Jun 7 2006
Dr Sean Gabb
Shootings continue daily and knife crime has reached epidemic proportion. Here Dr Sean Gabb from the Libertarian Alliance explains why he believes we need more guns to make us safer
The current debate on armed crime is depressingly predictable. Everyone agrees something must be done.
Just about everyone agrees this something must include laws against the sale or carrying or simple possession of weapons. More controls on weapons, the argument goes, the fewer weapons on the street: therefore lower levels of armed crime.
Now, this whole line of thinking is nonsense. We already have some of the strictest controls in the developed world on the carrying of weapons.
We also have some of the highest levels of armed crime. Indeed, we are reaching the point where we shall need to show proof of identity before buying knives and forks.
If we want to do something about armed crime that has any chance of
working, we need to rethink our entire approach. I would suggest that,
instead of trying to remove weapons from society, the authorities should
allow us to keep weapons for defence and to use them for defence.
I am not talking about the right to carry baseball bats or pepper
sprays, or even various kinds of knife. These have their uses for
defence - but not against a determined criminal who may be younger and
faster and more experienced in close fighting. I am talking about the
right to arm ourselves with guns - and to use these where necessary to
protect our lives and property.
This is not a new approach. It is, rather, a return to the old policy of
our country. Until the end of the 19th century, anyone in Britain could
walk into a gun shop and, without showing any licence or any form of
identification, buy as many guns and as much ammunition as he wanted,
and could carry loaded guns in public, and could use these for
selfdefence. The law not only allowed this, but even expected it. We
were encouraged to take primary responsibility for our own protection.
The function of the police was simply to assist.
We should go back to this old approach. We should go back because it is
a question of fundamental human rights. The right to keep and bear arms
for defence is as fundamental as the rights to freedom of speech and
association.
Anyone who is denied this right - to keep and bear arms - is to some
extent enslaved. That person has lost control over his life. He is
dependent on the State for protection.
The default reaction to this argument is to cry out in horror and ask if
I want a society where every criminal has a gun, and where every
domestic argument ends in a gun battle?
The short answer is no. The longer answer is to say that more guns do
not inevitably mean more killings. There is no evidence that they do.
What passes for evidence is little more than an excuse for not trusting
ordinary people with control over their own lives.
Take armed crime, both professional and domestic. Britain had no gun
controls before 1920, and very low rates of armed crime. Today,
Switzerland has few controls, and little armed crime. Those parts of the
US where guns are most common are generally the least dangerous. There
is no necessary correlation between guns and armed crime.
Focusing on professional crime, gun control is plainly a waste of
effort. Criminals will always get hold of guns if they want them. At
most, it needs a knowledge of the right pubs to visit.
Plainly, the maniacs who carried out the recent drive-by shooting in
Manchester do not seem to have read the Firearms Acts 1920-97. They do
not seem to have noticed that most guns are forbidden, and that the few
that are allowed must be licensed. All control really does is to disarm
the honest public, and let the armed criminals roam through them like a
fox through chickens.
Indeed, free ownership of guns may often reduce armed crime. The current
round of official gungrabbing began after the Hungerford massacre back
in August 1987. But the wrong lesson was learned then. Just consider
what might have happened had someone else beside Michael Ryan been
carrying a gun in Hungerford High Street. He might have been cut down
before firing more than a few shots. As it is, he killed nearly 20
people before armed police could be brought in to stop the shootings.
Think of the burglaries, rapes and other crimes that might never happen
if the victims were armed, and therefore able to deal with their
aggressors on equal terms. Anyone can learn to fire a gun. And nothing
beats a bullet. As the old saying goes: "God made men equal, and Smith
and Wesson make damn sure it stays that way."
But let us move away from armed burglars and rapists and the occasional
lone psychopath. We need guns to protect us from the State. So far from
protecting us, the State is the main aggressor.
A low estimate puts the number of civilians murdered by states this
century at 56 million - and millions of these were children. In all
cases, genocide was preceded by gun control. How far would the Holocaust
have got if the Jews in Nazi Germany had been able to shoot back? How
about the Armenians? The Kulaks? The Chinese bourgeoisie? The Bosnians?
In all previous societies, guns and freedom have gone together. I doubt
if our own is any different.
I conclude with our own society. Our authorities have so far done
nothing to disarm violent criminals. There is nothing they can do in the
future to disarm them. This being so, can you seriously agree with the
argument that you should be disarmed, and therefore powerless to defend
yourself and your loved ones against the armed street trash who are
beginning to turn this country upside down?
Laugh at me. Call me mad. Call me evil. But just remember me when you or
your loved ones are being raped, or mugged, or dragged off never to be
seen again.
Dr Sean Gabb is the Director of the Libertarian Alliance. It exists to
put the radical case for freedom in social, economic and political
matters. Its web address is
www.libertarian.co.uk.