1973 and 1992, burglary rates in the U.S. fell by half. In Britain, not even the Home Office’s disreputable reporting methods (if a burglar steals from fifteen different apartments in one building, it counts as a single crime) can conceal the remorseless rise: Britons are now more than twice as likely as Americans to be mugged; two-thirds will have their property broken into at some time in their lives. Even more revealing is the divergent character between UK and U.S. property crime: In America, just over 10 percent of all burglaries are “hot burglaries”—committed while the owners are present; in Britain, it’s over half. Because of insurance-mandated alarm systems, the average thief increasingly concludes that it’s easier to wait till you’re home, knock on the door, and punch your face in. Your home-security system may conceivably make your home more secure, but it makes you less so.
Conversely, up here in the New Hampshire second Congressional district, there are few laser security systems and lots of guns. Our murder rate is much lower than Britain’s and our property crime is virtually insignificant. Villains are expert calculators of risk, and the likelihood of walking away uninjuredwith an eighty-dollar TV is too remote. In New Hampshire, a citizen’s right to defend himself deters crime; in Britain, the state-inflicted impotence of the homeowner actively encourages it. Just as becoming a drug baron is a rational career move in Colombia, so too is becoming a violent burglar in the United Kingdom. The chances that the state will seriously impede your progress are insignificant.
To a North Country Yankee it’s self-evident that, when a burglar breaks into your home, you should have the right to shoot him—indeed, not just the right, but the responsibility, as a free-born citizen, to uphold the integrity of your property. But in Britain and most other parts of the western world, the state reserves that right unto itself, even though at the time the ne’er-do-well shows up in your bedroom you’re on the scene and Constable Plod isn’t: He’s some miles distant, asleep in his bed, and with his answering machine on referring you to central dispatch God knows where.
These days it’s standard to bemoan the “dependency culture” of state welfare, but Britain’s law-and-order “dependency culture” is even more enfeebling. The Conservatives’ big mistake between 1979 and 1997 was an almost willfully obtuse failure to understand that giving citizens more personal responsibility isn’t something that extends just to their income and consumer choices; it also applies to their communities and their policing arrangements. If you have one without the other, you end up with modern Britain: a materially prosperous society in which the sense of frustration and impotence is palpable, and you’re forced to live with a level of endless property crime most Americans would regard as unacceptable.
We know Bill Clinton’s latest favorite statistic—that twelve “kids” a day die from gun violence. In reality, five-sixths of those 11.569 grade-school moppets are aged between fifteen and nineteen, and many of them have had the misfortune to become involved in gangs, convenience-store hold-ups, and drug deals, which, regrettably, have a tendency to go awry. If more crack deals passed off peacefully, that “child” death rate could be reduced by three-quarters. But away from those dark fringes of society, Americans live lives blessedly untouched by most forms of crime—at least when compared withsupposedly more civilized countries like Britain. That’s something emotionally inclined gun-banners might consider, if only because in a gun-free America women and the elderly and gays and all manner of other fashionable victim groups will be bearing the brunt of a much higher proportion of violent crime than they do today. Ask Phil Collins or Ridley Scott or Germaine Greer.
ARMS ARE FOR DINING
The National Post
Conversely, up here in the New Hampshire second Congressional district, there are few laser security systems and lots of guns. Our murder rate is much lower than Britain’s and our property crime is virtually insignificant. Villains are expert calculators of risk, and the likelihood of walking away uninjuredwith an eighty-dollar TV is too remote. In New Hampshire, a citizen’s right to defend himself deters crime; in Britain, the state-inflicted impotence of the homeowner actively encourages it. Just as becoming a drug baron is a rational career move in Colombia, so too is becoming a violent burglar in the United Kingdom. The chances that the state will seriously impede your progress are insignificant.
To a North Country Yankee it’s self-evident that, when a burglar breaks into your home, you should have the right to shoot him—indeed, not just the right, but the responsibility, as a free-born citizen, to uphold the integrity of your property. But in Britain and most other parts of the western world, the state reserves that right unto itself, even though at the time the ne’er-do-well shows up in your bedroom you’re on the scene and Constable Plod isn’t: He’s some miles distant, asleep in his bed, and with his answering machine on referring you to central dispatch God knows where.
These days it’s standard to bemoan the “dependency culture” of state welfare, but Britain’s law-and-order “dependency culture” is even more enfeebling. The Conservatives’ big mistake between 1979 and 1997 was an almost willfully obtuse failure to understand that giving citizens more personal responsibility isn’t something that extends just to their income and consumer choices; it also applies to their communities and their policing arrangements. If you have one without the other, you end up with modern Britain: a materially prosperous society in which the sense of frustration and impotence is palpable, and you’re forced to live with a level of endless property crime most Americans would regard as unacceptable.
We know Bill Clinton’s latest favorite statistic—that twelve “kids” a day die from gun violence. In reality, five-sixths of those 11.569 grade-school moppets are aged between fifteen and nineteen, and many of them have had the misfortune to become involved in gangs, convenience-store hold-ups, and drug deals, which, regrettably, have a tendency to go awry. If more crack deals passed off peacefully, that “child” death rate could be reduced by three-quarters. But away from those dark fringes of society, Americans live lives blessedly untouched by most forms of crime—at least when compared withsupposedly more civilized countries like Britain. That’s something emotionally inclined gun-banners might consider, if only because in a gun-free America women and the elderly and gays and all manner of other fashionable victim groups will be bearing the brunt of a much higher proportion of violent crime than they do today. Ask Phil Collins or Ridley Scott or Germaine Greer.
ARMS ARE FOR DINING
The National Post
Similar Books
