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HOW GOVERNMENTS CREATE CRIME AN OVERVIEW OF CRIME CONTROL, GUN CONTROL, PEOPLE CONTROL
AND THE LOSS OF RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENCE. A presentation
given to the Law and Order Workshop at the ACT New Zealand (Association of
Consumers and Taxpayers) Annual Conference, INTRODUCTION Over the last 80-90
years, a wide range of ever-more restrictive gun control laws have become an
accepted part of every government’s approach to crime control. The gun
control debate has been raging for almost as long. In spite of this, and
although these laws have been “toughened-up” after each
high-profile failure (Aramoana (NZ), Dunblane (UK), Port Arthur (Aust),
Columbine (US),) such incidents still occur and violent crime continues to
rise. HOW CAN THIS BE? Surely if gun laws worked
as we are told they work, the trend should surely be the opposite and each
tightening up on firearms use and possession would result in a fall in crime
not a sharp increase. Might it not be that we are seeing “cause and effect”,
with such legislation substantially contributing to the increase in violent
crime? The firearms debate and
the related issue of effective self-defence in the face of rising criminal
violence are key components in any crime/ law and order debate. It is important
to have a realistic grasp of all the relevant facts before discussing or
attempting to formulate policy. Gun control is a complex
area and any understanding requires knowledge of many overlapping topics and
policy areas: 1) Legal/Criminal
Justice systems 2) Constitutional
law and International law 3) Policing
- current procedures and past and present policy 4) Psychology 5) Criminology 6) Mental
health 7) History 8) Politics 9) Role
of Prisons/ Corrections Policy Fundamentally, the gun
control debate (which includes the topic of self-defence) is characterised by
two opposing world views. The first sees the entire responsibility for crime
control and the maintenance of law and order rest totally with the government
and its agencies. ·
Use of deadly force
is delegated to police and army. ·
Ordinary citizens
play no part in maintaining law and order and are not considered trustworthy enough. ·
Individuals are not
allowed to protect themselves - especially not with firearms and any
pre-existing right of self defence is frowned upon and weakened. ·
Such a point of
view clearly supports gun control measures. The opposite point of
view considers governments to be simply elected servants of the people and to
operate under delegated authority from the people. One fundamental, if often
forgotten, principle is that the master (the people) should always have more
power than the servant (government and its various agencies). ·
Power is thus
shared between people and government. Most importantly, both parties
have complementary if separate roles to play in the creation of a safe and
well-functioning society. Optimum outcomes result from allowing the citizen
to have maximum input into maintaining law and order, with the State
protecting the fundamental rights of the law-abiding citizen and not usurping
them. This clearly opposes the fundamental concept of gun control and is
clearly in step with the basic principles of any properly functioning
democracy: ·
Individuals are the
rightful owners of their own lives and therefore have inherent freedoms and
responsibilities. ·
The proper purpose
of government is to protect such freedoms and not to assume such responsibilities. FIREARMS LEGISLATION: A BRIEF HISTORY
LESSON Gun laws are relatively recent
additions to our statute books. They attempt to control an item sometimes
used in crime rather than the individuals who commit crime. They first
appeared in their present form in the 1920s in the English speaking world and
were refined by the Fascist governments of Hitler and Mussolini. Stalin also
was an enthusiastic proponent of gun laws and used draconian firearms laws to
rapidly disarm the Russian people.
Since then, gun laws have become almost universal. The toughest laws
on private firearm ownership seem to occur in the most politically repressive
countries. ·
While not all
countries with tough gun control laws are tyrannies, all tyrannies have tough gun control laws. THE UNITED STATES AND ITS FIREARMS
LEGISLATION Most people consider the 20,000 Federal, State and
Local laws and ordinances dealing with firearms. Before and after the
civil war in the Southern states. The aim
was to keep the blacks disarmed and thus subject to white authority. This
became even more important after the slaves were freed. The first
“modern” gun laws in the In the The Firearms Act of 1920
was the first piece of legislation in British history that removed from
British subjects the right to be armed and was the culmination of almost 50
years of effort by British governments of every political stripe. Then, as now, the
announced rationale by the ruling coalition government was an increase in armed crime,
yet statistics for The real motive for this
legislation was that the government was unwilling to relinquish its immense
wartime powers. Private cabinet papers showed that the Government was afraid not
of crime but of political disorder, more specifically Bolshevik revolution by a
working class with little real political power and low wages. A general strike
had been called. GOVERNMENT JUSTIFICATION FOR FIREARMS
CONTROLS In summary, control of
the working class and not crime control was the underlying motive for the
1920 Gun laws in the In Although this was relaxed
in the 1880s, after the land wars had ended, more gun control legislation was
passed in 1908 because of a fear of left-wing agitation and the birth of
organisations like the International Workers of the World and the Federation
of Labour. While such organisations failed to mobilise the working class,
they certainly did manage to terrify the government (2). The return of servicemen
after World War 1, with their service guns and war trophies, made the authorities
nervous about large scale industrial demonstrations or riots in an era of
deteriorating industrial relations. In 1920, in tandem with the · Gun control is less about guns, it is
more about control. Gun control laws are
essentially elitist and often also racist. They help to maintain
discrimination and exploitation. They also help to maintain an unacceptable
and unstable social status quo by force and they are thus profoundly
anti-democratic. · Such laws are unlikely to be
beneficial to society. The erroneous belief at
the core of gun control proposals is that inanimate objects such as guns
(rather than aberrant people) cause crime. Logically, fewer guns
would mean fewer crimes and no guns will in time equate to no crimes. The
facts tell a different story. There is no relationship between high levels of
gun ownership rates and high levels of violent crime rates between nations:
Fig. 1 - Taken from
Note: There is a correlation between gun
ownership and gun death, but not between gun ownership and violent crime.
This correlation is primarily due to the link between gun ownership and gun suicide.
There is no link between gun ownership and total suicide. In other words, if
you do not have a gun you clearly cannot shoot yourself or anyone else. That
does not mean that you cannot kill someone else or yourself. IN SUMMARY There is no link between
a nation’s gun ownership rate and its violent crime rates. Widespread legal
ownership of firearms is entirely compatible with low crime rates, as is the
opposite scenario. If there is no pattern between gun ownership levels and
the violent crime rates of different nations, is there then a correlation
between gun ownership rates and violent crime levels in different areas of a
particular country or over time? Here, the data does show a significant
correlation between the numbers of legal guns and the violent crime rate.
Unfortunately for supporters of more gun control, the relationship is
inverse, with crime rates rising as gun numbers fall. This can be seen by
tracking the violent crime rates of individual countries in relation to their
gun laws. Comparisons can then be made of trends in crime between various
countries over time. Let us look at some examples. 1. Countries
that completely banned firearms ( Firearms
were prohibited and confiscated in 1972. This was motivated by a concern with
terrorism and a fear that police might not be able to retain control.
Fig. 2 - Murder
Trend in the As
the graph shows, after the passage of rate
rose from about 10 a year to 50 a year in the space of just three years.
While it then
fell back from this peak, the new murder level stabilised at roughly double
the previous
rate (at 20 murders a year) for some twenty years (until 1995). It then started
rising again in 1995 and reached the previous high of 50 murders a year in 2002.
It is hard to see how the ordinary Irish citizen has been made safer by the prohibition
and confiscation of privately owned guns in 1972. closed
because of continuing human rights abuses. The 1974 law not only prohibited
the private possession of firearms and ammunition but also introduced
mandatory life sentences for firearms offences. There was no bail and jury
trial for any firearms crime was suspended. Firearms ownership is still
prohibited and violent crime levels remain very high. Another concern is that
the rate of shootings by police is very high.
Fig. 3 - Jamaican
Crime Trends As
the graph shows, the murder rate did not fall after the passage of the gun
law but doubled within a few years from 10 per100,000 population to 20 per
100,000 and then doubled again in the early 1980’s to 40 per100,000
population. This equates to about 1000 murders per year. They then fell back
to a rate of about 20 per 100,000 (twice the rate before the passage of the
law) but a decade later started to rise again. By 1997 they had reached 40
per 100,000 again and have remained round that figure. Again, it is hard to
see what effect gun laws might have had other than dramatically increasing
all violence. Note the similarity in
the 2. Countries that have introduced harsh general
firearms laws in the 1990s: ( Firearms
laws in the Firearms
Amendment 1988 was brought in after Hungerford (where a deranged man in
camouflage gear and armed with a pistol and Kalashnikov
“look-alike” killed fifteen other people, including his mother,
and then killed himself). The legislation banned semi-automatic
military-style rifles as well as all semi-automatic shotguns. A decade later,
after the Dunblane massacre in 1997 (when a deranged paedophile armed with
two pistols shot 16 children at a primary school) all legally held handguns
were prohibited and then confiscated. Has this legislation made the
Fig 4 - Homicide
Trends in the The
graph shows that in 100,000
population have steadily increased since the early 1990’s. In contrast,
in the
Fig. 5 - Murder
Trends in An
even more spectacular result is seen by comparing violent crime rates in
Fig. 6 - Violent
Crime Rates in As
can be seen, in 1988 the than
continued
to fall to the present day in spite (or, as we will see, probably because) of
more and more states liberalising their firearms laws. The English violent
crime rate started to rise in 1997 (a paradoxical result since all pistols
were banned and confiscated
in that year) and this rise has escalated dramatically to the present day. The
present population
to about 500 per 100,000 population. The English rate has increased from just
over 400 per 100,000 in 1988 to about 700 per 100,000 in 1997 and then
doubled again to 1400 per 100,000 population in just four years. England is
now in the unenviable position of having a violent crime rate almost three
times that of the US and is certainly no longer the safe nation it was even
two decades ago. Over
the very same period, the number of legally held firearms (as measured by shotgun
certificates granted) have fallen while whole classes of firearms (semi- automatic
rifles and pistols) have been prohibited and confiscated.
Fig. 7 - Shotgun
Certificates and Robberies, The
same pattern can be clearly seen in the next graph, which shows that a 20%
decline in legal firearm ownership in
Fig. 8 - Legal Gun
Ownership and Firearm Robbery in Great Britain 1979-1992 (Source – In
1997, the Howard government brought in sweeping firearms legislation
following the
Fig. 9 - Violent
Crime in the Robbery
rates in 1993,
when the robbery rate in the
Fig. 10 - Robbery
Trends in In
1977, the Canadian government introduced police screening for firearms purchasers.
This was followed (in 1991) by stiffer rules for ownership and a number of firearms
and accessories were prohibited. Finally, in 1995, owner licensing and
universal firearms registration was brought in and many types of handguns
were banned. Yet over the period 1990-2003, homicide rates decreased faster
in the
Fig. 11 - Trends in
US and Canadian Homicide Rates
Fig. 12 - Violent
Crime Trends in the However,
the 1995 Canadian Firearms legislation impacted on more than just crime
trends. Although violent crime has not reduced significantly in (Graphs 2 to 12
reproduced with permission of Prof. Gary Mauser) (4, 5) CONCLUSIONS After the introduction of
British-style gun laws in ·
The true
relationship between firearms and crime is inverse, with crime rates falling
as legal firearm numbers increase and rising as legal firearms ownership is
hindered or prohibited. · TOUGH FIREARMS LEGISLATION equals
HIGHER CRIME RATES. Since 1996, in the Home Office figures for
1998-2003 (following the prohibition of all pistols in 1997) show that the
incidence of gun crime in It is difficult to avoid
the conclusion that restrictive gun laws raise crime rates and that each
cycle of “tightening up” gun laws has the perverse effect of
increasing violent crime. SELF-DEFENCE LAWS equal FALLING CRIME RATES Compare with In those states, crime
has fallen faster than the national crime rate (as shown in the Landmark 1997
study by Professor Lott and David Mustard entitled “Crime, deterrence
and right to carry concealed handguns”). The LOTT-MUSTARD Study (6) This study analysed crime
data from all 3054 counties in the US throughout the period 1977-1992 and
found that, when “shall issue” gun laws allowing concealed carry
of a pistol went into effect in a county, murders dropped 7.65% (including
non-gun murders), rapes fell by 5.2%, robberies fell by 2.2% and aggravated
assaults fell 7%. All this was achieved
with no extra state or federal expenditure on police or any other part of the
machinery of law and order. Even better, the downward trend has continued,
with states still seeing smaller decreases even after 15 or more years. Lott and Mustard also
extrapolated their figures to those counties that did not have such
self-defence friendly laws and calculated that there would have been 1,414
fewer murders, 4177 fewer rapes, 11,898 fewer robberies and 60,363 fewer
aggravated robberies had such a law been in place. This corresponds to a
potential saving of over 6 Billion (US) dollars (adjusted to 1992 dollars). “Concealed handguns
are the most cost-effective method of reducing crime thus far analysed by
economists, providing a higher return than increased law enforcement or
incarceration, other private security devices or social programmes like early
educational intervention” (6). Might that be the real
reason why 38 states in SUICIDES Another
of the other false promises of gun control is that suicides will fall.
Although often (but not invariably) gun suicides do fall, total suicide rates
remain unchanged. This is true for NZ as well as overseas. ACCIDENTS Firearms are also no
different to any other potentially dangerous item. Accidents occur because of
inexperience or immaturity, aberrant behavioural traits or stupidity. These
are the very sort of people who break or disregard laws. Firearms accidents
in NZ are very rare, in spite of high gun ownership rates. Over the last
half-century, firearm accident rates have declined significantly, even as
firearm numbers have risen (NZ Mountain Safety Council) (2). There has been a
similar trend in the As with crime and guns, a
natural inverse relationship appears to apply. If we accept the overwhelming
body of evidence that increasing gun ownership levels does not increase
violent crime but works to reduce it, what precisely is the mechanism by
which it works? SELF-DEFENCE A robust right of self
defence (together with access to the means to do so) strengthens and
reaffirms the basic philosophy that citizens have a moral and legal right to
defend themselves against criminal attack. It demonstrates that government
trusts its citizens. It is also an acceptance by the authorities that there
will always be a small minority of dangerous criminals or deranged
individuals roaming free in our society and that in reality the state is
unable to protect the ordinary citizen and their property from such people. An individual’s
right of legal self defence is based on the same law that police use to
justify carrying firearms and the use of deadly force. The relevant section
(48) of the NZ Crimes Act (Defence Against Assault) states; “Everyone
is justified in using, in defence of himself or another, such force as, in
the circumstances as he believes them to be, it is reasonable to use.”
Note that this applies to everyone and nothing in the Act gives police
greater rights or gives grounds for them to discriminate against the ordinary
citizen. Why then do police
hierarchy believe police have a greater right, a greater need and a greater
justification to both the right and the means of self defence than the people
they are paid to protect? How is it that police
policies and procedures that appear to run counter to the law are allowed to
survive unchallenged and continue to be enforced, especially when the
evidence over the past decade is that it will increase crime rates? The concept of a right of
self-defence is universal. Blackstone, the famous 17th Century English
Constitutional historian called it “inviolate, a primary law of
nature”. The right of self-defence belongs to each person, not just to
police or to those granted special status by the state. ·
This right was
available to our grandparents and parents in the ·
This is a right
that requires a good deal of personal responsibility. Anyone misusing this
right must be legally prosecuted. ·
In the ·
Qualified citizens
are clearly both very law-abiding and very responsible. Self-defence can be
considered the most important human right of all, because without it, all other
rights ultimately become meaningless. Criminals can strike anywhere and at any time.
It is the criminal who chooses his victim; the victim does not choose to be a
victim. Criminals strike when they see themselves as having an advantage over
their victim. POLICE RESPONSE TO CRIME It is in reality
impossible for police and government to protect every citizen 24 hours a day.
In addition, police have no strict legal obligation to protect individual
members of the public and are not legally liable for failure to protect. When a crime is being
committed, only the perpetrator and the victim are present. The police have
yet to arrive. 99% of police work is
reactive, and starts after the crime has been committed. Furthermore, police response
times are inconsistent and often unacceptably long even in our towns. In
rural areas police might not arrive for hours. FIREARMS LEGISLATION DOES NOT DISARM CRIMINALS Gun laws only disarm the
law-abiding, they will never disarm criminals. In doing so, they make the
law-abiding more vulnerable to violent crime while making the (often armed)
criminal safer. Gun laws are In such a situation,
disarming the law-abiding majority through restrictive gun laws denies
ordinary people their basic right to life if attacked. This is dangerous for
victims and clearly helps criminals. On the other hand,
allowing potential victims the right and means to effective self-defence
works to reduce crime by increasing risks to criminals and by changing the
perception of criminals that victims are easy targets. It deters criminals
because they are unsure of outcome and because getting it wrong can be
dangerous or even fatal for them. The evidence now available shows clearly that
not only can ordinary citizens protect themselves better than police or
government can protect them but that this protection (even if only a few
people actually take up the option) extends to other members of their
community, whether they choose to have the means to defend themselves or not.
The socially beneficial result is lower violent crime rates and a safer
society. Most importantly, the
right of self-defence closes an important if poorly understood behavioural
loop that socialists have been ignoring and trying to destroy for decades.
SELF-DEFENCE LEGISLATION An effective self-defence
law sends the message that, although the authorities and the law cannot
prevent certain people from choosing to be disruptive and violent, they can create
a social environment in which the consequences of such behaviour will rebound
on the perpetrator. In other words, if your behaviour is such that it puts
others in fear of their lives, then as you increase fear and risks to others
you also automatically increase the risks to yourself. Such consequences have
been all but removed from our society and as a result criminal behaviour has
rocketed out of control. ·
A right to
self-defence by law-abiding citizens is the basis of real community policing.
·
As stated already,
police have no strict legal obligation to protect individual citizens and
cannot be held legally liable for failing to do so. Police, however,
certainly can make the ordinary citizen more vulnerable to criminal attack by
the way they enforce firearm laws and by the way police policies and
procedures impose restraints on our basic right of self-defence. Such
policies and procedures do not fight crime but simply protect privilege and
over a period of time work to increase crime, especially violent crime. It is time that such
counter-productive police policies and procedures were subjected to the long
overdue process of robust public and parliamentary scrutiny and that the
necessary changes in the law, police attitudes and police policies and procedures
were implemented. ·
It will turn out to
be one of the most effective crime fighting initiatives ever. THEORY OF POLICING In 1826, the founder of
modern policing, Sir Robert Peel set out his basic principles of policing. ·
The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent
crime and disorder. ·
The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent
upon public approval of police actions. ·
Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary
observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the
public. ·
The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured
diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force. ·
Police seek and preserve public favour not by catering to
public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to
the law. ·
Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure
observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion,
advice and warning is found to be insufficient. ·
Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the
public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the
public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the
public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent
on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. ·
Police should always direct their action strictly towards
their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary. ·
The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and
disorder, not the visible
evidence of police action in dealing with it. There was clearly never
any intention to create a para-military police force with a focus on
controlling ordinary law-abiding citizens. RIGHT OF CITIZEN’S ARREST Historically, and right
up until some 50 years ago, it was well understood (especially by criminals)
that every ordinary citizen was potentially a policeman or policewoman out of
uniform. Every Citizen had a clearly defined right (and access to the means)
of self-defence and citizen’s arrest. Anyone at a crime scene
was entitled to do whatever was necessary to deter, prevent or terminate a
crime. As a result, serious crime was very low and both the ordinary citizen
and the ordinary police officer were much safer. The exploding crime rates
seen in countries that have attempted to restrict legal firearms shows we can add
gun control to the ever-growing list of government plans that dramatically
fail to achieve what they promised. ·
The failure of gun
control has become too overwhelming to ignore. The issue of self-defence
and the valuable contribution to law and order that the ordinary law-abiding
citizen can make are two issues on which this present New · What worked then |
