The article is nonsense from start to finish, UK gun laws are little different to those of many other European countries.
Most of the time I lived there, the gun laws were worse than most other EU nations. I gather, for example, that the British government was quite peeved at the number of pistol shooters who shipped their guns across the Channel to shoot at ranges elsewhere in the EU when they were banned.
But I found the headline rather dubious, too. Britain is certainly more violent than it was when anyone could carry a gun if they paid 50p for a permit, but the level of violence is certainly less than the city where I now live in Canada. What’s missing here is the persistent low level crime that infests the UK, so I don’t have to worry that chavs might set my car on fire if I park it on the street near where I work. And the violence is mostly drug dealers and other low-lives fighting and killing each other, rather than chavs beating up random passers-by for looking at them the wrong way.
This didn’t look right to me, so I did some checking. It isn’t right. See this: http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/01/12/fact-checking-ben-swann-is-the-uk-really-5-times-more-violent-than-the-us/
And this: http://dispellingthemythukvsusguns.wordpress.com/
The article is nonsense from start to finish, UK gun laws are little different to those of many other European countries.
Most of the time I lived there, the gun laws were worse than most other EU nations. I gather, for example, that the British government was quite peeved at the number of pistol shooters who shipped their guns across the Channel to shoot at ranges elsewhere in the EU when they were banned.
But I found the headline rather dubious, too. Britain is certainly more violent than it was when anyone could carry a gun if they paid 50p for a permit, but the level of violence is certainly less than the city where I now live in Canada. What’s missing here is the persistent low level crime that infests the UK, so I don’t have to worry that chavs might set my car on fire if I park it on the street near where I work. And the violence is mostly drug dealers and other low-lives fighting and killing each other, rather than chavs beating up random passers-by for looking at them the wrong way.