Huge number of Britons want handgun ban repealed

Saturday, June 22, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: UK gun laws, gun control, self defense

(NaturalNews) The Second Amendment's guarantee of a citizen's right to keep and bear arms for self-defense and other purposes is a key provision of the United States Constitution, but it is an inherent human right that a growing number of British subjects would like to utilize.

The Telegraph, a British newspaper, asked readers recently to submit proposed changes to British law they would like their Ministers of Parliament to introduce. Among them was a repeal of Britain's ban on the ownership of handguns. Per the paper:

Repeal the ban on hand guns and re-open shooting clubs, proposed by Colliemum. They write: "After all, why should only criminals be 'allowed' to possess guns and shoot unarmed, defenseless citizens and police officers?"

Or British soldiers.

Disarmed before those who would do them harm

The suggestion that British law be changed to allow new shooting clubs and handgun ownership comes just weeks after a British soldier was beheaded on the streets of London outside his military barracks in broad daylight by a pair of knife-wielding jihadists who had no fear whatsoever that their victim would himself be armed.

"We have suffered these attacks before, we have always beaten them back," Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron said in the aftermath of the attack. "We will not be cowed, we will never buckle."

No - just slaughtered. Senselessly. Because the right of self-defense, the most basic of human rights, is being denied to Britons every single day.

According to the paper, as of this writing more than 15,000 votes had been cast in an unscientific poll backing repeal of British gun bans. Of those, some 13,000 supported repeal of a 1997 ban, or about 85 percent of the vote. In fact, the gun ban repeal far outpaced votes for other measures British subjects want to see introduced in the House of Commons.

For those who trace Britain's gun-ban history, the 1997 law was enacted following a school massacre in Dunblane. Noted the Commentator:

While gun crime soared after the British ban in 1997, rates of gun violence have fallen, especially in British cities, following more spending by police forces into tackling gun crime. Police in England and Wales recorded 5,911 firearms offenses in 2011/12, a reduction of 42 percent compared with nine years earlier, according to the Office for National Statistics.

But statistics from the United States show that guns are used by citizens to defend themselves around 80 times more often than they are used to take a life. A recent study published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy concluded that there is a negative correlation between gun ownership and violent crime in countries internationally, that is, 'where firearms are most dense violent crime rates are lowest, and where guns are least dense violent crime rates are highest.'

In the U.S., as we have reported, more guns have definitely led to less crime - a statistical measure that simply can no longer be refuted (https://www.naturalnews.com/040427_gun_violence_control_statistics.html).

Gun bans empower terrorists and criminals

According to newly released Department of Justice figures, firearm-related homicides fell 39 percent over the course of 18 years in the U.S. During that same period, non-fatal firearms crimes have fallen a whopping 69 percent - statistics that would no doubt be reflected throughout Great Britain, were parliamentarians serious about crime reduction.

In July 2009, The Telegraph reported, in fact, that Britain was Europe's violent-crime capital:

Analysis of figures from the European Commission showed a 77 percent increase in murders, robberies, assaults and sexual offenses in the UK since Labour came to power.

Further, "the UK had a greater number of murders in 2007 than any other EU country - 927 - and at a relative rate higher than most western European neighbors, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain," the paper said.

Clearly a growing number of British citizens are sick and tired of being helpless before violent criminals. If British politicians aren't cowards, they will do the people's bidding and repeal gun bans that do nothing but empower terrorists and criminals.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

http://www.military.com

http://www.telegraph.co.uk