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Legally or illegally, Europeans are better armed
than most people realize.
The Times of London recently carried an interesting report about the public response to a violent terrorist attack.
[T]wo such anarchists, lately come from an attempt to blow up the president of France, tried to commit a robbery in north London, armed with automatic pistols. ... Londoners, however, shot back – and the anarchists were pursued through the streets by a spontaneous hue-and-cry. The police, who could not find the key to their own gun cupboard, borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by, while other citizens armed with revolvers and shotguns preferred to use their weapons themselves to bring the assailants down.
If you're scratching your head, that's because the newspaper description is of an incident in 1909. At the time, the UK had no restrictions on private firearms ownership to speak of. People owned guns and carried them in public.
If you wonder what the crime rate was like with all of those well-armed Brits wandering around ... Well, there were about 9.6 murders per million people (PDF) in 1900. That dipped over the years, to a low of 6.2 per million in 1960 -- and then rose to over 14 per million by the end of the 20th century.
The strict gun control laws that we associate with Britain today really began with the red scares of World War I and were implemented thereafter, with handguns finally banned in 1997. So the murder rate seemed to first dip and then soar even as gun laws grew ever-tougher.
Which isn't supposed to be how it works in disarmed Europe, is it?
Well, European countries certainly have lower -- often, much lower -- murder rates than the U.S., but we tend to exaggerate their disarmed status. That's because most mainstream media comparisons of gun ownership dwell on official figures. How many guns Americans legally own vs. how many Germans legally own. That makes sense to American eyes, because most guns here are perfectly legal. That's exactly what gets gun control advocates so hot and bothered when they start crunching numbers. They want guns further restricted and made less common.
But less common isn't always what you get. Those official gun ownership numbers actually compare apples and oranges. That's because Europeans own an awful lot of guns outside the law. As of 2003, according to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey (PDF), "Contrary to widely-accepted national myths, public gun ownership is commonplace in most European states." The survey adds, "public officials readily admit that unlicensed owners and unregistered guns greatly outnumber legal ones."
Even the 2003 figures may understate how unofficially well-armed European scofflaws are. The Small Arms Survey reported 350,000 unregistered guns in Greece in 2003. Two years later, the Greek government upped that figure -- to 1.5 million.
In countries with relatively loose gun laws -- like Finland -- most guns are legally held, as in the U.S. In countries with restrictive laws, like Germany, most guns are held illegally. Either way, people who want to own guns seem to go ahead and do so, no matter what the authorities want.
The result, in countries with tough laws, like the UK, is that you might have more than twice as many firearms owned in the shadows as out in the open. In France, more than five times as many guns are held illegally as legally.
So, Europeans are not so disarmed.
Why does this matter?
Well, if your population turns to supporting black markets, the logic of those illicit markets prevails. Once the mechanisms for satisfying demand move beyond the reach of the law, they acknowledge few limits. Again, from the Small Arms Survey 2003:
European criminals appear to be switching to heavier armaments. Instead of less capable revolvers, they increasingly have fully automatic pistols. Instead of hunting weapons, police are more commonly recovering sub-machine guns. Even larger weapons appear irregularly, illustrated when British police seized heavy machine guns and a mortar in March 2001.
With that booming underground market in place, you didn't think criminals were going to confine themselves to a few pocket pistols, did you?
And as illegally well-armed as many Europeans are, they're just not in a position to use those weapons against the armed bad guys the way the Londoners of 1909 were. Carrying a pistol in Edwardian times was a right, and chasing down a criminal was a civic duty. Doing the same these days carries a long prison sentence. The modern German gun owner may well use an illegal pistol to defend himself against a murderer -- after all, arrest is better than death. But he has good reason to resist the good samaritan urge to race around the corner to assist a stranger.
So Europeans still own their guns and they may even carry them, but they reserve their use for rare circumstances.
That Times description of a 1909 "hue and cry" was written by Richard Munday, a British firearms scholar who contrasted the century-old incident with the helplessness of Mumbai residents during the recent terrorist attack. India has suffered under strict gun control laws since the 19th century, leading Gandhi to lament, "Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”
In India, as elsewhere, people probably own a relatively large number of guns beyond the approval of the law. But under threat of prosecution and imprisonment, armed Mumbai residents certainly stayed at home to defend their families, leaving strangers to fend for themselves against the terrorists who openly used their illegal guns.
That's the end result of unenforceable laws for you. You get all the downside of whatever it is you're trying to restrict, but none of the benefits.
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Comments
Exactly right; firearms laws do nothing to criminals, which are half of their intended target; government's point is to grow in power and control its people, of which are the law abiding, which is the other half of the people that firearms laws are made for.
Simply irrelevant. You cannot compare Europe's population (continent by the way) with the US. We have other gun control policies here and the need to fire a gun is much lower than the US. Get your facts right and remember to take the population number into account.
Daniel,
You need to pay better attention to the article. The figures include per-population breakdowns. As for "the need to fire a gun..." That's too vague a statement on which to comment. In what context do you mean?
I was stationed in Germany from 1994-19997. As a shooter and gun owner, I attended gun-related events and associated with fellow shooters of NATO nations. Several incidents stand out:
- At shooting 'fest' sponsoired by the Belgian military , I was approached by some Belgian troops who repeatedly offered to sell me 'Uzi, FAL (an assault rifle), American Tommygun"...when I asked how could this be, given Euro gun laws, they said, Colonel, on the black market, anything you want....."
- On a vacation to Crete, at the hotel' outdoor bar, I was chatting with some of the locals, and happened to mention I like guns. Immediately, two pistols - a Czech and German pistol, both 9mm - appeared from under shirts onto the bar. "We fought the Germans .. you think we're going to let Athens tell us what we can have? I have friend in the mountains who has tank on his property..."
- Mu cousin in Nicosia, Cyprus, after telling me how bereft of private arms the citzenry were of that country, showed me his militia-issued G3 assault rifle -a machine gun - and spam can of 500 rounds of ammunition. Which, as most adult males in the guard forces, kept in their closets at home. Peacefully.
ALl this goes to show is Europeans have access to maybe even more interesting and capable arms than do Americans. Remember, that continent has seen more wars than most of us remember, and the remnants are everywhere. They just don't shoot each other as often. However....we never built a death camp in Nebraska or Massachusetts so I'll call it square and prefer our culture to theirs...
I was stationed in Germany from 1994-19997. As a shooter and gun owner, I attended gun-related events and associated with fellow shooters of NATO nations. Several incidents stand out:
- At shooting 'fest' sponsoired by the Belgian military , I was approached by some Belgian troops who repeatedly offered to sell me 'Uzi, FAL (an assault rifle), American Tommygun"...when I asked how could this be, given Euro gun laws, they said, Colonel, on the black market, anything you want....."
- On a vacation to Crete, at the hotel' outdoor bar, I was chatting with some of the locals, and happened to mention I like guns. Immediately, two pistols - a Czech and German pistol, both 9mm - appeared from under shirts onto the bar. "We fought the Germans .. you think we're going to let Athens tell us what we can have? I have friend in the mountains who has tank on his property..."
- Mu cousin in Nicosia, Cyprus, after telling me how bereft of private arms the citzenry were of that country, showed me his militia-issued G3 assault rifle -a machine gun - and spam can of 500 rounds of ammunition. Which, as most adult males in the guard forces, kept in their closets at home. Peacefully.
ALl this goes to show is Europeans have access to maybe even more interesting and capable arms than do Americans. Remember, that continent has seen more wars than most of us remember, and the remnants are everywhere. They just don't shoot each other as often. However....we never built a death camp in Nebraska or Massachusetts so I'll call it square and prefer our culture to theirs...
oldcorps76, too funny. And they think we have "assault" rifles HERE.
I'm a bit confused as to WHY they have them.
If they are for personal protection it would seem that they have failed miserably, they now have governments that will punish them more than the criminal. (see england and the case of the farmer who shot burglars)
If they were for protection against government abuses, they have failed.
They cannot serve as a deterrent as their existence is unknown, evidenced by the fact that they are "illegal guns" and if known would lead to criminal prosecution and confiscation.
So, are they just a status symbol amongst the few "prags" who refuse to turn them in and only speak of them after a secret handshake?
While in Israel for a month in June 2007 I was amazed by the number of rifles and handguns carried openly with "grace" and care-free style. The Israeli gun culture, an extention of their citizen-militia policy, is such an effective anti-crime, anti-terror tool that I never felt disarmed or unsafe while walking through the cities at night and driving down the roads and highways. Perhaps we need to reestablish our citizen-militia and put an end to crime as we know it in the U.S.
As a Jewess in the US, may I remind everyone that criminals are stopped by FIREARMS, not by talk? And that America wasn't won with a registered gun? That is why all REAL Americans put our 2nd Amendment FIRST!
Going with what Kohl said, it's easily arguable our armed forces need not be so huge and expensive (and they're very expensive) if we have a citizen-militia. We may not have to sacrifice security. Yes, the professional ability will be less, but there would be far more. And, in exchange, you'd also get a far faster response time than police, as they would be right around the corner. You could also look forward to less abuse potential of the government, not to mention those massive taxes could either be cut or placed into more important things. A truly free democracy requires citizens to have the option to keep and bear arms if they so choose, because those freedoms are so easily abused by criminals and terrorists -- as much as they are enjoyed by the law abiding.
@ Tom: We Europeans have guns for the same reasons why you Americans have guns: our survival instinct and distrust of government. Many Europeans are anti-american but gun-owning Europeans are not; they would love to have the Second Amendment in Europe.
@Ben "they would love to have the Second Amendment in Europe"
<sigh> So would we (Americans). In fact, we'd like little better than to be able to rely on our Constitution and the neighborhood cop to protect us. But, "when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away" and the Constitution is way too thin to stop a bullet.
A really good article. And very true, but anti-gun folk in the UK (which 95% of the UK are) are just to illeducated on firearms and have a illogical, conditioned, knee jerk reaction to any arguements for gun ownership. Take for example the banning of the Brocock air guns afew years back. These air guns (mainly revolvers) used a German air cartridge system (LEP), in each pressurized cartridge a pellet was placed. But afew criminals realized that these cartridges could be drilled out to accept a .22 round. Afew of these converted guns (usually poorly converted) appeared on the street and were banned and classed as a section 5 firearm. So now the criminals which would of previously obtained a clumsy .22 revolver buy superiour weaponry instead. I would rather the local gangs had .22s and not .45acp. But hardly no one in the UK understands this logic. Also just look at gun crim in our citys like Manchester (famously known as Gunchester), Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham,London etc. All have areas filled with illegal gun toting gangs. These areas are very rarely frequented by our unnarmed Police, and the law abiding citizens in these areas or close to are victimized and intimadated on a dily basis. As a child my fmaily and me lived in the area of Manchester Moss side, famed for its West Indian gangs and gun violence. On several occasions my father was threatened with a gun just because we were white. Not once was there any Police action taken to remove guns from these gangs. This is absolutely true, and until you have lived in this situation, I dont think you can make a correct judgement on the UKs anti gun laws.
The thing is with anti gun laws and what tony blair did to this country is you have to understand them, i am an avid shooter and i know and laugh at my anti gun friends, i would never pull a gun on another life, and that goes for the hundreds of thousands of firearms owners in the uk, but its fine for some kid to run around with pistols, sawnoffs and converted guns, the pistol ban didnnt prove anything other than the fact that the police made an error and passed the buck to people like me..... Also to all you anti gun lobbyists, i wonder what you will do if some little herbert stuck a gun in you or a family members face whilst on a "routine" robbery. Criminals will always have guns,
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