"Gun-free" Great Britain scores horribly on violent crime

[Editor's Note: This article has been updated to correct for the use of a dated newslink, and to add additional, more current data.]

In 1997, virtually all handguns were banned in Britain via the Firearms Act, on the promise of a reduction in crime and greater safety for the British people. The real result was the emergence of Britain as the "most violent country in Europe."

By 2009, the Daily Mail reported that Britain's violent crime record had become worse than any other country in the European union, South Africa, and the United States.

From the article:

The Tories said Labour had presided over a decade of spiralling violence.

In the decade following the party's election in 1997, the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77 per cent to 1.158 million - or more than two every minute.

The figures, compiled from reports released by the European Commission and United Nations, also show:

The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.

It has a higher homicide rate than most of our western European neighbours, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The UK has the fifth highest robbery rate in the EU.

It has the fourth highest burglary rate and the highest absolute number of burglaries in the EU, with double the number of offences than recorded in Germany and France.

The article says it's the naming of Britain as the most violent country in the EU that is most shocking to residents there. The analysis is based on the number of crimes per 100,000 residents.

In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677.

The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609.

Since then, things just keep looking worse across the pond.

In 2015, the Daily Mail reported that gun crime had almost doubled in the past decade.

In January, 2018, the UK's Office for National Statistics said "the number of violent crimes and sex offences recorded by police in England and Wales has risen sharply over the past year," and that "recorded sexual offences and violent crimes have more than doubled in three years."

In June 2018, EuroNews.com reported that "for the first time in modern history, the murder rate in London surpassed New York's in February and March 2018."

Whenever a high-profile crime is committed with a gun in the U.S., gun ban extremists in Europe look down their noses at America while claiming that our "more violent" culture is to blame. But these numbers prove a culture becomes far more violent when law-abiding citizens are denied their right to self-defense. Indeed, as the saying goes, an armed society is a polite society.

The failed foreign social experiment of gun bans must never be allowed to meet our shores. It is up to all of us. It is up to you.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Secretary and an NRA-certified firearms instructor. He is co-founder of BFA-PAC, and served as its Vice Chairman for 15 years. He is the editor of BuckeyeFirearms.org, which received the Outdoor Writers of Ohio 2013 Supporting Member Award for Best Website.

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