It’s rare to encounter a work of social science that manages to overturn a major tenet of conventional wisdom. But Joyce Malcolm’s excellent Guns and Violence: the English Experience does just that.

I’m an American, but I live overseas and have numerous British friends. One point on which they universally disagree with my views is the issue of gun control. Every single Brit I know, whether a Labour supporter or a Tory, believes wholeheartedly that guns must be banned in order to maintain a civilized society, and that the USA’s lax (in their view) regulation of firearms is more or less directly responsible for what they assume to be far higher rates of violent crime than in the UK.

They need to read this book.

Malcolm begins by tracing out the laws on firearm ownership in England from the late middle ages to the present day. Several impressive facts emerge. First, acting in self-defence was not just expected throughout much of English history – it was considered a duty of citizenship. Next, firearm ownership was rarely controlled, was positively encouraged at points, and there is no correlation between rates of gun ownership and rates of violent crime. In fact, the opposite holds true: guns were widely distributed in 19th-century England, but crime rates fell steadily, to the point that England was an almost miraculously safe country by late Victorian and Edwardian times.

But all this changed in the 20th century, as increasingly draconian laws were passed periodically, starting in 1920, limiting the right to firearm ownership and abrogating a crime victim’s right to self-defence. The argument always made was that rising crime rates necessitated stricter gun control, but in fact Malcolm argues convincingly that British governments’ concerns about maintaining public order in the face of perceived threats from Bolsheviks, unionists and other class warriors were the real reason for these crackdowns.

Never the less: if banning guns really kept crime down, wasn’t it worth it? Malcolm eviscerates this misconception:

Still, it is important to know whether the many English firearms acts of the twentieth century have been beneficial: have they worked? The short answer is no, not if the goal was to reduce the use of firearms in crime, to make it more difficult for criminals to obtain guns, to ‘shift the balance substantially in the interests of public safety.’ Armed crime, never a problem in England, has now become one. Handguns are banned, but the kingdom has millions of illegal firearms. Criminals have not trouble finding them and exhibit a new willingness to use them. In the decade after 1957 the use of guns in serious crime increased a hundredfold. … In 1904, before passage of gun restrictions, there were only 4 armed robberies a year in London. By 1991 this had increased 400 times, to 1,600 cases. From 1989 through 1996 armed crime increased by 500 percent at the very time the number of firearms certificate holders decreased by 20 percent. (p. 209)

Although still one of the world’s safest societies as late as the early 1950s, Britain is now a hotbed of crime, much of it violent, and most of it unopposed, as law-abiding citizens fear being arrested and convicted themselves for putting up even token resistance to the criminals who prey on them. Malcolm notes:

The ancient constitutional right of Englishmen ‘to have arms for their defence’ exists only on paper. That right of a free person to be armed, long regarded as a badge of citizenship, is now considered a grave menace to public order. However, English governments have gone far beyond this in their zeal to monopolize force by prohibiting any implement an individual might use to protect himself. In so doing they have effectively removed an even more basic right, the most basic right of all, the right of personal security, again in the name of public order. These policies have had a perverse impact. If they did not cause the unprecedented surge in violent crime, they certainly abetted it. There is now little to deter criminals, who are in the enviable position of being protected by the majesty of the law and of the courts from confronting victims armed even with walking sticks, let alone firearms, are shielded from any resistance by their victims that might qualify as ‘unreasonable force’, and whose chances of arrest and punishment are minimal.

Government created a hapless, passive citizenry, then took upon itself the impossible task of protecting it. Its failure could not be more flagrant. (pp. 210-211)

Malcolm’s last chapter contrasts the American experience: in recent years, i.e. since the early 1990s, gun control laws have generally been relaxed, and rather than leading to a sudden increase in crime, especially violent crime, as most British people would assume, the exact opposite has occurred. American crime rates, especially for violent crime, have in fact declined. Malcolm cites many examples, but perhaps the most startling is the state of Vermont: its gun laws are the nation’s most lenient: it has none. Its crime rate is also the very lowest in the union.

In her UK/USA comparison, Malcolm hits on a highly salient point: ‘The English have been reluctant to reconsider the premiss behind seventy years of failed arms policies. Not so Americans, who seldom hesitate to question first principles.’ (p. 220) That sums it up very nicely, and jibes well with my experience. Brits can be remarkably conservative, in the broad sense of the word, when it comes to challenging assumptions. But how many of them have paid in pain and even with their lives over the past century for this stance?

I highly recommended this well-written, meticulously-researched, conventional-wisdom-defying book. ( )