<PRE>
                         GUN CONTROL IN BRITAIN

                              By Sean Gabb

                         Political Notes No. 33

              ISSN  0267 7059         ISBN  1 870614 08 9

         An occasional publication of the Libertarian Alliance, 
       25 Chapter Chambers, Esterbrooke Street, London SW1P 4NN.

Sean Gabb is a graduate in History from York University. He has been an 
estate agent, the director of a minicab company, an economic and 
political adviser to the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic and now 
lectures in economics at Goldsmiths University, London.

               (c) 1988, Sean Gabb; Libertarian Alliance.

The views expressed in this publication are those of its author, and not 
necessarily those of the Libertarian Alliance, its Committee, Advisory 
Council or subscribers.

 LA Director: Chris R. Tame      Editorial Director: Brian Micklethwait

                     FOR LIFE, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY
                     
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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 parlamentary 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 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 stubbon 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 excercised 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.

A CASE FOR MODERATION

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 blasphemey 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.

THE HISTORY OF GUN CONTROL 

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 Bolshevistt 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 ancesters 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 shoudl 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 Chanel.  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.

DO CONTROLS HAVE ANY USE?

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 dificult 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 the next 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.

THE ABANDONMENT OF DETERRENCE

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
NORTHERN 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.  
