What's Wrong with UK Gun Policy

Dr. John Ray's Gun Watch ran a story last week about how the UK is doing with gun crime since the post-Dunblane laws have taken effect. Much as I expected, the situation has not improved:

Levels of violent crime recorded by police soared by 11 per cent in the second quarter of this year, Government figures showed yesterday.

Recorded gun crime rose by three per cent to 10,590 incidents in the year to June - an average of 29 a day and more than double the rate when Labour took power - although firearm killings were down.

You have to like that last part, but the idea behind the gun crackdown in the UK was to lower all of these numbers. As with most attempts to ban a social wrong, bad guys have as much or more access to guns as ever while decent people don't have any. If the Concealed Carry laws passed in US states are any indication, an armed populace is a deterrent like no other, and just outlawing something has no effect on those who live outside the law.

It's a terrible idea to punish use instead of abuse, my father always says, as the bad guys are not discouraged while the good guys are. Now the UK is banning "assault knives" and axes in what must be an increasingly desperate hope that doing the same thing that failed everywhere else will magically work there. Good luck with all that.