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Tuesday, July 17, 2001
England, according to the champions of gun control, is the shining proof that their restrictionist philosophy works -- a place where no one owns firearms, and all are safer because of it. A story in today's Daily Telegraph should help lay that fallacy to rest. In 1997, the British town of Dunblane made international headlines when a gunman opened fire at an elementary school, killing sixteen young students and their teacher. Local authorities promptly responded with an outright ban on pistol ownership, forcing residents to surrender 160,000 weapons. So what's become of hangun crime in Dunblane? A report from the Centre for Defence Studies at Kings College, London, shows that it increased by 40 percent in the first two years alone -- from 2,648 offenses to 3,685. Go figure. Only those who obey the law bothered to honor the ban; for criminals, it was free reign. In the 20 police areas with the fewest legally owned firearms, half had an above-average gun-crime rate. In the 20 areas with the widest gun ownership, only two had above-average rates of handgun crime. The study's authors concluded that "there is no direct link between the unlawful use of handguns and their lawful ownership." Maybe England has something to teach us about gun control after all. Monday, July 16, 2001
The success of the Pentagon's missile-defense test on Saturday is good news for two reasons. First and foremost, it puts the U.S. a little closer to the day when, thanks to a defensive shield, it need not fear a devastating attack from one of the world's increasingly well-armed and numerous terrorist states. More immediately, however, is the hope that the test will (momentarily, anyway) silence the naysayers who swear that National Missile Defense can't be done. Perhaps the latest positive results will persuade those who are convinced we can make climate predictions centuries into the future (even though we can't predict this weekend's weather) that maybe we have some hope for devising a way to spare our citizens a nuclear holocaust. At least now they can be more forthright about their intentions: Feasibility is a red herring. NMD opponents' real concern is about honoring the 30-year old ABM treaty with a corrupt, totalitarian state that not only no longer exists, but routinely violated said treaty when it did. A decade after its demise, they're still more concerned with protecting the USSR than with protecting the nation. |