Hope this helps. It is an indirect answer and possibly too much information, but it gives you a good feel for the situation. Sorry for the bandwidth if it doesn't help your question:
Here's a thought worth considering, especially with regard to the country's state of hysteria and fear of crime. Ever notice how murder statistics are always used to claim the USA is so much more violent, and thus we should turn in our guns, etc, yada yada.
Consider our murder rate and England. Ours is about 6.8 per 100,000 (and declining), England maybe 4 per 100,000 (and rising). That in itself is almost insignificant on its face. But for the sake of argumentlet's go back a few years - USA 10/100K, England 2/100K. That's FIVE times the Limey's rate, right? WRONG! This stat simply means that in a given year 2 or 10 people will be murdered for every 100,000 people..... or put the other way around 99,998 or 99,990 people will NOT be murdered in that given year. Now THAT doesn't look like such a big difference after all, does it? It's simply the half full, half empty glass argument.
The fact is that with a very few egregious exceptions no one place and neither country is more or less dangerous murder-wise than the other. Major exceptions would be places like Gary, IN and D.C. - also minorities (particularly poor black males) would be exceptions. I'll have to set this aside - it's a whole different subject for which there's no room tonight anyway.
So, we scotch murder, and also rape (generally consistent and also statiscally insignificant as well). What really defines crime then. How about robbery, assault, car theft and home burglary? These occur so much more (thus stat. significant) and the difference are so much more pronounced between cities that THIS is what we are really worried about.
Here, England fails miserably, and the Continent is not far behind. Assault, home invasion, burglary, theft both car and property rates are all either equal to or greater than in the USA. Not to mention that ol' Britain has a very oppressive (in comparison) judicial system when it comes to treating the ordinary citizen. No 5th Amendment, collection of "secret" evidence, can be held w/o a charge, the Star Chamber, hell the list goes on. In comparison the only thing that's wrong with our courts is that its so perverted in favor of the criminal and oppresses the good, decent citizen. But, again that's another subject for another time.
So, do you REALLY think Europe is such a swell, nice and safe place to be? Or, if you prefer, is the USA such a dangerous country after all?
Artical 1:
"Gun Law Comparisons; USA, Australia, Britain Shooters Journal, Australia
December 98 issue Paul Peake"
"Preventing Australia from supposedly going down the 'American path' has been one of the chief arguments put forward to justify the Howard government's (Australia) anti-firearm laws. Britain, on the other hand, has often been hailed as the model Australia should follow. Several jurisdictions have based their current 'safe storage' requirements on arrangements already in place in the United Kingdom and, since the early 1930s, a number of Australian states have used contemporary British legislation as the archetype for their own regulatory measures, a trend which has continued up to the present. However, a newly released report entitled Crime and Justice in the United States and in England and Wales, 1981-96, prepared by Cambridge University criminologist Professor David Farrington and Department of Justice statistician Dr Patrick Langan, demonstrates that the notion of a largely disarmed and apparently safer Britain is a complete myth.
The 110 page Department of Justice review shows that serious crimes such as assault, robbery and burglary are considerably higher in England and Wales compared to the United States. According to Dr Langan: The robbery rate in England and Wales, including muggings, is 40% higher. The assault, burglary and automobile theft rates are getting on for double those of the US.
The report considered both crime-victim surveys and police statistics over a fifteen-year period and found that crime rates across a range of major offences have been falling in the United States while those in England have been steadily increasing.
In what may be a vindication of US initiatives such as the so-called zero-tolerance policies and 'three strikes and you're in' legislation, the report also found that since 1981 the chances of being caught and convicted of a serious offence have risen significantly in the United States, but have fallen in England for most major crimes. Incarceration time for most violent offences is also much lower in England and Wales than in the US.
The findings raise considerable doubts about harsh firearm laws and their efficacy in reducing serious crime. Between 1981 and 1996 the number of US states which allow firearms to be carried for self defense increased from a handful to more than thirty. At the same time, however, British shooters had to endure some of the most draconian anti-gun laws in the developed world, with further restrictions on handgun ownership imposed in 1996. Yet between 1981 and 1996 the homicide rate in the US decreased significantly, while in England it rose from 0.011 per 1,000 population to 0.013. Recently released British police figures for the year ending April 1998, show an alarming 26% increase in the murder rate in London and an incredible 85% increase in Northumbria. Severe firearm regulations and forcing hundreds of thousands of law-abiding shooters to surrender their private property has obviously had no more positive effect on serious crime in Britain than it has had here in Australia.
The issue of burglary is particularly important, especially given Australia's increasing incidence of home invasion. The report indicates that burglary rates are considerably higher in England and Wales than in the United States. Work done by Chicago University Professor John Lott, with the help of David Mustard, shows that firearms in the home have a major deterrent effect on what their study refers to as 'hot burglary', a situation where a criminal robs a residence when the occupier is home. A 1986 study of convicted felons in the United States conducted by Wright and Rossi found that most were far more worried about running into an armed victim than they were about being caught by the police. The proof lies in the fact that fewer than 13% of burglaries in the US are carried out on occupied premises, while in Britain it is in the order of 50%. Not only are average Britons far more likely to be robbed, but it is much more likely to occur when they are at home.
This presents an awkward question for the anti-gun lobby. If more firearms supposedly equate to more crime, then why have a range of serious offences been decreasing in the United States as gun laws have been liberalized to allow private citizens to defend themselves, while ratios for similar crimes have increased in Britain as lows have been tightened?
The question applies equally to Australia. Despite the forced confiscation of over 640,000 lawfully owned firearms, the incidence of unlawful entry has increased considerably across the country as a whole.
Other serious crimes such as murder, armed robbery, assault and motor vehicle theft have also risen markedly in the wake of the government's 'buy-back' scheme.
Farrington and Langan's research highlights the fact that the availability or otherwise of firearms has little to do with violent crime. While 5% of robberies in England and Wales involve the use of a gun, the overall rate of offences is nevertheless much higher than in the United States where the degree of private firearm ownership is much greater. In other words, the fact that most people in Britain do not have legal access to guns has little bearing on the number of robberies actually committed. It appears that English criminals simply rely on other means, and when it comes to being held up and deprived of property or seriously assaulted, ultimately what difference does it make what instrument is used?
For the better part of this century shooters in the United Kingdom have endured steadily tighter restrictions. Paranoia over Russia's Bolshevik Revolution and its possible effect on the British working class greatly influenced the regulatory measures of the early 1920s. By the start of the Second World War, however, the result was a disarmed Britain unable to defend itself and reliant upon the generosity of American gun owners. Increasing regulation in the postwar period, culminating in the 1996 total ban on handguns, has seen private firearms ownership in the UK severely depleted, but as Farrington and Langan's report shows, by and large it has made little difference to serious crime.
The plight of British gun owners carries valuable lessons for Australian shooters. Capitulation on important regulatory questions such as comprehensive registration and unreasonable restrictions often only encourages even tighter limitations later. Similarly, allowing policies based on dubious assumptions to be implemented with little if any discussion is a recipe for disaster. The idea that Australia should avoid going down the 'American path' in deference to the British model invariably begs the question of the tangible benefits, all the more so when hundreds of thousands of law-abiding people are forced to give up their property in the process. With Farrington and Langan's work as a guide, the idea of a safer Britain, and by extension a supposedly safer Australia, has been shown up as total fiction."
Think about it.
