In the summer of 2000 I found myself sat at the counter of a small bar somewhere on the coast of Virginia, USA.\u00a0 The barman, a man in his 40s with long hair and a beard, was friendly enough and we were chatting (the place wasn’t busy).\u00a0 I don’t remember what we talked about and I would have otherwise forgotten being there were it not for one thing he said regarding Britain:<\/p>\n
“Well, you guys just need to get the fuck out of Ireland.”<\/em><\/p>\n I wasn’t particularly annoyed by the remark – dumbassed comments on the Northern Irish situation were common enough back home – but it remained with me as a perfect example of somebody passing a remark on a highly complex and protracted foreign situation which revealed almost total ignorance and should best be ignored.\u00a0 Which is what I did.<\/p>\n I was reminded of this episode last week in the wake of the shootings in South Carolina, when herds of British and Australians, led by that idiot Piers Morgan and backed up by the comedian John Oliver, took to the internet to launch both criticism and advice at America which can be summed up as follows:<\/p>\n 1) Americans are stupid.<\/p>\n 2) Ban all guns now.<\/p>\n When it comes to foreigners talking about American gun laws, there seems to be an inverse relationship between passion and knowledge of the subject.\u00a0 Many of those foaming at the mouth, who confess they consider this issue to be the gravest America faces, were unaware that gun laws vary considerably<\/a> from state to state.\u00a0 Others claimed the issue of gun control is one that has never been debated in the US, leading one to wonder how the Federal Government, 50 states, and the District of Columbia managed to pass legislation on the subject.\u00a0 As Wikipedia <\/a>tells us:<\/p>\n Policy at the Federal level is\/has been governed by the Second Amendment<\/a>, National Firearms Act<\/a>, Gun Control Act of 1968<\/a>, Firearm Owners Protection Act<\/a>, Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act<\/a>, Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act<\/a>, and the Domestic Violence Offender Act<\/a>. Gun policy in the U.S. has been revised many times with acts such as the Firearm Owners Protection Act<\/a>, which loosened provisions for gun sales while also strengthening automatic firearms law.[94]<\/a><\/sup> At the local and state level gun laws such as handgun bans have been overturned by the Supreme Court in cases such as District of Columbia v. Heller<\/a> and McDonald v. Chicago<\/a>.These cases hold that an individual person has a right to possess a firearm. Columbia v. Heller only addressed the issue on Federal enclaves, while McDonald v. Chicago addressed the issue as relating to the individual states.<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n No debate or control, indeed.<\/p>\n The prevailing opinion appears to be that everyone and anyone is able to carry any kind of weapon freely, and hence they\u00a0have all these shootings in the USA.\u00a0 They think that these shootings are less common in other countries because they have tighter gun control, hence the solution is to implement a nationwide ban. \u00a0What advocates of a ban rarely acknowledge is that even European countries have not banned handguns: ownership, although subject to obtaining a permit and other heavy restrictions, is not illegal in the UK<\/a>, France<\/a>, Germany<\/a>, Norway<\/a>, and Italy<\/a>\u00a0(at which point\u00a0I stopped looking). \u00a0Regarding\u00a0France:<\/p>\n France has no limit on magazine capacity and no assault weapon ban, other than that you need a permit for category one semi-automatics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And Italy<\/a>:<\/p>\n All private firearms must be registered at the local police department within “72 hours”, as specified by law, after purchase or transfer, although this limit goes from the time the firearm is actually taken to the place where it is to be registered (for example, the firearm may be bought at a time and withdrawn after a week from the retailer; only then the weapon will require the registration).<\/p>\n Citizens are allowed to own:<\/p>\n A concealed carry license<\/i> allows a citizen to carry a handgun for personal defense; this license is usually much harder to obtain than the other two firearm licenses, must be renewed yearly (while the hunting and shooting sports licences are valid for 6 years), and the applicant has to provide a valid reason to carry a concealed gun (e.g. a salesperson of valuable goods such as jewelry).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The fact that gun ownership is permitted across Europe is something rarely acknowledged by those Europeans who want to see American guns banned. \u00a0How many commentators do you hear saying “there is absolutely no reason for anyone to own an assault rifle” in the context of American gun ownership, but never once mention France?<\/p>\n In short, the gap between America and Europe when it comes to gun control laws is wide, but not half as wide as\u00a0gun control advocates\u00a0make out. \u00a0When it comes to actual gun ownership, the gap is indeed very wide, which may be because of the restrictions in Europe but is more likely to\u00a0be because, for reasons related to culture, history, and geography, Americans simply want to own more guns that Europeans. \u00a0It does not follow that by introducing European-style gun laws that Americans will turn their backs on guns, and their number decline amongst the law-abiding. \u00a0So what a lot of the criticism comes down to is that Americans are stupid for wanting to own a gun, because Europeans don’t see a need for them.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the complete ban solution, so the narrative goes, is so obvious that only morons cannot see it.\u00a0 Hence we get Facebook posts along the lines of:<\/p>\n 3,000 people killed in 9\/11 = war<\/p>\n 32,000 people killed per year by guns = NOTHING<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Which gets reposted by what appear to be adults.<\/p>\n Gun deaths in the US, or anywhere else, can be broken down into separate categories:<\/p>\n According to Wikipedia<\/a>, there were 8,855 firearm related homicides in the USA.\u00a0 I’ve not been able to find a breakdown of this figure which would show us how many of these are attributed to general criminality, but despite the regularity of noodle-armed omega males going on killing sprees in the past decade or so, the numbers killed in these events do not run into the hundreds, let alone thousands.\u00a0 Ditto for self-defence.\u00a0 Therefore, most firearms homicides in the US are a result of general criminality.<\/p>\n Now the homocide rate is very high, probably for two broad reasons:<\/p>\n The above two set America apart from most other civilised nations, who either have one but not the other, or both but on a far smaller scale.\u00a0 If you’re looking for a reason why there are more homicides by firearms in the US than UK, for example, then look no further.<\/p>\n So how are harsher gun controls supposed to help with this?\u00a0 As TNA pointed out in the comments<\/a> of my previous post:<\/p>\n 1. I don\u2019t believe those with malicious intent will pay any attention to gun laws. A lot of foreigners, particularly Australians, point to the Australian gun buy-back scheme which was set up as part of the new legislation after the 1996 massacre in Port Arthur.\u00a0 This netted 631,000 firearms<\/a>, turned in by law-abiding owners.\u00a0 However, as the same linked Wiki article tells us:<\/p>\n Low levels of violent crime through much of the 20th century kept levels of public concern about firearms low. In the last two decades of the century, following several high profile multiple murders and a media campaign, the Australian government co-ordinated more restrictive firearms legislation with all state governments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So the Australian government managed to gather and destroy a lot of legal firearms from a population that had, by and large, not been using them to kill each other very much.\u00a0 Leaving aside whether this was necessary\u00a0(although Australians point to their lack of recent massacres to vindicate this policy), it is hard to see this working in the US: criminals are criminals, and are not likely to hand over their guns.\u00a0 In short, Australia and the US are at very different starting points with the main difference being the armed, criminal element in Australia was pretty low.\u00a0 As it was in the UK around the time of Dunblane.<\/p>\n Even assuming law-abiding Americans hand over their weapons instead of going through the embuggerance of complying with European-style gun laws (which I very much doubt), this still leaves the vast swathes of gun-toting criminals who would in all certainty hang onto them, and in all probability be delighted that they are now the only civilians who will be armed. \u00a0The Australian scheme simply isn’t going to work in the US and remove any more than a handful of guns from circulation.<\/p>\n And that’s by far the biggest problem facing America when it tries to grapple with its sky-high homicide-by-firearm rate: there are a lot of violent criminals, and they all have guns. \u00a0If you want to tackle this problem, the starting point would be a severe examination of their disastrous war on drugs, but nobody will touch that with a barge-pole.<\/p>\n However, nobody really cares about the vast majority of homicides which are dark folk shooting other dark folk. \u00a0Certainly the Europeans couldn’t care less about inner-city gang violence in the US. \u00a0But they are quite happy to use these statistics whenever there is a shooting spree. \u00a0Shooting sprees are terrible events and create harrowing storylines, but statistically they are insignificant, hence the overall gun death rate must be held aloft when the bodies are still warm in order to advance the agenda.<\/p>\n There is an argument that increased gun control might prevent some<\/em> shooting sprees (although not all of them), which was put to me by a Texan friend. \u00a0The type of loser who goes on a shooting spree would probably lack the balls and the social connections to get hold of illegal weaponry, and so picks up a legal one from the nearest shop. \u00a0Without this option, he might not be able to arm himself. \u00a0I’ll not dismiss this argument because it does make sense in theory, but increasing gun controls is unlikely to eradicate all shooting sprees as anyone determined will arm himself one way or another. \u00a0But more importantly, I don’t think shooting sprees have much to do with gun controls anyway: it is more an issue of mental health diagnosis and treatment, and the quirk of American culture which for whatever reason throws up delusional, attention-seeking assholes who would do anything for a few minutes of notoriety – be it on a reality TV show or by committing mass murder. \u00a0Addressing these two issues would probably go a lot further to reducing the number of shooting sprees than making people obtain gun permits.<\/p>\n Finally, what annoys me a lot about Europeans and Australians when they comment on America’s gun laws is they are completely dismissive of 1) the constitutional structure of the USA and 2) the opinion of millions upon millions of American citizens. \u00a0We saw this when the Kyoto Protocol was roundly rejected<\/a> by the US senate by whopping 95-0 because, rightly, they saw it as a massive stitch-up for the American way of life. \u00a0Europeans reacted with disbelief and insults, seemingly astonished that an American government is unable to just enact whatever laws it\u00a0likes in order to fall into line with what the rest of the world wants. \u00a0The way Europeans sneer at the American constitutional right of its citizens to keep and bear arms betrays a deep-rooted ignorance and snobbery which Americans have detested since the Boston Tea Party. \u00a0Secondly, Americans have been time and again asked whether increased gun control laws are a price they are willing to pay to reduce the number of gun deaths in the USA, and each time they have come back with a resounding “No!” based on:<\/p>\n 1) The fact that they have a constitutional right to own guns, and the government does not have the power to infringe this; and<\/p>\n 2) The quite understandable idea that restricting their right to own a firearm would not make a blind bit of difference anyway.<\/p>\n America has serious issues with guns and gun deaths, but these will not be solved by their listening to foreigners who are breathtakingly ignorant or utterly dismissive of\u00a0every historical, cultural, societal, political, and constitutional aspect of this highly complex and divisive topic.<\/p>\n (With thanks to the commentators<\/a> on my previous post.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the summer of 2000 I found myself sat at the counter of a small bar somewhere on the coast of Virginia, USA.\u00a0 The barman, a man in his 40s with long hair and a beard, was friendly enough and … Continue reading \n
\n
\n
\n2. There are loads of guns already out there and they are non-biodegradable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n