On Sat, 15 May 2004 20:52:16 -0700, John Ings
wrote:

On Sun, 16 May 2004 02:27:43 GMT, Gunner
wrote:

Brits aren't paranoid about states rights the way Americans are.
They don't feel that they have to be armed to keep a federal
government off their backs.

Subjects seldom do.

Ah the independent frontiersman! Nobody's gonna tell him what to do!
Not even his own elected government!


Correct. We tell THEM what to do. Every 4 years we refresh their
memory. Sometimes they listen, sometimes not. However when the
government becomes oppressive odd things happen as demonstrated by a
certain document released in 4 July, 1776

One should note the origins of gun control in the UK. Seems the Lords
of the Rlhem didn't want the pesky Reds coming across the Channel and
ultimately tossing them out on their asses.

Seems you need to read a few history books Gunner.

So between the royalty and the Bolsheviks, they got a really nice
Socialist Kingdom going for themselves nowadays. Seems almost a
contradiction in terms don't it?

## Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence;
## Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.
Gladstone

You are aware that the two terms have been reversed since Gladstones
time?

Gun Control in Britain
by Sean Gabb
(4873 words)
Published as Political Notes No. 33 by the Libertarian Alliance,
London, 1988, ISBN 1 860614 10 0
On Wednesday the 19th August 1987, an unemployed Hungerford labourer
named Michael Ryan, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, and in a mental
state unknown to us, went through his home town, shooting anything
that moved. He shot and killed 14 people., including his mother His
suicide a couple of hours later, and the subsequent deaths of two of
the 16 wounded, brought his total to 17.


Such killings being a rarity in England, their effect was tremendous.
Every small detail of the event was collected and printed; and, when
the stock of true details ran low, tabloid imagination supplied the
lack. A fund was set up for the survivors or the victims' next of kin.
Within a few weeks it had raised £380,000.1 Yet, with curiosity and
sympathy, perhaps no other emotion competed for primacy in the public
mind so strongly as determination. The Hungerford Massacre, it was
resolved, should not be repeated. And, as though the one naturally
followed the other, the cry went immediately up for a tightening of
the law controlling guns.


`The existing legislation is wholly inadequate ...' said the General
Secretary of the Police Superintendents' Association. `There are too
many guns in circulation and a lot of people who have guns clearly
should not be in possession of them.'2 Stephen Waldorf, perhaps, might
agree with this. So might the relatives of Cherry Groce. (These were
innocent British citizens set upon and shot in error by the police -
ed.) But whatever may be thought of their speaker, the words
themselves only expressed the general belief regarding firearms.
Stricter controls were essential, it was agreed, if criminal shootings
were not to become part of the normal run of things. Such was the
opinion six months ago. Reinforced since by a spate of armed robberies
and killings with shotguns, such remains the opinion now. `Weapons
should be kept under conditions so secure as to exclude most
householders from keeping them' wrote The Times.3 Indeed, the latest
Gallup Poll on the issue reports public favour at 75% for the banning
of all guns from private ownership.4 Leave aside the efforts of some
Conservative backbenchers, and of all the measures likely this year to
have the Royal Assent, possibly none will have had so easy and
uncontroversial a passage as the Firearms (Amendment) Act.


Yet for all its lack of controversy, the Bill is easily the most
illiberal measure of this entire long parliamentary session.5 For
legal access to firearms is already strictly and comprehensively
limited. The `wholly inadequate' current legislation already forbids
the public to own automatic weapons.6 Everything else, excepting
shotguns, which have a less restrictive form of control - and the most
feeble airguns - requires a Firearms Certificate, which is had from
the local Police and is renewable every three years. On it must be
recorded all transactions in weapons and ammunition. Applicants must
satisfy the Police of their `good reason' for possessing any
certifiable weapon, and that they can be trusted with it `without
danger to the public safety or to the peace'.7

`Good reason' is normally held to be membership of an approved
shooting club, or use of land not open to the public - but not, at
least since 1946, self defence.8 Forfeit of a certificate can result
in loss of all firearms held.9 Unauthorised possession is a serious
offence, bringing a penalty of three years imprisonment, or an
unlimited fine, or both.10 There is a penumbra of controls in other
statutes which, taken entirely, might seem already to discourage all
but the most determined from lawfully keeping guns. Despite all this -
despite levels of control comparable to those in Rumania on
typewriters - more is following. Some of the Bill's harsher clauses
have subsequently been softened.. Not all semi-automatic rifles and
pump action shotguns will be prohibited, as was at first intended. Nor
are weapons to be taken without compensation. But certain kinds of
shotgun are to be made fully certifiable, and access to other kinds
restricted. There are still more than a million certificate holders in
this country. They are nearly all peaceful and responsible citizens.
The new Act, when passed, will yet more limit their right to lawful
enjoyment of an activity quite as popular as any better known sport.


But the rights of sportsmen, though important, are not all that are
threatened. There is the matter of our constitutional rights - those
famous Rights of Englishmen, which have been the crude matter from
which every liberal doctrine has been refined, and possession of which
we trace back into the mists of time. To bear arms is one of those
rights, and the one with which the others have repeatedly been
protected. To go back only to the Revolution, it is specifically
affirmed in the Bill of Rights;11 and one of the grievances against
James was that he had caused `several good subjects, being
protestants, to be disarmed ...'12 A disarmed people was believed a
sure sign of approaching or actual tyranny, and Gibbon, in the next
century, only voiced the general prejudice in declaring that `[a]
martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of
property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only
balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises
of an aspiring prince.'13


For centuries there has been no good reason here for pulling down a
government. The right to bear arms for personal defence was
nonetheless jealously preserved, and still exercised into a time
almost within living memory. Ninety years ago, it was possible for
anyone in this country, regardless of age or capacity, to walk into a
gunsmith's and buy as many guns and as much ammunition as he could
afford. Since no effort was made to count the number of guns in
circulation, numbers are uncertain. But over 4,000 imported pistols
and revolvers were submitted for proof at the Birmingham Proof House
in 1889; and 37,000 British pistols were submitted in 1902. Price was
no constraint on ownership: pistols of a kind started at 1s 6d,14 or
eighteen times the cost of a daily newspaper. There was, it should be
said, Section 4 of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, which penalised the carrying
of offensive weapons with intent to commit a felony. There was the Gun
Licenses Act of 1870 - despite its name a revenue measure requiring a
10s license to be taken out before any kind of firearm could be
carried or used outside of a private dwelling. Licenses were available
without question at all Post Offices. These restrictions aside, guns
could be had as readily and legally as television sets can today.


Quite obviously, the mere assertion of rights is no defence of them;
and it would be a very feeble case against gun controls that rested
here. The function of constitutional rights is to safeguard freedom,
the function of which in turn is to allow the pursuit of happiness -
however this may be conceived. There is no value in calling for rights
which, if had, would frustrate this purpose, or which would give more
freedom than is compatible with its own survival. Certainly, they are
not to be interfered with for any light, transient reason. Neither,
though, are they to be enjoyed absolutely, without regard for
circumstances. Freedom of speech, for example, is one of the essential
doctrines of liberalism; yet no liberal of any common sense would
press equally hard for it in every instance. There are places where
the open discussion of certain matters would produce not the
elimination of error but bloodshed on a massive scale. Even in this
country, there may be some danger that too much flaunting of blasphemy
might provoke an otherwise indifferent majority to censoring the
press. When therefore the exercise of any one right seems to endanger
the continued exercise of others, or of itself in a milder form, its
curtailment becomes a proper matter for thought.


Now, perhaps the individual owning of guns is another such instance.
There were few controls in the last century because few were required.
But the present age is believed more violent than any before it. There
has been both an increase in the effectiveness of most weapons and an
increasing willingness to use them; and new threats to public safety
call for new forms of protection. On this point, Peregrine Worsthorne
draws an ingenious analogy with the road traffic laws - superfluous
once but now essential.15 No one can know for certain what would
happen without controls; but American experience is normally taken as
a good indicator. There, despite some controls, guns are to be had
virtually on demand, the murder rate is regularly almost ten times
that of England and Wales, and more than three fifths of all murders
are committed with guns.16 Three Presidents have been shot this
century, two of them fatally. And even stockbrokers have not been
immune from the anger or disappointment of an armed public. Perhaps,
without what controls we have, armed violence in England might
increase to similar levels. Or fears for life and property might even
cause a lapse into a simpler, and more despotic, form of government
and justice. For avoiding either of these, the limiting of freedom
involved in gun controls is generally thought well worth the price.
Put forward as it is with great frequency and unanimity, the argument
does have an appearance of plausibility. Critically examined, however,
it is found to rest on a number of false assumptions. First, most
obvious and most easily exposed, there is the belief that gun controls
were put on in response to a need for them. Almost the exact opposite
is true.


Though guns were freely available, the late Victorians seem to have
been anything but careless or violent in their use of them. According
to Coroners' reports, in the three years from 1890, there was a total
of 524 deaths attributable to firearms. 443 of these were suicides,
which, being voluntary matters, are not our concern. This leaves 49
accidental deaths and 32 homicides. Accidents are not presently our
concern, involving as they often do self-inflicted harm. This leaves
an average of 10 instances per year of the lethal misuse of guns.17
Regarding their more general use in armed crime, not much can be said
owing to a lack of continuous statistics. But, in the nine years to
1889, 13 police offices were wounded by armed burglars in the
Metropolitan Police District. During the next five years, three were
so wounded in the whole of England and Wales, an area with a
population five times larger. In the earlier period, 18 burglars
escaped by using firearms in the Metropolitan Police District; in the
later period, in England and Wales, the number was still 18.18 These
were not unusually peaceful years. They knew the Fenian bombing
campaign in London, and the Jack the Ripper killings. Yet guns were
very seldom used.


Controls, nonetheless, began in 1903, with the Pistols Act, which
required the production of a Game or Gun Licence before buying certain
kinds of pistol. In the absence of any crime wave, supporters of the
Bill were reduced to giving anecdotal evidence of shooting incidents
involving children.19 But it was not seen as controversial, and had an
easy passage.


Next came the Firearms Act of 1920. Still, the use of guns in crime
was almost insignificant: between 1911 and 1917, there were 170
instance in London, or an annual average of 24.20 But, with civil war
in Ireland, fears in England of a Bolshevist coup, and the prospect of
millions of demobilised weapons coming onto the home market, it was
agreed that something ought to be done. Precedent sanctioned temporary
measures. The Government chose permanent ones; and its Act was
substantially the modern scheme of control. Only one Member spoke of
constitutional rights. He was ignored, and the Bill went through both
Houses almost by acclamation.21 During the next twenty years, the rate
of nearly every type of crime fell. Looking at the eighteen months to
the end of 1937, for example, only seven people arrested in the
Metropolitan Police District were found in possession of firearms.22
More controls, however, came in 1937, making sawn-off shotguns and
smooth bore pistols certifiable weapons, and prohibiting automatic
weapons.


Shotgun controls date from 1967, and were the direct response to the
killing of two policemen by criminals with pistols. Much was said
about a trebling since 1961 of indictable offences involving shotguns.
Probably there was an increasing use of shotguns. But, for every year
since 1961, the figures showing this increase had been collected on a
different basis; and the phrase `indictable offences involving
shotguns' covered every crime from armed robbery to the theft of
unusable antiques.23 Controls on the more powerful sort of airgun
followed in 1969, though not one instance was produced of them having
featured in a crime or accident.24

And so we have all but lost a right which our ancestors thought equal
in importance to the Habeas Corpus Act and trial by jury. And we have
lost it with scarcely a shred of good evidence that the loss was
required on the grounds of public safety. It would be gloomy yet
satisfying to think ourselves victims of despotic rulers or a
coalition of special interests. Yet if there is one certain fact in
the progress of our gun controls towards completeness, it is that they
have been overwhelmingly popular. At almost every stage, they have
been quietly accepted or loudly demanded. They are the outcome not of
any specific unhappy circumstances, but of general lack of interest in
being free which has been the mark of this country in the period of
its decline.


Against controls in the present, of course - whatever suspicion
against them it might raise - this purely in itself is no argument.
Simply because they were not needed once is no reason for not having
them now. Every hypochondriac, after all, does eventually die; and, in
the age of Michael Ryan, rather than criticise the superfluity of past
legislation, perhaps we should praise the foresight of its makers. But
though it is nearly an article of faith that the Firearms Acts are all
that keeps London from becoming like Detroit, faith is no guarantee of
truth. Different nations have different patterns of behaviour, and
with these go different propensities to violence. If there is greater
misuse of guns in one country than in another, there is surely more to
explaining the variation than knowing whether guns can be had on
demand or by permission. The example of America tends to dominate all
talk of gun control. But America is by no means the model of what a
country without them must inescapably become. Switzerland has very
moderate controls, and every man there of military age is even
required to keep firearms on his property. Yet the murder rate is
regularly lower than our own,25 and guns are seldom used as a weapon
of assault.26 Or, to look near the other extreme, there is Northern
Ireland. Controls there are more severe even than in England and
Wales, only one firearm being allowed per certificate, and shotguns
and all airguns being fully certifiable weapons. Nonetheless, the
murder rate in that unhappy place was actually higher in several years
than that of the United States.27 Or there is even our own example to
be looked at. A shared language and popular culture make England
almost a satellite of America. It may be yet noted that the American
murder rate with knives alone is far higher than the murder rate in
England and Wales from all causes combined;28 and the only restriction
on having any knife whatever in England is at most the additional cost
of a ferry ride across the Channel. If our crime rate is below the
American even in those cases where no preventive barriers exist to
parity, it hardly seems likely that our gun controls are all that
contains the rate of murder by shooting.



This being so, there remains the claim that controls, if not equally
needed in all places, may still have a certain use. For, on the above
principle, it is arguable that repealing all our laws against murder
might leave us safer on average than the Americans, though they were
invariably to catch and execute their murderers: and who would suppose
this a good case for repeal? Therefore, though already low, the
criminal use of guns in Switzerland might be even lower were they less
easily available. Northern Ireland, without any controls, might well
slip from endemic terrorism into civil war. But so far from saving the
case for controls, this claim only rests it on and isolates its most
basic assumption, which is that they work. While there is little doubt
that threatening the appropriate penalties may check the rate of
murder or other crimes, it is very much less certain whether controls
on guns do much to prevent their misuse.


Take the incidence of professional armed crime, which is normally the
main object of public concern. If controls had any substantial effect
here, we might expect to see some reflection of it in the statistical
tables. We should see, that is, little use of fully automatic weapons,
these being prohibited. Use of handguns, having been controlled nearly
seventy years, we might see rather more of. But shotguns and powerful
airguns, subject to control only these past twenty years, we ought to
see as almost the general firearm. We see, of course, nothing of the
kind. Choice of firearm seems determined far more by preference than
theoretical availability. In 1967, shotguns, though just controlled,
were used in only 21.3% of armed robberies. Pistols, however, were
used in 45.6%.29 Twenty years later, the proportions have not greatly
changed: the 1985 figure for shotguns was 26.8%.30 For obvious reasons
of convenience and firepower, most criminals who wish to carry a gun
will prefer to carry a handgun - this in spite of the written law. But
the law can regulate possession only of what the Police know to exist.
How many uncertified weapons there are no one knows. Guns wear out
slowly, and are not hard to repair. There might easily be millions of
them in the country, held either since before the 1920 Act or since
the War, when many controls were practically annulled by
circumstances. Certainly, in the four amnesties between 1946 and 1968,
weapons handed into the Police exceeded 20,000.31 Another amnesty is
planned for this year, and it will be interesting to see how many
warehouses will be filled this time with old service revolvers and
exotic memorabilia. It seems unlikely in the nature of things that
many of the weapons handed in were or will be owned for criminal
purposes. The number is, however, vast; and it may be wondered how
many others have found their way into the pool of uncertified guns
available for criminal use. Otherwise, if demand for guns exceeded the
domestic supply, imports could never be kept out.32 The record of our
drug laws illustrates how difficult it is to control the movement of
small but greatly desired items. More specifically, opposed even by
one of the best anti-terrorist forces in the world, the IRA has no
shortage of personal weapons, only of the men to fire them. For these
reasons, if the use of guns in professional crime is increasing - and
it almost certainly is - the speed of the increase seems almost wholly
determined by fashions within the criminal classes.


Take next the incidence of domestic violence. There can be few
households that are completely peaceful, and disputes within them are
often peculiarly savage. Whether there would be more disputes, and of
greater violence, in the absence of control cannot be known. Perhaps
more arguments than now become crockery fights would otherwise become
shooting matches. But, writing of homicides in general, the conclusion
of at least one researcher is firmly that `more than the availability
of a shooting weapon is involved in homicide ... The type of weapons
used appears to be, in part, the culmination of assault intentions or
events and is only superficially related to causality'.33 It may
easily be, then, that gun controls keep down the number of domestic
murders by shooting, but do so largely in those cases where murders
are committed anyway, though by other means. They may do little more
than force a substitution for handguns of shotguns, crossbows or
other, less convenient weapons.


Finally, take Michael Ryan. How maniacs are to be abolished by Act of
Parliament probably not the most fervent supporter of the Firearms
Bill can explain. Ryan is said to have been obsessed by guns, and
there are few obsessions that are not more powerful than the law. Even
if public opinion had had its way years ago, and civilian ownership of
all firearms had been absolutely prohibited, he might still have
collected an armoury quite as impressive as the one he acquired by
legal means alone. The existing controls did not put him off. The new
controls will not put off anyone strongly inclined to follow his
example. What they might do, indeed, is make his example all the
easier to follow. How far would Ryan have got that day had his victims
been carrying guns of their own? - had not controls disarmed the
law-abiding? As it was, nothing endangered him until armed police
could be brought in from outside.


None of this should be taken as denying that a problem does exist. The
incidence of all violent crime has increased alarmingly during the
past four decades. The criminal use of firearms, once a rarity, is
verging on the commonplace. It would be unnatural were people to look
on these increases and not demand that something be done. Even so, it
must be stressed - and repeatedly so - that gun controls are not the
required solution. They take from us an important natural right
without proper reason and without substantial benefit. Certainly, they
do have some damping effect on the rate of criminal misuse. They put
the lower class of street thug to the trouble of making phone calls or
waiting in public houses before being able to go about armed. They
ensure that enraged marriage partners reach out for carving knives
more often than automatics. There are some people who would cry up
even the smallest potential saving of life as justifying the controls.
Similarly, there are people who believe the avoiding of a few
disorders to justify censoring the press, or who want motor cars
banned on account of the road casualty figures. Every kind of freedom
is attended by particular ills, and looking only at these, ignoring
its general advantages, is a sure means of herding free men into a
slave gang. As said, freedom may be limited for reasons of public
safety. But, to justify any limitation, the balance of advantage must
weigh far more heavily in its favour than it does in the case of gun
control. This is so taking the measure only in itself. And the balance
falls still heavier considering also the scheme of law enforcement of
which control is an important part.


According to the old jurisprudence, crime is most effectively deterred
- of course assuming detection - by the severity of punishment. This
is a harsh doctrine, sanctioning as it often does very severe
punishments indeed. It is also a strictly limited one. It involves a
precise and known use of state power - a collection and focussing of
it over a small area, much as burning glass does to the sun's rays.
Only criminals are to be in fear of that power: the rest of us are to
be left freely to go about our business. Today, harshness is no longer
in fashion. There is no death penalty, nor flogging, nor hard labour.
They are thought barbarously cruel by those whose opinions count.
Therefore, when mildness and attempts at the reformation of character
fail, the only means left of ensuring obedience to the law is to try
restricting the means of breaking it. Yet, though apparently more
humane than deterrence, prevention requires the most constant and
unwelcome modes of State supervision. Acts which in themselves may be
completely harmless, or at least innocent, come under police
inspection. Those who use guns in crime are an almost insignificant
minority of all who own guns. Yet the entire class of gun owners is
treated as a potentially criminal class. Those who take out licenses
open themselves to all manner of legal harrying. Those who prefer not
to, though perhaps without the least aggressive intent against life or
property, become criminals - to be punished if caught. As best
illustration of this, however, take not gun controls, but the great
Miners' Strike. Violent mass picketing is a breach of public order,
and should always be put down with whatever force may be required.
Tear gas, baton charges, severe punishment of all taken on the scene
after a state time - these are the proper means of dealing with riots.
But modern English law has no Riot Act. Instead of mobs being
dispersed, road blocks were set up, for the Police to stop motorists
and turn them back or arrest them if suspected of travelling to a
picket line.34 Putting a rope round someone's neck is surely an
unhappy thing to do. But is it so bad and unthinkable as trying to
govern an entire nation as though it were a prison or a school? As was
said against another species of prior restraint: `He who is not
trusted with his own actions, his drift not being known to be evill,
and standing to the hazard of law and penalty, has no great argument
to think himself reputed in the Commonwealth wherein he was born for
other than a fool or a foreiner'.35


The normal conclusion to this kind of essay is to call for the
dismantling of controls, and to discuss the ways in which it might be
done. My own feeling, however, is that this would be to end on a note
of inappropriate optimism. Much is said of a liberal revival in this
country since 1979. Certainly, the economic role of the State is
smaller now than ten years ago, and this is reason to be glad. But it
should not be mistaken for more than it is. Just as even the Chinese
and Russian governments have abandoned the greater follies of
socialism, so has our own tried a limited freeing of markets - and for
much the same mercantilist reason, of preserving or maintaining a
certain national status. The immediate needs of economic efficiency
are one thing. Liberalism is something rather larger, and altogether
stranger and more frightening to Government and public alike.


The Firearms Bill will become law, and after a decent interval will be
followed by another, and then by another, until guns are in theory
outlawed among the civilian population. There is no opposing the
general will on this point. There is no place for fantastical schemes
of deregulation. All that can usefully be done is to observe and
record the progress of folly - and hope that its worst consequence
will be felt by a later generation than our own.



NOTES



1. Times, 31/8/87.


2. Times, 22/8/87.


3. Times, 16/10/87.


4. Daily Telegraph, 10/2/88. It should be noted that the poll was
commissioned by the League Against Cruel Sports, and that none of the
questions asked was published in my source.


5. See the Bill reviewed in Policing London for December, 1987,
produced by the Police Monitoring and Research Group of the London
Strategic Policy Unit (a major part of the GLC's ghost).


6. Firearms Act, 1968, s 5.


7. Ibid 27 (1).


8. Colin Greenwood, Firearms Control: A Study of Armed Crime and
Firearms Control in England and Wales, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London,
1972, p. 92.

9. F.A., 1968, ss 51 & 52.


10. Ibid, ss 3 (3). 51 (1). (2) & Schedule 6, Part 1.


11. Bill of Rights, 1689, S II (7) - `That the subjects which are
protestants may have arms for their defence suitable for their
conditions, and as allowed by law.


12. Ibid, I (6).


13. Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, Chapter III - last sentence of first paragraph.


14. Greenwood, op. cit., p. 26.

15. Sunday Telegraph, 27/8/87.


16. MURDER RATES PER 100,000 - VARIOUS COUNTRIES


1976 1977 1978 1979 1980


U.S. 9.1 9.2 9.4 NA NA ENG. & WALES 1.1 0.9
1.2 1.1 0.8 SWITZERLAND 0.9 0.9 0.7 0.9 NA N IRELAND
13.7 14.3 5.7 NA NA
Source: Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1982-3, Washington
D.C. 1982, Table 297.


MURDERS IN U.S. - % RATE GUNS AND KNIVES


YEAR MURDERS GUNS % KNIVES %
1970 13,649 66.2 17.8
1975 18,642 65.8 17.4
1980 21,860 62.4 19.3
1981 20,053 62.4 19.4

Source: Ibid, Table 298.

17. Greenwood, op. cit., p. 22. Despite ignoring accidents, I cannot
help relating that, in 1892, accidental deaths due to misuse of
pistols were just three more than those due to misuse of perambulators
(ibid).


18. Ibid, Table 2.


19. Ibid, p. 29.


20. Ibid, Table 5.


21. Ibid, Chapter 3.


22. A further 12 had airguns, and one a toy pistol - Ibid, p. 70.


23. Ibid, Chapter 8.


24. Ibid, p. 89.


25. M. B. Clinnard, Cities Without Crime: the Case of Switzerland,
Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 114-5.


26. See Ibid.


27. See Table above.


28. See Table above.


29. Greenwood, op. cit., p. 236.


30. From official figures (quoted by the Shooters' Rights
Association).


31. Greenwood, op. cit., p. 236.


32. It might also be said that guns are not difficult to make or
convert. See L. Wesley's very interesting Air-Guns & Air-Pistols,
Cassell, London, 1979.


33. Marvin E. Wolfgang, Patterns of Homicide in America, University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1958, p. 82 (quoted in Greenwood, op. cit., p.
130).

34. See Policing London: Collected Reports of the GLC Police
Committee, 1986, p. 100.


35. John Milton, Areopagitica, Clarendon Press, 1886, p. 30.





That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's
cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays
there.
- George Orwell