The Gold Standard of Gun Control …

                   The Gold Standard of Gun Control
               Book Review of Joyce Malcolm, Guns and Violence:

                                   The English Experience

                  By David B. Kopel 1 , Paul Gallant 2 , and Joanne D. Eisen 3

         For the last several decades, the United States and Canada have enjoyed robust
scholarly inquiry into the law and policy issues regarding gun control and gun rights. Yet
in the United Kingdom, scholarly attention to firearms policy has been almost nil. 4 As a
result, the definitive history of the right to arms guarantee in the 1689 English Bill of
Rights was written by the American Joyce Lee Malcolm. Her book To Keep and Bear
Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right focused on the century of political
developments leading up to the 1689 Bill of Rights, and on the effect of the 1689 arms
rights guarantee during the eighteenth century in Great Britain and the United States. 5 In
Guns and Violence: The English Experience 6 Malcolm broadens her scope to tell the
story of the arms possession, arms control, and violent crime in England from the Middle
Ages through the end of the twentieth century.
         Malcolm describes the patterns of gun possession and violence, as well as
changes in British culture due to war, food shortages, politics, and crime policy. She pays
particular attention to changes in the culture of self-defense, both from the viewpoint of
the Crown and of the subjects, and to how crime victims are treated by the government.
Formerly, Britons happily contrasted their own permissive gun laws with the repressive
laws on the Continent, and considered liberal British laws to exemplify the superior and


1
  Research Director, Independence Institute, Golden, Colorado; Associate Policy Analyst, Cato Institute,
Washington, D.C., www.davekopel.org. Author of The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should
America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies? (1992). Coauthor of Gun Control and Gun Rights
(2002). Editor-in-Chief of the Journal on Firearms and Public Policy.
2
  Senior Fellow, Independence Institute, Golden Colorado. www.independenceinstitute.org.
3
   Senior Fellow, Independence Institute, Golden, Colorado. Coauthor (with Kopel and Gallant) of
numerous articles on international gun policy in publications such as the Notre Dame Law Review, Texas
Review of Law and Politics, Engage, UMKC Law Review, and Brown Journal of World Affairs.
         The authors would like to dedicate this Article to the memory of Alan G. Eisen, a devoted husband
who admired and supported Joanne's scholarship, and whose love of freedom and truth continues to inspire
us.
4
  Among the very few scholarly contributions to the gun control debate by British authors are PETER
SQUIRES, GUN CULTURE OR GUN CONTROL? (2000) and COLIN GREENWOOD, FIREARMS CONTROL (1972).
5
  JOYCE LEE MALCOLM, TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS: THE ORIGINS OF AN ANGLO-AMERICAN RIGHT (1994);
David B. Kopel, It isn't about Duck Hunting: The British Origins of the Right to Arms (book review) 96
MICH. L. REV. 1333 (1995); David B. Kopel, Malcolm in the Middle, NAT'L REV. ONLINE, Sept. 16, 2002,
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel091602.asp.
6
  JOYCE LEE MALCOLM, GUNS AND VIOLENCE: THE ENGLISH EXPERIENCE (2002). Following American
usage, Malcolm uses "English" to connote the entire polity of Great Britain, although some historically-
minded Englishmen would point out that Wales, Cornwall, and Scotland are not part of narrowly-defined
"England."


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free character of the British nation. But today, British gun controls are the most severe in
the western world. 7
         Malcolm's story is significant for readers interested in comparative criminology
or British history. But the story of what happened in Great Britain over the last century is
also of worldwide importance, because the modern British government has been
aggressively working to export its policies on firearms and self-defense. At the United
Nations, the British delegation has been in the forefront of efforts to create a legally
binding system of international gun control. The Foreign Office has been extremely
active in many other world fora, in regional conferences, and in bilateral relationships, in
promoting the broadest gun prohibition policies possible, wherever possible. The British
government is also a major funder of international gun prohibition lobbies and
organizations. Quite plainly, the British government believes that it has gotten gun
control policy just right, and that the British model must be imposed worldwide.
         Accordingly, Guns and Violence: The English Experience is relevant for every
person trying to decide whether to welcome or to resist the imposition of British-model
gun controls in his or her own country. In this Article, we present Malcolm's story of
British arms policy in the second millennium, and we also extend that story a few more
years forward, until the present.
         Malcolm's story begins in firearms-free medieval England of the thirteenth and
early fourteenth centuries, when the homicide rate was approximately 18-23 annually per
100,000 population. 8 Thereafter, the homicide rate began a six century decline. Even
after firearms became generally available in the sixteenth century, homicides rates
continued to fall. The right to arms was officially recognized in the 1689 Bill of Rights,
and for the next two centuries, England had almost no gun control, except for anti-
poaching laws, and a two-year period in 1819-1821 when stricter rules were imposed on
a few counties due to concerns about working class unrest. Violent crimes continued to
decline until the twentieth century. 9
         Various minor and ineffectual gun controls were enacted in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries; proposals for more extensive controls ran into strenuous
opposition in Parliament from MPs who still believed in natural rights. The advocacy for
gun control was almost always accompanied by a bodyguard of lies, such as when the
government, fearful of a workers rebellion, pushed through the Firearms Act of 1920.
The government falsely told the public that gun crimes were rapidly increasing, and hid
the law's true motive (political control) from the public, presenting the law as a mere
anti-crime measure. 10
         In practice, the law eliminated the right of British subjects to be armed, and turned
it into a privilege. The Firearms Act also began a decades-long process of eliminating the
public's duty to protect their society and right to protect themselves.
         The Firearms Act set the scene for civilian acceptance of further restrictions--not
only on gun possession--but on almost any act of self-defense. 11 Malcolm describes a
7
   There is one micro-state with even more repressive laws; the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg bans citizen
ownership of firearms.
8
  Malcolm, at 21.
9
  Malcolm, at 20.
10
   Malcolm, at 141-142.
11
    Malcolm, at 141-149; see also David B. Kopel & Joseph Olson, All the Way Down the Slippery Slope:
Gun Prohibition in England, and Some Lessons for America, 22 HAMLINE L. REV. 399 (1999).


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series of confidential memos, the first of which was written in 1937, from the Home
Office to local police in charge of the issuance of licenses. 12 The memos were designed
to reduce the number of lawfully possessed rifles and handguns as, coincidentally, crime
rates began to increase. By 1969, the police were advised to deny all rifle and handgun
licenses for self-defense purposes. 13
        Shotguns, which had historically been regulated less severely than rifles and
handguns, were brought into the licensing web in the 1960s; then in the 1980s, the
licensing system was changed to make sure that no one would possess a shotgun
defensively. "Safe storage" requirements were invented by the police, and enforced with
increasing severity so as ensure that a lawfully-stored gun of any type could never be
available for defense in a sudden emergency. Parliament had never voted to outlaw
defensive gun ownership; instead, the Home Office, operating through secret memos, had
instructed the police how to use their control over the gun licensing process to eliminate
the right of every Briton to arm against criminals.
        In 1998, after a known pedophile used a handgun to murder kindergarten children
in Dunblane, Scotland, the Parliament banned non-government possession of handguns.
As a result the Gun Control Network (a prohibition advocacy group) enthused that
"present British controls over firearms are regarded as `the gold standard' in many
countries." According to GCN spokesperson Mrs. Gill Marshall-Andrews, "the fact that
we have a gold standard is something to be proud of...." 14
        A July 2001 study from King's College London's Centre for Defence Studies
found that handgun-related crime increased by nearly 40% in the two years following
implementation of the handgun ban. 15 The study also found that there had been "no direct
link" between lawful possession of guns by licensed citizens and misuse of guns by
criminals. 16 According to the King's College report, although the 1998 handgun ban
resulted in over 160,000 licensed handguns being withdrawn from personal possession,
"the UK appears not to have succeeded in creating the gun free society for which many
have wished. Gun related violence continues to rise and the streets of Britain...seem no
more safe." 17
        A few weeks before the King's College study was released, Home Office figures
showed that violent crime in Great Britain was rising at the second fastest rate in the
world, well above the U.S. rate, and on par with crime-ridden South Africa. 18 In February
2001, it was reported that 26 percent of persons living in England and Wales had been
victims of crime in 1999. 19 Home Secretary Jack Straw admitted, "levels of victimisation
are higher than in most comparable countries for most categories of crime." On May 4,

12
    Malcolm, at 155-156.
13
    Malcolm, at 171.
14
    House of Commons, Home Affairs ­ Second Report ­ Controls over Firearms, Session 1999-2000, Apr.
6, 2000, at ¶22, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmhaff/95/9502.htm (visited
June 5, 2006).
15
   Illegal Firearms in the United Kingdom, Centre for Defence Studies, Kings's College London, Jul. 2,
2001, Working Paper 4, Table 1, at 12.
16
    Illegal Firearms, Working Paper 4, at 3.
17
    Illegal Firearms, Working Paper 3, at 9. Malcolm estimates a remainder of 4 million illegally possessed
firearms of all types. See Malcolm, at 209.
18
    Nick Paton Walsh, UK Matches Africa in Crime Surge, THE GUARDIAN, Jun. 3, 2001.
19
    Sean O'Neill, A Quarter of English are Victims of Crime, THE TELEGRAPH, Feb. 23, 2001.


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2001, the Telegraph disclosed that the risk of a citizen being assaulted was "higher in
Britain than almost anywhere else in the industrialized world, including America." 20 The
latest U.N. data show that Scotland (which has always kept separate criminal justice
statistics from England and Wales) has the highest violent crime rate of any developed
nation, and that England and Wales are not much better. 21
         With passage of the Firearms Act of 1997, "it was confidently assumed that the
new legislation effectively banning handguns would have the direct effect of reducing
certain types of violent crime by reducing access to weapons." 22 The news media
promised that the "world's toughest laws will help to keep weapons off the streets." 23
         Yet faster than British gun-owners could surrender their handguns for destruction,
guns began flooding into Great Britain from the international black market (especially
from eastern Europe and from China), driven by the demands of the country's rapidly
developing criminal gun-culture. 24
         Malcolm does not hide her disdain for the creators of the last century of
destructive policies in Great Britain, nor for the nineteenth century bureaucrats who
began laying the foundation for the twentieth century failures. In less than a hundred
years, British policymakers have undone six prior centuries of progress, and turned
twenty-first century England, like thirteenth century England, into the most violent,
crime-ridden nation in Western Europe.
         While not claiming to supply a complete explanation for the catastrophic surge in
British crime, Malcolm argues that the gun control laws, particularly the anti-self defense
components of those laws, deserve part of the blame. Her conclusion is shared by Peter
Hitchens, who also argues that extremely repressive gun laws are one of the major causes
of Britain's modern crime wave. 25
         Malcolm suggests that many criminals are capable of at least elementary logical
thought, and thus can be deterred by the risk of confronting a victim who can fight back
effectively; conversely, criminals can be emboldened by the prospect of attacking a
defenseless victim. 26 For example, a major U.S. study of convicted felons in ten U.S.
state prison systems found that 60% of prisoners said that they would not attack a victim
known to possess a firearm, and 74% of their sample agreed that they would avoid
occupied houses on the chance that the owner(s) might possess a firearm. 27
         However, British criminals have little expectation of confronting a victim who
possesses a firearm. Even the small percentage of British homes which have a lawfully-
owned gun would not be able to unlock the gun from one safe, and then unlock the
ammunition from another safe, in time to use the gun against a home invader.28 It should

20
   Philip Johnston, Britain Leads the World on Risk of Being Assaulted, THE TELEGRAPH, May 4, 2001.
21
   See Scotland Worst for Violence ­ UN, BBC NEWS, Sept. 18, 2005 ("Scotland has been named the most
violent country in the developed world by a United Nations Report.").
22
   Illegal Firearms, Working Paper 1, at 7.
23
   Philip Johnston, World's Toughest Laws Will Help to Keep Weapons off the Streets, THE TELEGRAPH,
Nov. 2, 1996.
24
   Illegal Firearms, Working Paper 4, at 15.
25
   PETER HITCHENS, A BRIEF HISTORY OF CRIME (2003).
26
   See Patrick Mercer, Even Burglars Admit It: My Bill Will Stop Them, THE TELGRAPH, Jan. 12, 2005.
27
   JAMES D. WRIGHT & PETER H. ROSSI, ARMED AND CONSIDERED DANGEROUS (1986), at 145.
28
   The current British implementation of the "safe storage" requirements invented by the police, as part of
the gun licensing process, require that the guns and ammunition be kept in separate safes.


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hardly be surprising, then, that Britain has a much higher rate of home invasion burglaries
than does the United States. 29
        Technically, self-defense is still legal in Great Britain, but in practice, any act of
self-defense is subject to a prosecutor's second-guessing of what is "reasonable." For
example, Brett Osborn is now serving a 5-year sentence for manslaughter. In order to
protect a friend, "He stabbed a blood-covered, drug-crazed intruder...." His prosecution
stemmed from the fact that he failed to warn the criminal that he had access to a knife. 30
        In 2004, despite popular demand, the British government refused to reform the
laws regarding victim self-defense. Home Office Minister Fiona Mactaggart claimed that
self-defense reform would be a "licence to kill with impunity." 31
        Coming to the aid of crime victims is strongly discouraged. British subjects are
taught that, if they are attacked by a criminal, they should not yell "Help! Help!" because
such cries might encourager a bystander to use physical force against the criminal.
Rather, victims are supposed to yell, "Call the police." Likewise, the government tells
Britons that when they are attacked, they should not fight back, but should instead curl
into a ball or take a similar defensive posture. 32
        If a properly-behaved British bystander does "call the police," the response may
be lethally slow. Vicky Horgan and her sister Emma Walton were shot by Stuart Horgan
on June 6, 2004. 33 A total of sixty calls to 999 (the US's equivalent to 9-1-1) were made,
but help did not arrive for over an hour. The Express explained that a major cause of the
delay was police reluctance to confront an armed criminal. 34
        Nor are criminals afraid of being jailed, as the authorities cannot afford to
incarcerate them. In 2006, burglary was essentially decriminalized, by a new government
policy to merely give a "caution" (an official warning) to first time burglars who have
been apprehended; now, a burglary will literally not even result in an arrest for a burglar
who is caught for the first time. 35

Britain's New Gun Culture

        While tightening the screws on law-abiding gun owners, the British authorities
29
   David B. Kopel, Lawyers, Guns, and Burglars, 43 ARIZ. L. REV. 345 (2001); David B. Kopel, Comment,
in Jens Ludwig & Philip Cook, eds., EVALUATING GUN POLICY 109-18 (2003).
30
   Mercer, supra.
31
   `Tony Martin Law' is Blocked, BBC NEWS, Apr. 30, 2004.
32
    Dave Kopel, From The Frontlines, THE CORNER (Nat'l Rev. Online weblog) May 15, 2003,
http://www.davekopel.com/Corner/Corner-Archive-2003.htm           (quoting American exchange student's
report of instructions which a British officer delivered to a newly-arrived cadre of American students in
London).
33
   Mother Angry at Shooting Response, BBC NEWS, Feb. 21, 2006 ("But police did not enter the house until
more than an hour after the first 999 call was made."). See also Police Criticised over Gun Deaths, BBC
NEWS, Sept. 29, 2004. In the death of Julia Pemberton, the police received a call at 7:11 P.M., but did not
arrive until nearly 2 A.M. the following day. The coroner stated "The only way Julia Pemberton's life could
have been saved is if she had an armed escort throughout the 15 months before she died." The coroner's
report did not consider the much cheaper, and potentially more effective, option of permitting Julia to arm
herself.
34
   See Anna Pukas, This Week's Scathing Report on How Police Dealt With a Killing Spree at a Family
Party has Brought New Anguish and Anger for Roy and Georgie Gibson; Torment of Couple Haunted by
the Barbeque Murders, THE EXPRESS, Oct. 9, 2004.
35
   Jon Silverman, How Police Cautions Work, BBC NEWS, Jan. 13, 2006.


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were declaring their determination to prevent the existence of an American-style "gun
culture." In that regard, the British government has been very successful.
        In previous generations, Britain had a long-standing tradition of sporting gun use,
and an unwritten agreement that both the police and the criminals would eschew the use
of guns. Everything has now changed. The new criminal gun culture in Britain is one in
which, according to the British government, there is "the perception of firearms as a
means of resolving differences through violence." 36
        British gun laws have transformed the way children are introduced to firearms. In
the past, the many parents who participated in the shooting sports taught their children
safe and responsible firearm handling practices. Now, the gun control laws are
deliberately operated to impose bureaucratic barriers that encourage law-abiding shooters
to give up their sport; many have done so.
        Never introduced into a law-abiding, responsible gun culture of adults, Britain's
modern youth are creating their own "gun culture", a sort of non-fiction version of Lord
of the Flies. Children in gangs, some as young as nine, roam the streets uncontrolled,
victimizing the aged and the infirm. 37 Today, one third of all British criminals under the
age of 25 admit to owning or having access to a firearm. 38
        In contrast, firearm ownership in the United States continues, for the most part, to
be kept in the family, handed down from parent to child. What happens when parents
teach children about shooting? The most detailed empirical data come from the Rochester
(N.Y.) Study on Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse. 39
        Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, the study tracked 7th- and 8th-graders
for 4-1/2 years until 11th or 12th grade, providing "quite a thorough picture of adolescent
development during the junior and senior high school years." The researchers explain
that "To maximize the number of serious, chronic offenders available for the study, the
sample includes more youth from high-crime areas and fewer from low-crime areas." For
the same reason, the study focused exclusively on males.
        One of the topics of the Rochester Study was adolescent behavior with firearms.
Of the group of boys who owned guns legally by the time they were in 9th or 10th grade,
not one of them committed any crime or delinquent act with a gun.
        Of the boys who did not, by 9th or 10th grade, already own a legal gun, one percent
would commit a firearms crime in the next few years. As for the boys who already
illegally owned guns, twenty-four percent would eventually use a gun in a crime.
        As for the overall rate of street crimes (remember, the study deliberately
oversampled at-risk males), of the boys who lawfully owned guns, fourteen percent
eventually committed at least one street crime. Of the non-gun owners, twenty-four
percent committed a street crime. Of the illegal gun owners, seventy-four percent
committed a street crime.
        Thus, it appears that there is something about the culture of law-abiding gun

36
   House of Commons, Home Affairs ­ Second Report ­ Controls over Firearms, Session 1999-2000, Apr.
6, 2000, at ¶50, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmhaff/95/9502.htm (visited
June 9, 2006).
37
    Gillian Harris, `Terrible ten' Children Terrorising Edinburgh, THE TIMES, Jul. 18, 2001; Philip
Nettleton, Curfew on `Reign of Terror' Boy, THIS IS LONDON, Nov. 2, 2001.
38
   Tony Thompson, One in Three Young Criminals is Armed, THE GUARDIAN, Sep. 3, 2000.
39
   Urban Delinquency and Substance Abuse ­ Technical Report, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of
Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Nov. 1993.


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ownership which is associated with lower rates of gun crime, and of general crime. The
researchers observed: "Parents who own legal guns socialize their children into the
legitimate gun culture. Those parents who do not own guns are unlikely to socialize their
children in that manner." Simply put, the Rochester youths who were given lethal
weapons by their parents, and who were instructed in how to use those weapons by their
parents (usually, by the father), behaved more responsibly than did their peers.
        Today, Great Britain is generally a more dangerous place than the United States.40
Great Britain is also a place which has successfully crushed the spread of a large
American-style gun-culture. While America's gun culture is still composed,
overwhelmingly, of law-abiding, hard-working, family-oriented people, Great Britain's
new gun culture consists of armed criminals, and armed police. 41 One fact is undeniable:
the Firearms Act "did not stop the use of guns, it prevented their use by honest citizens ­
and created a monopoly, with the ownership and use of guns confined to two classes:
professional criminals and the police." 42
        Guns and Violence tells a remarkable story of a society's self-destruction, of how
a government in a few decades managed to reverse six hundred years of social progress
in violence reduction. The book is also a testament to the amazing self-confidence of
British governments; Labour and Conservative alike have proceeded with an extreme
anti-self-defense agenda, although the agenda has never had much supporting evidence
beyond the government's own platitudes. Whether the rest of the world should follow
that bipartisan British agenda is an essential question in the current United Nations debate
over international gun control.




40
   The one major criminal justice statistic in which Great Britain appears to be doing better than the U.S. is
the homicide rate, with the U.S. rate at 4.3, and the England and Wales rate at 1.4. However, the U.S. rate is
based on initial reports of homicides, and includes lawful self-defense killings (about 10-15% of the total);
the England and Wales rate is based only on final dispositions, so that an unsolved murder, or a murder
which is pleaded down to a lesser offense, is not counted a homicide. In addition, multiple murders are
counted as only a single homicide for Scottish statistics. See Malcolm, at 228-31; Patsy Richards, Homicide
Statistics, Research Paper 99/56, House of Commons Library Social and General Statistics Section, May
27, 1999, at 9. See also Statistics Release, Homicides in Scotland in 2001 ­ Statistics Published: A Scottish
Executive National Statistics Publication, Nov. 28, 2002, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00205-
00.asp (visited May 16, 2006), at Note 2 ("A single case of homicide is counted for each act of murder or
culpable homicide irrespective of the number of perpetrators or victims.")
41
   Gun Law, THE GUARDIAN, Dec. 4, 2000.
42
   Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Cracked Shots, THE GUARDIAN, Jul. 19, 2001.


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