Gun Control

Back in 1954, when there were no restrictions on owning shotguns in England and there were far more owners of pistols then than there were decades later, there were only 12 cases of armed robbery in London.

By the 1990s, after stringent gun controls laws were imposed, there were well over a thousand armed robberies a year in London. In the late 1990s, after an almost total ban on handguns in England, gun crimes went up another ten percent.

The reason-- too obvious to be accepted by the intelligentsia -- is that law-abiding people became more defenseless against criminals who ignored the law and kept their guns.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

Self-defense against criminals is anathema to the left in both Britain and the United States but in Britain the left has greater predominance. Britons who have caught burglars in their homes and held them at gunpoint until the police arrived have found themselves charged with a crime -- even when it was only a toy gun.

Given the prevailing view in the British criminal justice system that burglary is a "minor" offense and the fierce hostility to guns, even toy guns, the homeowner is far more likely to end up behind bars than the burglar is.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

The left's jihad against gun ownership by law-abiding citizens has produced a flood of distorted information. International comparisons almost invariably compare the United States with some country with stronger gun control laws and lower murder rates.

But, if facts really mattered, you could just as easily compare the United States to countries with stronger gun control laws and higher murder rates -- Brazil and Russia, for example.

You could compare the United States with countries with more widespread gun ownership -- Switzerland and Israel, for example -- and lower murder rates. But that's only if facts are regarded as more important than the dogmas of the left.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

The biggest and most common talking point when the police fire at someone is counting how many bullets they fired. There are politicians, media people and— above all— community activists who can work themselves into a rage over how many bullets were fired.

If we stop and think— which of course the demagogues hope we will never do— it is hard to see any moral difference between killing someone with one bullet or with dozens of bullets.

People who have never fired a gun in their lives say that they cannot understand why the police fired so many bullets. If it is something that they have never experienced, there is of course no reason why they should be expected to understand.

But, even after confessing their ignorance, such people often proceed to spout off, just as if they knew what they were talking about.

It is very easy for a pistol shot to miss, even in the safety and calm of a firing range, much less in a desperate situation where a decision must be made in a split second that can cost you your life or end someone else's life.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America