From cdn-firearms@skatter.usask.ca Sun Dec 4 07:57:38 1994 From: "Frank H.RYDER" ============================================================================== Boiling the Reasonable Frog Members of the SSAA are being kept up to date with developments in the struggle to retain the right to lawful gun ownership. That is the central function of this, the SSAA magazine. Here, internationally known lawyer and author David Kopel shows how politicians have slowly but surely increased the heat under the frog of gun ownership in England, so that by the time the water was too hot, escape was impossible. This story is in three parts. The first covers the period before World War I; the second goes through to the 1980s. The third brings us to the present. If you are an Australian gun owner, you cannot afford to ignore this series. What has been done in England is under way here and now. Only in the United States among the English=1Espeaking world does the Constitution formally guarantee the right to keep and bear arms. Yet many other English speaking peoples firmly believe that they have a right to own a gun. Where do they get this idea? The answer lies in 17th Century Britain, when the British people were taught the hard way that a disarmed society is an unfree society. At least as far back as the middle ages, most free British subjects had been required by law to be armed. By the end of the 16th Century, universal gun ownership as seen as necessary for defence against foreign enemies. The British, like the Swiss, believed thatif they were well armed, they would be less attractive as an invasion target. In addition, the government required Britons to own guns in order to participate in domestic lawenforcement. There were no police forces; each community had the responsibility of protecting itself from felons. All males were legallybound to join in the hutesium et clamor (hue and cry) to pursue fleeing criminals, whenever a local sheriff raised the cry.Training the populace in use of arms was considered an essential duty of government. All able=1Ebodied men from the age of 16 to 60 were legally bound to participate in what came to be called, by around 1590, "the militia." The duty of subjects to bear arms for the common defence, as their financial means allowed, traced its roots back to Saxon traditions, and to King Henry II's 1181 Statute of Assize of Arms. The 17th Century saw continual struggle between the King, the Parliament, and the rest of society over who should have the ultimate power of force in Great Britain, as historian Lois G. Schwoerer explains in her book No Standing Armies! (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). The struggle led first to civil war, and eventually to the formal recognition of a British subject's right to bear arms. This crucial century was studied intensely by the creators of the American republic. From the Royalist point of view, the power of the sword should belong exclusively to the king. Royalists believed that the King of England had the implicit authority to raise and maintain a standing army of professional soldiers. While the monarchy believed it had the right to absolute control over both the standing army and the militia, many people disagreed. In general terms, the Parliament usually represented the views of the rural, landed aristocracy that was opposing monarchical efforts to centralize state power in London. In the "country versus court" battle, many small landholders, tenant farmers, and artisans sided with the faction of rural aristocracy opposed to central control from London. In 1642, Parliament asserted for itself the right to regulate the militia. "By God, not for an hour!" the King thundered back. King Charles I recognized that whoever controlled the militia controlled the state. "Kingly power is but a shadow," without command of the militia, he noted. He considered the militia question the "fittest subject for a King's Quarrel," and challenged the Parliament's unprecedented usurpation of the power of the sword. A crisis of government ensued. In 1642, a Royalist army marched on London, but retreated without a shot when faced down by a 20,000=1Eman militia loyal to Parliament. John Milton wrote the poem "When the Assault was Intended to the City" in tribute. Civil war began that year, with the militia issue being as important as any other. After two decades of conflict, monarchy triumphed, and in 1660 the Restoration placed the English people once again under the authority of a King. Shortly thereafter, the King ordered gunsmiths to report all gun sales, and banned imports. (Modern governments in Britain, and Australian states, have taken similar steps.) Restrictions on the right to bear arms were accompanied (as they are in modern times) by repressive searches and seizures, and by suppression of dissent. By the Militia Act of 1662, a Parliament loyal to King Charles II confirmed the King's sole authority over the militia. The Act authorized the King's agents "to search for and seize all arms in the custody or possession of any person or persons who the said lieutenants or any two or more of their deputies shall judge dangerous to the peace of the kingdom." The 1671 Game Act forbade 95 percent of the population (those not owning lands worth at least =A3100 in annual rentals) from hunting, and barred non=1Ehunters from owning guns. The law further authorized daytime searches of any home suspected of holding an illegal gun. The strict laws failed. After the Catholic James II succeeded Charles II in 1685, he observed that "a great many persons not qualified by law" kept weapons in their homes. The new king commanded "strict search to be made for such muskets or guns and to seize and safely keep them till further order." The king attempted to build up his standing army, with Catholic officers in charge. By neglecting the militia, he hoped it would wither as a threat to his power. The monarchs were correct to recognize that the militia could not be trusted to enforce his dictatorial will. The militia disobeyed orders to suppress Dissenters (Puritans and Congregationalists who did not submit to the Anglican Church) and deserted at the first possible opportunity. As Parliament had begun to grow bolder even under Charles II, Sir Henry Capel of the House of Commons explained why Parliament felt free to defy the monarch: "Our security is the militia: that will defend us and never conquer us." It was clear that the militia would fight foreign invaders, but would be much less willing than the standing army was to obey royal orders to attack fellow Englishmen (particularly when the fellow Englishmen were neighbours, or supporters of a popular cause).In the Glorious Revolution of 1688=1E89, James II was driven out of the country by the professional army of the Protestant Will3am of Orange. James's standing army deserted at the first opportunity, and not a single life was lost. William and Mary then established a system of limited monarchy, operating under an informal constitution. In response to the abuses of absolute monarchs, Parliament enacted the 1689 Bill of Rights, which guaranteed British subjects certain rights. The first part of the statute listed the abuses of Charles II and James II; numbered among them were: 5....Raising and keeping a standing army within this kingdom in time of peace, without the consent of parliament, and quartering soldiers contrary to law. 6....Causing several good subjects, being Protestants, to be disarmed at the same time when papists were both armed and employed contrary to law. The second part of the Bill of Rights created laws to prevent recurrence of the abuses. The Bill of Rights affirmed that the right to bear arms, like other rights, was not being created or granted by government but had always been a traditional right of Englishmen: And thereupon the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons...do in the first place (as their ancestors in like case have usually done) for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties declare: 6. That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of parliament, is against the law.7. The subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law. Since a militia composed of all Protestant citizens was to be armed, and since standing armies were prohibited, the Bill of Rights implicitly created a right of popular rebellion, which acted as a guarantee of the other rights. Some advocates of gun prohibition contend that the 1689 Bill of Rights recognized only a "collective" right to bear arms, and not an individual right. The theory is that British right was applied only to a single group- Protestants-and only for collective purposes such as national defence. The "collective" right to bear arms becomes treated like "collective" property in Communist societies; while the right theoretically belongs to the people as a whole, it can only be exercised by the gov But record of 1689 is not consistent with the "collective rights" theory. In fact, Parliament rejected drafts which would have limited the right to situations "necessary for the public safety" or "for their common defence." (Likewise, the United States Senate, in ratifying the Second Amendment's guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms, rejected a change which would have narrowed it to bearing arms "for the common defence.") It is true that Catholics were excluded from the scope of the English Bill of Rights (as Blacks would later be excluded from the American Bill of Rights). But the exclusion of Catholics did not mean that the right to bear arms was therefore confined only to a small group. Catholics, who were thought to be subversive, amounted to less than two percent of the population, and a separate statute allowed even a Catholic to keep firearms "for the defence of his house or person". The view of most British historians was that the militia had saved the nation. Historian Thomas Macaulay concluded that Britain's Parliament survived-while continental parliaments declined-because the British monarchy's power was dependent on the consent of the militia. Macaulay's views echoed those of Sir John Fortescue, whose 1476 book Governance of England (revised edition, 1885) traced the development of a limited monarchy under law in Britain to the fact that the British peasants were armed, and that Britain therefore did not have to rely on mercenaries for defence. Cato's Letters, written by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon in the 1720s and reprinted many times in the following decades, looked to the history of the previous century, and vigorously condemned the idea of a standing army, and of the participation of army officers in Parliament. Britain's great expositor of the common law, Sir William Blackstone, called the right to bear arms the "fifth auxiliary right of the subject," which would allow citizens to vindicate all the other rights. He explained that "in cases of national oppression, the nation has very justifiably risen as one man, to vindicate the original contract subsisting between the king and his people." At home, the British people would be armed, and the government would not be. When professional police forces were established a century and a half later, they conformed to the verdict of the Glorious Revolution, and were unarmed. As the 20th Century opened, the British people were free to keep and bear any firearms they chose. The 1689 Bill of Rights is of more than just historical importance. It is the foundation upon which gun owners in all Commonwealth nations base their belief that they have a right-not merely a privilege granted by the government-to own firearms. While the Englishmen of the late 17th Century had won freedom for themselves, the job of preserving the freedom falls to each successive generation. In Britain during this century, most gun owners have lost any sense of rights; instead, they cling to the shred of freedom which the government still allows them: the "privilege" to own guns deemed suitable for sporting purposes by the government, pursuant to a highly restrictive licensing system. In modern times, the struggle continues between those who believe that gun ownership is a privilege that the government may constrict or revoke at will, and those who believe that owning a firearmis their fundamental right. In the final decades of the last century, Great Britain had almost no gun laws, and almost no gun crime. The homicide rate per 100,000 population per year was between 1.0 and 1.5, declining as the century wore on. Two technological developments, however, began to work together to create in some minds the need for gun control. The first of these was the revolver. Revolvers had begun to achieve mass popularity when Colonel Colt showed off his models at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Revolver technology advanced rapidly, and by the 1890s, revolver design had progressed about as far as it could, with subsequent developments involving fairly minor tinkering. As revolvers got cheaper and better, concern arose regarding the increase in firepower available to the public. And in fact, the change from one=1E or two=1Eshot weapons to the repeat=1Efiring revolver represented per= haps the greatest advance in small arms civilian fire=1Epower that has ever occurred. Compared to the seemingly more benign single=1Eshot muzzle=1Eloade= rs of the past, the revolver seemed a frightening innovation. Revolvers were one technological development that began to make Britons rethink the desirability of the right to bear arms. What was the second development? The growth of the mass circulation press. Newspapers, like guns, had been around for quite a while, but the late 19th Century witnessed several printing innovations that made printing of vast quantities of newspapers extremely cheap. The British press was fervently devoted to sensation, and especially loved lurid crime stories. In 1883, a pair of armed burglaries in the London suburbs set off a round of press hysteria about armed criminals. The press notwithstanding, crime with firearms was rare. Also in 1883, British Parliament saw the first serious attempt at gun control in many decades. Parliament considered and rejected a bill to ban the "unreasonable" carrying of a concealed firearm. In 1895, strong pistol controls were rejected by a 2=1E1 margin in the House of Commons. In Britain as the 19th Century came to a close, the press had not as yet persuaded the public to adopt gun controls. Indeed, the only significant firearms law was the 1870 Gun Licence Act, which required a prospective buyer to purchase a 10=1Fshilling gun licence at the local post of fice. The bill was strictly a revenue measure. Buyers of any type of gun from derringers to Gatling guns faced no background check, no need for police permission, and no registration. As criminologist Colin Greenwood wrote, "anyone, be he convicted criminal, lunatic, drunkard or child, could legally acquire any type of firearm." And anyone could carry any gun anywhere. The gun crime rate was at its all=1Etime low. The official attitude about guns was summed up by Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne=1ECecil, the Marquess of Salisbury, who in 1900 said he would "laud the day when there is a rifle in every cottage in England." Led by the Duke of Norfolk and the majors of London and of Liverpool, a number of gentlemen formed a cooperative association that year to promote the creation of rifle clubs for working men. The Prime Minister and the rest of the aristocracy viewed the widespread ownership of rifles by the working classes as an asset to national security. But within a century, the right to bear arms in Britain would be well on the road to extinction, for reasons that would have little to do with gun ownership itself, but which instead related to the British government's growing mistrust of the British people, and to the apathetic attitude of British gun owners. In 1903, Parliament enacted a gun control law which appeared eminently reasonable. The Pistols Act of 1903 forbade pistol sales to minors and felons and dictated that sales be made only to buyers with a gun licence; the licence itself could be obtained at the post of fice, the only requirement being payment of a fee. People who intended to keep the pistol solely in their house did not need to get the postal licence. The Pistols Act attracted only slight opposition, and passed easily. The law had no discernible statistical effect on crime or accidents. Firearms suicides did fall, but the decline was more than matched by an increase in suicide by poisons and knives. The bill defined pistols as guns having a barrel of nine inches or less, and thus pistols with nine=1Eand=1Ea=1Ehalf inch barrel= s were soon popular. While the Act was in the short run harmless to gun owners and useless in reducing gun misuse, it was of considerable longterm importance. By allowing the Act to pass, British gun owners had accepted the proposition that the government could set the terms and conditions for gun ownership by law=1Fabiding subjects. The early years of the 20th Century saw an increasingly bitter series of confrontations between capital and labour throughout the English=1Espeaking world. In Britain, the rising militancy of the working class was beginning to make the aristocracy doubt whether the people could be trusted with arms. Leaders of Parliament interpreted the current bitter labour strikes as a harbinger of impending revolution. The next set of gun control initiatives reflected fears of immigrant anarchists and other subversives. British resistance to gun controls finally cracked in 1914, when Great Britain entered World War I. The government imposed comprehensive, stringent controls as "temporary" measures to protect national security during the war. "War is the health of the state" observed one historian, and it was World War I that set in motion the growth of the British government to the size where it could begin to destroy the right to arms which the British people had enjoyed with little hindrance for over two centuries. After "The Great War" broke out in August 1914, the British government began assuming "emergency" powers for itself. "Defence of the Realm Regulations" were enacted which required a licence to buy pistols, rifles, or ammunition at retail. As the war came to a conclusion in 1918, many British gun owners no doubt expected that the wartime regulations would be soon repealed, and Britons would again enjoy the right to purchase the firearm of their choice without government permission. But the government had other ideas. Next month: the story continues. Learn how the events after WWI took England ever closer to the point of the effective loss of their traditional shooting rights forever=09 Members of the SSAA are being kept up to date with developments in the struggle to retain the right to lawful gun ownership. That is the central function of this, the SSAA magazine. Here; internationally known lawyer and author David Kopel shows how politicians have slowly but surely increased the heat under the frog of gun ownership in England, so that by the time the water was too hot, escape was impossible. This story is in three parts. The first covers the period before World War I; the second goes through to the 1980s. The third brings us to the present. If you are an Australian gun owner, you cannot afford to ignore this series. What has been done in England is under way here and now. Last month we saw the way that new technology, in the form of the proliferation of the revolver, was instrumental in the authorities taking steps to limit private ownership of firearms. We saw also that as always, the media of the day, the press, waged its own war of misinformation to inflame public opinion against gun ownership. Now, read on The disaster of World War I had bred the Bolshevik Revolution inRussia. Armies of the new soviet state swept into Poland, and more and more workers of the world joined strikes called by radical labour leaders who predicted the overthrow of capitalism. Many Communists and other radicalsthought the Revolution was at hand; all over the English=1Espeaking world governments feared the end. A= t a cabinet meeting on January 17, 1919, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff raised the threat of "Red Revolution and blood and war at home and abroad." He suggested that the government make sure of its arms. The next month, the Prime Minister was asking which parts of the army would remain lo yal. The cabinet discussed arming university men, stockbrokers and clerks to fight any revolution.The Minister of Transport, Sir Eric Geddes, predicted "a revolutionary outbreak in Glasgow, Liverpool or London in the early spring, when a definite attempt may be made to seize the reins of government." "It is not inconceivable," Geddes warned, "that a dramatic and successful coup d'etat in some large centre of population might win the support of the unthinking mass of labour." Using the Irish gun licensing system as a model, the Cabinet made plans to disarm enemies of the state and to prepare arms for distribution "to friends of the Government." Although popular revolution was the motive, the Home Secretary presented the government's 1920 gun bill to Parliament as strictly a measure "to prevent criminals and persons of that description from being able to have revolvers and to use them." In fact, the problem of criminal, non=1Epolitical misuse of firearms remained minuscule. Of course, 1920 would not be the last time a government lied in order to promote gun control. The Firearms Act of 1920 sailed through Parliament. Britons who had formerly enjoyed a right to bear arms were now allowed to possess pistols and rifles only if they proved they had "good reason" for receiving a police permit. Shotguns and airguns, which were perceived as "sporting" weapons, remained exempt from control. In the early years of the Firearms Act,the law was not enforced with particular stringency, except in Ireland, where revolutionary agitators were demanding independence from British rule. Within Great Britain, a "firearms certificate" for possession of rifles or handguns was readily obtainable. Wanting to possess a firearm for self=1Edefence was considered to qualify as a "good reason" for being grante= d a firearms certificate. The threat of Bolshevik revolution-the impetus for the Firearms Act-had faded quickly as the Communist government of the Soviet Union found it necessary to spend all its energy gaining full control over its own people, rather than exporting revolution. Ordinary firearms crime in Britain the pretext for the Firearms Act- remained minimal. Despite the pacific state of affairs, the government did not move to repeal the unneeded gun controls, but instead began to expand the controls further. In 1934, a government task force, the Bodkin Committee, was formed to study the Firearms Act. The Committee collected statistics on misuse of the guns that were not currently regulated (shotguns and airguns) and collected no statistics on the guns under control (rifles and handguns). The Committee concluded that there was no persuasive evidence for repeal of any part of the Firearms Act. Since the Bodkin Committee had avoided looking for evidence about how the Firearms Act was actually working, it was not surprising that the Committee found no evidence in favour of decontrol. In 1973 and 1988, when the government was attempting to expand controls still further, gun control advocates claimed that the Bodkin Committee report was clear proof of how well the Firearms Act of 1920 was working, and why its controls should be extended to other guns. Spurred by the Bodkin Committee, the British government in 1934 enacted new legislation to completely outlaw (with a few minor exceptions) possession of sawnoff shotguns and automatic firearms. The law was partly patterned after the National Firearms Act in the United States (which taxed and registered, but did not prohibit, such guns). Starting in 1936, the British police began adding a requirement to firearms certificates requiring that the guns be stored securely. As shotguns were not licensed, there was no such requirement for them. While the safe storage requirement might, in the abstract, seem reasonable, it has been enforced in a highly unreasonable manner by a police bureaucracy determined to make firearms owners suffer as much harassment as possible. After the fall of France and the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940, Britain found itself short of arms for island defence. The Home Guard was forced to drill with canes, umbrellas, spears, pikes, and clubs. When citizens could find a gun, it was generally a sporting shotgun-ill=1Esuited for military use because of its short range and bulky ammunition. British government advertisements in American newspapers and in magazines such as The American Rifleman begged Americans to "Send a Gun to Defend a British home-British civilians, faced with threat of invasion, desperately need arms for the defence of their homes." The ads pleaded for"pistols, rifles, revolvers, shotguns and binoculars from American civilians who wish to answer the call and aid in defence of British homes." Pro=1EAllied organizations in the United States collected weapons; the National Rifle Association shipped 7,000 guns to Britain. Britain also purchased surplus World War I Enfield rifles from America's Department of War.Prime Minister Winston Churchill's book Their Finest Hour details the arrival of the shipments. Churchill personally supervised the deliveries to ensure that they were sent on fast ships, and distributed first to Home Guard members in coastal zones. Churchill thought that the American donations were "entirely on a different level from anything we have transported across the Atlantic except for the Canadian division itself." Churchill warned his First Lord that "the loss of these rifles and field guns would be a disaster of the first order."When the ships from America approached our shores with their priceless arms special trains were waiting in all the ports to receive their cargoes," Churchill recalled. "The Home Guard in every county, in every town, in every village, sat up all through the night to receive them...By the end of July we were an armed nation...A lot of our men and some women had weapons in their hands." Before the war, British authorities had refused to allow domestic manufacture of the Thompson sub=1Emachine gun because it was "a gangster gun." When the war broke out, large numbers of American=1Fmade Thompsons were shipped to Britain, where they were dubbed "Tommie guns". As World War II ended, the British government did what it could to prevent the men who had risked their lives in defence of freedom and Britain from holding onto guns acquired during the war. Troop ships returning to England were searched for souvenir or captured rifles, and men caught attempting to bring firearms home were punished. Guns that had been donated by American citizens were collected from the Home Guard and destroyed by the British government. And yet, large quantities of firearms slipped into Britain, where many of them remain to this day in attics and under floor boards. At least some British gun owners were beginning to conclude that their government did not trust them, and that their government could not be trusted to deal with them fairly. Having implemented a licensing system for handguns and rifles in the 1920s, and having banned automatic weapons entirely in the 1930s, and having confiscated guns which Americans had donated to the British Home Guard in the 1940s, the British government in the 1950s left the subject of gun control alone. Crime was still quite low, and issues such as national health care and the Cold War dominated the political dialogue. As in most of the Western world, the late 1960s in Great Britain was a time of rising crime and civil disorder. In 1965, capital punishment was abolished, except for treason and piracy. Gun crime did not seem to be a problem. Scotland Yard stated "with some confidence" that the objectives of eliminating "the improper and careless custody and use of firearms...and making it diMcult for criminals to obtain them...are effectively achieved." In June, 1966, Home Secretary Roy Jenkins told Parliament that after consulting with the Chief Constables and the Home Office, he had concluded that shotgun controls were not worth the trouble. Yet six weeks later, Jenkins announced that new shotgun controls were necessary, because shotguns were too easily available to criminals. Had there been a sudden surge in shotgun crime in the six week period? Not at all.What had happened was that three policemen at Shephard's Bush had been murdered with illegal revolvers. Popular outcry for capital punishment was fervent, and Jenkins, an opponent of the death penalty, responded by announcing new shotgun controls, in an attempt to divert attention from the noose. In retrospect, Mr Jenkins's shotgun controls made no logical sense. Regulating shotguns would obviously have no impact on criminal use of unlicensed revolvers, the guns used to murder the three policemen. Jenkins claimed that "criminal use of shotguns is increasing rapidly, still more rapidly than that of other weapons." But "rapidly" increasing types of crime associated with shotguns involved mostly poaching or property damage, rather than armed robberies or murders. Nevertheless, by showing that he was doing something about crime by proposing shotgun controls, Mr Jenkins effectively achieved his main goal, which was to divert public attention from the death penalty. The Jenkins tactic has been used by many other politicians since then, including New York Governor Mario Cuomo, a proponent of gun confiscation, and an opponent of the death penalty. At Jenkins's request the British government began drafting the legislation that became the Criminal Justice Act of 1967. The new act required a licence for the purchase of shotguns. Like the Gun Control Act of 1968 in the United States, Britain's 1967 Act was part of a comprehensive crime package that included a variety of infringements on civil liberties. The British Act abolished the necessity for unanimous jury verdicts in criminal trials, eliminated the requirement for a full hearing of evidence at committal hearings, and restricted press coverage of those hearings. Under the 1967 system, which is mostly still in force, a person wishing to obtain his first shotgun would obtain a "shotgun certificate". The local police could reject an applicant if they believed that his "possession of a shotgun would endanger public safety." The police were required to grant the certificate unless the applicant had a particular defect in his background such as a criminal record or history of mental illness. An applicant was required to supply a countersignatory, a person who would attest to the accuracy of the information in the application. During an investigation period which might last several weeks, the police might visit the applicant's home. In the first decades of the system, about 98 percent of all applications were granted. Once the =A3 12 shotgun certificate was granted, the law allowed a citizen to purchase as many shotguns as he wished. Private transfers among certificate holders were legal and uncontrolled. As is typical with many gun control laws, the shotgun certificate system was enforced in a moderate and reasonable way by the government in its first years. Similarly, the rifle and handgun licensing system, introduced in 1921, had been enforced in a generally moderate way in the 1920s and 1930s. But as the public grew accustomed to the idea of rifles and handguns being licensed, it became possible to begin to enforce the licensing requirements with greater and greater stringency. Severe enforcement of the rifle and handgun licensing system would not have worked in 1922. Too many gun owners would have been outraged by the rapid move from a free society to one of repressive controls. By enforcing the 1921 system with moderation, at first, and then with gradually increasing severity, the British government acclimatised British gun owners to higher and higher levels of control. The British government used the same principle as do people who are cooking frogs. If you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, he'll jump out. But if you put a frog in a pot of moderately warm water, and gradually raise the temperature, he'll slowly lose consciousness, and be unable to escape by the time the water gets to a boil. The frog=1Ecooking principle helps explain why in general anti=1Egun lobbies are so desperate to pass any kind of gun control, even controls that most observers agree will accomplish verylittle. The British firearms certificate system of 1921 had required that a person who wished to possess a rifle or handgun prove he had "a good reason." (In Great Britain, "firearms" refers only to rifles and handguns, and not to shotguns). In the early years of the system, self=1Edefence had been considered "a good reason." But by the 1960s, it was well=1Eestablished police pracfice that only "sporting" purposes and not self=1Edefence could justify possession of a rifle or handgun licence. In practice, being a certified member of an approved target shooting club is today the only way one can now legally obtain a pistol. The shooting clubs, being jealous guardians of their government=1Fgranted "privilege", usually require a person to become a probationary member of six months, and regularly attend club matches during that period, before being accepted into full membership (and thus becoming eligible for a handgun licence). Having, through administrative interpretation, delegitimized gun ownership for selfdefence, the British government was able to enact a variety of other laws, which met with little opposition, outlawing other defensive items. For example, non=1Elethal chemical defence sprays, such as Mace, are illegal, as are electric stun devices. Having control over rifle and handgun owners through a licensing system, the police began inventing their own conditions to put on licences. The police practice was not entirely legal, but it was generally accepted by a compliant public. British law requires that rifles and pistols stored in the home must be kept in "a secure place." Although the written law does not require guns to be locked in a safe, the police compel gun owners to purchase safes -sometimes two safes, the second one for separate storage of ammunition. Persons who refuse to give in to the police pressure will have the firearms certificate application denied. A person buying a low=1Epowered, =A35 rimfire rifle may have to spend =A3100 on a safe. A person with five handguns may be ordered t= o add a =A31000 electronic security system. The net effect of the heavy security costs is to reduce legal gun ownership, as in the days of Charles I, by the less wealthy classes. A certificate for rifle possession often includes "territorial conditions" specifying exactly where the person may hunt. Persons who do not like the territorial conditions have no practical redress. As a technical matter, applicants may appeal police denials, but the courts are generally deferential to police decisions. Hearsay evidence is admissible against the applicant. An appellant does not have a right to present evidence on his own behalf. Having meekly accepted the wishes of the police and the ruling party for "reasonable" controls, British rifle and handgun owners by the early 1970s found themselves in a boiling pot of severe controls from which escape was no longer possible. British shotgun owners, ignoring the fate of their rifle and handgun=1Eowning brethren, jumped into their own pot of then=1Elukewarm water when they accepted the 1966 shotgun licensing proposals. By the 1970s, all British gun owners were under some form of government control. From this power base the time was ready for the British government to begin in earnest the drive to exterminate all forms of gun ownership, as the next section will detail. "'With comprehensive licensing in place, many gun owners expected that the government would treat them with the same respect and moderation that they had treated the government. They would find that their expectations were terribly mistaken. In 1973, Edward Heath's Conservative government produced a Green Paper recommending sweeping new controls. Law professor Richard Harding, Australia' s leading academic advocate of gun control, criticized the Green Paper as "statistically defective" and "scientifically quite useless."Harding, however, was looking at whether the proposed laws would reduce gun crime, gun suicide, or other gun misuse. The proponents of the Green paper, on the other hand, did not care whether more gun control would reduce gun misuse. A secret draft of the Green Paper had stated that "a reduction in the number of firearms in private hands is a desirable end in itself." As Police Review magazine noted: "There is an easily identifiable police attitude towards the possession of guns by members of the public. Every possible difficulty should be put in their way."Assaulted by the Green Paper, some British gun owners finally began to shake off their passivity, and recognize that "moderate" controls were, in the government's view, only a stepping=1Estone on the way to prohibition. Mobilized by shooting sports organizations, 4,573 members of the public wrote to the Home Office (the government body in charge of crime control) to oppose all or part of the Green Paper. The Green Paper was withdrawn. But since, through the gun licensing system, the British police already had control over gun owners, they were able to go ahead and begin enforcing some of the Green Paper proposals anyway, by police fiat. For example, one Green Paper item would have required prospective rifle hunters to receive written invitation from the owner of the land where they would shoot, and then take the letter to the police; the police would investigate the safety of the hunt and other factors 65 1 before granting permission. Several Chief Constables adopted this proposal and others from the Green Paper as policy of the force and enforced them as if they were law. The abolition of gun collecting as a legitimate reason for gun ownership was also implemented without legal authority. In the ensuing decades, the police used their discretionary powers to partially achieve the Green Paper goal of reducing the number of rifles and handguns in private hands. The number of holders of firearms licences (required to own a rifle or a handgun) fell by nearly thirty percent 1968 and 1980, from 216,300 to 155,000. The rifle and handgun licensing system required the applicant to prove to police satisfaction that he had a "good reason" to be allowed the privilege of possessing the firearm. A licence holder who wanted to buy an additional gun would need separate police permission. In contrast, the shotgun licensing system required that the licence be granted, unless the police could find a specific reason why the licence should not be. And once a person had a shotgun certificate he could buy or sell shotguns at will, with no further permission or registration. So while the police were using their powers to slash the numbers of rifle and handgun licensees, they found themselves relatively powerless to prevent people from owning shotguns. The number of shotgun certificates rose from 715,500 in 1968 to 882,000 in 1980. The inability to cut the number of shotgun owners was immensely frustrating to the British police administration. Complained a spokesman of the Police Federation (the British police union), "The present legislation is farcical; it amounts to virtually no control at all." James Jardine, Chairman of the Police Federation of England, complained about a "farmers and sporting lobby" which impeded shotgun controls. The Police =46ederation blamed "the powerful gun lobby" for blocking new legislation. And indeed, the "gun lobby" was, compared to previous decades, starting to show some strength. One Member of Parliament was said to have lost his seat because of his support for the 1973 Home Office Green Paper. Gun owners took credit for tipping the balance in other close races as well. The Thatcher government showed little interest in new shotgun controls; Home Minister Leon Brittan stated that new restrictions on shotguns would be useless, since even more severe restrictions had failed to stop the use of pistols in robberies. Still, the 1980s did see some minor weapons laws enacted. The Firearms Act of 1982 introduced restrictive licensing for imitation firearms which could be converted to fire live ammunition. (The original proposal had been to implement the 1973 Green Paper's outright ban on realistic imitation or toy firearms.) The sponsor of the new law against imitation firearms promised that itwould help stem "the rising tide of crime and terrorism"-although there had never been a crime or terrorist act committed with a converted imitation weapon. In addition, a new Crossbows Act outlawed purchase by persons under seventeen. Some Britons are now pushing for laws putting bows under a licensing system identical to that for firearms. Next month: the 1980s to the present day where the British shooter went wrong, and the lessons Australians must learn. | British gun control, having stagnated for fifteen years, turned into a whirlwind on the morning of August 19, 1987, when licensed gun owner Michael Ryan dressed up like Rambo and shot a woman thirteen times with a handgun at the Savernake Forest. After killing a filling station attendant, he drove to his home in the small market town of Hungerford, where he murdered his mother and his dog. In the next hour, he went into town and slaughtered fifteen people-seven with his handgun, and eight with his Kalashnikov rifle. Ryan disappeared for a few hours, reappeared at 4.00 pm in a school, and killed himself three hours later. A few days afterward, another mass murder took place at Bristol, this one with a shotgun. The media reaction was intense. The tabloid press ran editorials instructing the public how to spot potential mass murderers-advising suspicion of someone who lived alone, or lived with his mother, or was quiet. The tabloid press and the respectable press both pushed heavily for stringent gun laws. As usual, the press displayed little interest in factual accuracy. One magazine demanded prohibition of the "Ml carbine or other automatics". The writer was apparently unaware that automatics had been banned in Britain since 1936. The Thatcher government began work on a new set of gun control proposals. The Home Office suggested banning all semiautomatic rifles, banning shotguns with barrels less than 24 inches long (which were already strictly regulated), placing pump action and semi=1Eautomatic shotguns under the same controls as rifles and handguns, an= d imposing safe storage requirements on shotgun owners. The London police, meanwhile, unilaterally limited applications and renewals for rifle certificates to bolt=1Eaction only, thereby banning semi=1Eautomatic and pum= p action rifles. For the Police Federation, the time had come to reintroduce the Green Paper proposals that had been rejected in 1973. The Federation urged that all shotguns be brought under the same strict controls as rifles and pistols. The Labour Party (acting out of class animus against gun owners, who tend to be middle or upper class) took a similar line. Labour urged that shotguns be available only to people who demonstrated a particular need, such as farmers or target shooters, and that shotgun certificates allow the possession of only one shotgun. Home Office Minister Douglas Hogg rejected the police and Labour proposals. He told Parliament that if stricter licensing were imposed for shotguns, Britain would "face massivenon=1Ecompliance very large numbers of guns will simply disappear. Th= e effect would be to make gun control less effective."Rebuffed by the Tory government, the Police Federation began working with the Labour opposition. Labour deputy leader Roy Hattersley then struck an agreement with Tory Home Secretary Douglas Hurd: if the new gun law included more restrictions on shotguns, Labour would not oppose the government bill. The government accepted. (Hurd, like many of his gun controlling political counterparts, apparently did not believe that gun controls applied to him; in 1975 he had been fined five pounds for possessing two shotguns without a certificate.) The British Shooting Sports Council attempted to reach a compromise with the government by offering concessions, but was ignored. Unlike American gun groups, the British organizations did not argue that people had a "right" to own a gun to defend themselves against lone criminals and against criminal governments. When police organizations complained that some Britons were buying shotguns for self=1Fdefence, the British Shooting SportsCouncil called armed defence "an alarming trend reflects sadly on our society." One hunting lobby oMcial condemned "the growing number of weapons being held in urban areas" for reasons having nothing to do with sport. The major hunting lobby, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, defended not the right to bear arms, but only, "the freedom to possess and use sporting arms." On only one issue were British gun owners successful in modifying the Thatcher proposal. Originally the government had planned to confiscate the newly=1Ebanned weapons and pay nothing. A Parliamentary Committee, however, refused to schedule a meeting to consider the government bill until the government partly conceded on the compensation issue. As a result, the government has reimbursed gun owners 50 percent of the gun's purchase price or =A3150, whichever is less. On most major issues besides compensation, the gun owners lost. Semi=1Eautomatic centrefire rifles, which had been legally owne= d for nearly a century, are now completely banned. Pump=1Eaction rifles are banned as well, since it was argued that these guns could be substituted for semiautomatics. Practical Rifle Shooting, the fastest=1Fgrowing sport in Britain, vanished. Shotguns that can hold more than two shells at once now require a "firearms licence", the same as rifles and handguns. All shotguns must now be registered, and shotgun sales between private parties must be reported to the police. Applicants for a shotgun certificate (required for shotguns that hold one or two shells) must obtain a countersignature by a person who has known the applicant for two years and is "a member of Parliament, justice of the peace, minister of religion, doctor, lawyer, established civil servant, bank of ficer or person of similar standing." And, most significantly, the new shotgun law allows the police to deny a shotgun certificate if they think that the applicant does not have "a good reason" for wanting a shotgun. Official Home Office guidance states that the good reason language for shotguns "does NOT require the applicant to make out a good case for being granted a certificate but rather extends the chief officer's ground for refusing one." So, as a formal matter, the burden remains on the police to prove that the applicant does not have "a good reason." But in practice, the police immediately perverted the law, and began requiring applicants to prove (to the satisfaction of the police) that the applicant did have "a good reason" for wanting to own a shotgun. Active participation in a shooting organization that used the particular kind of shotgun the applicant wanted to possess would be considered "a good reason." Self=1Edefence would not be. The twisted police application of the law gave them the leverage they needed to start cutting the number of shotgun owners. Persons who simply wanted to keep an old family shotgun in the home were denied shotgun certificates, since they were not active participants in gun sports. A new safe storage requirement for shotguns gave the police a field day in requiring gun owners to install expensive safes, and, once the safes had been installed, to decide that the old safes were not good enough, and new ones would be necessary. And, as the police had hoped, the number of shotgun licences began to plummet. Incredibly, many of the provisions of the latest rounds of British gun control- such as banning guns which are not "sporting" or requiring "safe storage" of guns-are supported by many naive Australian gun owners. Eager to appear "reasonable", these Australians think that "moderate" gun control will not impair their ability to participate in the shooting sports or to defend their homes. But just because you manage to convince the police that you have "a good reason" for wanting to own a gun doesn't mean you're in the clear.In Britain, gun owners are required by law to store their guns in a "safe" manner. When the safe storage requirement was introduced for rifles and handguns several decades ago, it was enforced in a reasonable manner by the police. Leaving yourhandgun on the front porch wasn't acceptable; keeping it on a dark closet shelf was perfectly fine. But the safe storage law that British gun owners once accepted as "reasonable" (and whose extension to shotguns was generally supported by gun owners in the 1989 gun control law), is now being interpreted in a highly unreasonable manner.In many jurisdictions, police will not issue or renew a shotgun certificate or a firearms certificate (necessary for rifles and handguns) without an in=1Ehom= e visit to ensure that the police standards for safe storage are being met. The police have no legal authority to require such home inspections, yet when a homeowner refuses the police entry, the certificate application or renewal will be denied. The actual law does not specify detailed standards of how guns are to be stored. And the actual law clearly does not mandate that putting a gun in a hardened safe is the only acceptable storage method. But that is what the police in many jurisdictions require anyway. In fact, many gun owners who bought safes that the police said were acceptable are now being forced to buy new safes, because the local police have arbitrarily changed the standards. In many districts, an acceptable safe is now one that can withstand a half=1Fhour attack by a burglar who arrives with a full set of safeopening tools, and who even has time to take a short rest if his first efforts to pry open the safe do not succeed.The police decision to require such safes is completely unlawful. But Parliament has no interest in investigating police abuses of the gun licensing laws, and the courts are submissive to police discretion. The only practicable method that British gun owners could have avoid such ridiculous storage requirements would have been to resist the first proposed laws that allowed the police to determine who could get a gun licence. But the gun owners never would have dreamed of resisting, because such a law seemed so "reasonable". Police abuses appear in every aspect of gun licensing. Police departments have told hunters, incorrectly, that certain legal restrictions on hunting with semi=1Fautomatics also apply to hunting with pump=1Eaction guns. While it is not legally necessary for shooters to have written permission to hunt on a particular piece of land, police have been stopping shooters, demanding written proof, and threatening to confiscate guns from persons who cannot produce the proof. And the police have, again without legal authority, required applicants for shotguns capable of holding more than two cartridges to prove a special need for the gun. Without legal authority, the police have begun to phase out firearms collections by refusing new applications. Gun licensing fees have been repeatedly raised far above the actual cost of administering the licensing system, and have been used as a mechanism to discourage gun ownership. If a policeman has a personal interest in the shooting sports, that interest will generally disqualify him from being assigned to any role in the police gun licensing program. Policemen who know virtually nothing about guns, but who can be counted on to have a hostile attitude towards gun owners, are often picked for the gun licensing jobs. Under new "safety" regulations regarding explosives, persons who possess modern gunpowder or blackpowder are now subject to unannounced, warrantless inspections of their home at any time, to make sure that the powder is properly stored. The government, of course, promises (for now) that its inspections will not be unreasonable. The police leadership has made it clear that it views civilian gun ownership as something that should be abolished. One method of abolition is to prevent the entry of new generations into the world of shooting sports. Hence, it is illegal for a father to give even an airgun as a gift to his thirteenyear=1Eold son. And thanks to decades of such restrictions aimed at constricting entry into the shooting sports, the vast majority of the public has no familiarity with guns, other than what media propagandists choose to let them learn. Not surprisingly, 76 percent of the population supports banning all firearms. Thus, the men who used guns in the field sports - who confidently expected that whatever controls government imposed on the rabble in the cities who wanted handguns, genteel deer rifles would be left alone -have been proved disastrously wrong. The British gun owners have no one but themselves to blame. Once they conceded that guns were only appropriate for sports -once they conceded that gun ownership for protection was barbaric, once they conceded that guns played no role in strengthening the national defence or the national character-then gun owners had only their interest in sports to balance against the public's perception of guns as a grave threat to public safety. And as the government and the media weigh the balance, it is inevitable that a mere interest in sports must give way to what the police insist is a grave matter of safety. And have all these controls and abusive enforcement of controls actually made Britain safer? Of course not. Armed crime in Britain is higher than it has been in at least two centuries. Armed crime is literally a hundred times more common than at the turn of the century, when Britain had no weapons controls. With gun ownership for self=1Eprotection now completely illegal (unless you work for the government), Britons have begun switching to other forms of protection, which the government considers an intolerable affront. Early one evening in March, 1987, Eric Butler, a 56=1Eyear=1Eold executive with BP Chemicals, was attacked while riding the London subway. Two men came after Butler and, as one witness described, began "strangling him and smashing his head against the door; his face was red and his eyes were popping out." No passenger on the subway moved to help him. "My air supply was being cut off," Butler later testified, "my eyes became blurred and I feared for my life." Concealed inside Butler's walking stick was a three=1Efoot blade. Butler unsheathed the blade. "I lunged at the man wildly with my swordstick. I resorted to it as my last means of defence." I stabbed an attacker's stomach. The attackers were charged with unlawful wounding. Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon. The court gave him a suspended sentence, but denounced the "breach of the law which has become so prevalent in London in recent months that one has to look for a deterrent." The government immediately outlawed possession of swordsticks. Martial arts weapons have also been banned. And now police administrators are lobbying to bring crossbows under the same "reasonable" licensing system that currently applies to firearms. Many British gun owners now own deactivated replica guns that cannot be fired. For some gun owners, deactivation was the only way they could retain possession of a prized semi=1Eautomatic. Other gun owners simply found the inconvenience of the police licensing system too much to overcome, and had their family heirloom guns deactivated into non=1Efiring ex=1Fweapons. With deactivation, at least= , the family could retain the gun without need to spend vast sums on police security requirements. But this last "loophole" in the British gun laws may be closed in a few years, as the police are now lobbying to require that owners of deactivated or replica guns get the same licence that would be required for guns which can fire bullets. They will never outlaw all of your guns at once. But every "reasonable" control they can impose without your resistance gives them one more bit of leverage to make gun ownership for you and your children and your grandchildren as difficult as possible. The people of Great Britain fought for their right to keep and bear arms in the 17th Century, and then let the right vanish in the 20th Century. In this final section, we'll look at how a democratic nation, in less than a century, progresses from having no gun laws, and almost no gun crime, to draconian gun laws and soaring gun crime. The answer is especially important to Australians, because what happened in Britain could easily occurhere. Many of the same factors that helped destroy the right to arms in Britain are at work in Australia and New Zealand today. 1. Misunderstanding Nature of Right Sports versus Freedom Even the pro=1Egun groups in Britain eagerly concede that guns may only legitimately be possessed for sports, and not for defence. This may appear to be a "reasonable" position, which demonstrates that gun owners are not bloodthirsty nuts wanting to shoot people, but are simply harmless sportsmen. But in fact, the concession that guns are only for sports undermines defence of the right to bear arms. If guns are not to be owned for defence, then guns make no positive contribution to public safety. And while sportsmen may wish only to harm animals and clay pigeons, guns do sometimes fall into the hands of criminals, who use them to harm people. So as the public evaluates the issue, they see the gun control advocates talking about public safety, and the gun owners talking about sports. Given the trade=1Eoff, who wouldn't trade lots of damage to sports in exchange for even minimal gains in public safety? 2. Failure to Organize Unwilling to support the right to keep and bear arms for defence (as opposed to the privilege to use sporting weapons), British gun owners have also been unwilling to band together for defensive purposes. While Britain has a large number of groups that promote particular shooting disciplines, such as the Clay Pigeon Shooting Association, the National Small=1FBore Rifl= e Association, and the UK Practical Shooting Association, most of these organizations content themselves simply with running their own competitions. Getting involved in legislative affairs would hardly occur to them. And they would never dream of getting involved in legislative affairs on an issue that did not affect their own discipline. The clay pigeon folk pay no attention to how the government is restricting handguns, nor do the handgunners care much about what the government is doing to the rifle shooters. In all of Great Britain, there are fewer than half a dozen people with full=1Etime jobs resisting the further expansion of gun control laws. The British experience should teach Australians the importance of the NATO doctrine for gun rights. Adopted as a resolution at the Gun Rights Policy Conference every year since 1988, the NATO doctrine affirms that an attack against one form of gun ownership is considered an attack against all-just as the original NATO doctrine affirmed that an attack on one NATO country would be considered an attack against all. The people who own the firearms that are currently still considered "politically correct" are making a tragic miscalculation by their callous indifference to persons who want to own small handguns, or automatic firearms. Once the gun control lobby it is finished destroying the more vulnerable gun owners, the lobby will be all the stronger to take on the gun owners who remain. 3. Appeasement Even when British gun owners have be come politically involved, they have far too often been willing to assent to ever more restrictive controls to make the government happy. When the British Home OMce imposed stringent new restrictions on gun clubs, the Chief Executive of Britain's National Rifle Association affirmed his assent by simply noting that "the Government saw a need." The theory of appeasement is that by making concesslons, pro=1Egun groups will prove their reasonableness and good faith, and thereby convince the government not to take even more "privileges" away from gun owners. Just as British gun owners have attempted to appease their government, the British government attempted to appease the Nazis in the years before World War II. All that appeasement accomplished was to embolden the Nazis. And when the war finally came, the Allies were all the weaker. While there are particular gun control advocates who might be appeased for a while with concessions from the gun rights movement, the gun control lobby as a whole cannot be appeased. No concession you can offer will satisfy them for longer than it takes them todigest their gains, and prepare the next offensive. 4. Willingness to Stand and Fight Every time the British government has demanded more power, the great mass of British gun owners have placidly accepted the government's action without protest. The result of the "reasonable" approach of the gun owners has not been reasonable treatment by the British government. Instead, the government has pressed down restriction after restriction upon the British people, and as every restriction fails to halt the rising tide of crime, the British government invents still more "reasonable" gun controls to distract the public from the government's inept efforts at crime control. As armed crime grows worse and worse, despite nearly a century of severe firearms controls, the British government expends more and more energy cracking down on the rights of the British people. The right to arms, the right to jury trial, and the right to grand jury indictment having been almost entirely destroyed, the British government is now proposing to abolish the right not to be compelled to incriminate oneself. Once the government has disarmed other gun owners, how long will the shooting sports survive? What will remain of target competition, after draconian taxes on guns and ammunition have decimated the ranks of target shooters? What will remain of hunting, after animal rights advocates have confined hunting to a few faraway preserves, so that the number of licensed hunters falls further every year? What will remain of gun collectors, after the next generation of Australians grows up with political propaganda against guns? How long will it take, if you wait five to ten or fifteen years to begin fighting, simply to retake the ground that was lost in the interim while you sat on the sidelines? Will you ever regain it? Or will you stay forever on the sidelines, too busy or too self=1Eimportant to join the fray? Yes, you can wait to fight until you are all alone. Australian gun owners now face the same choice that Winston Churchill posed to the British people when they wondered how to face the Nazis during the 1930s: "If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." Today in Great Britain, the few remaining gun owners fight alone, with only a precarious chance of survival. Will you follow their path of appeasement, and surrender the rights which your ancestors gave their blood, toil, tears and sweat in order to preserve for you? Or would you rather wait until your only choices are disarmament or death? The war against gun owners has actually begun. Stand idle like the British, and be destroyed or fight for your rights? The choice is yours. Just imagine this. Total gun hysteria has set in and panic=1Estricken politicians are racking their brains for a solution. In haste they build a concentration camp and paint it blood=1Ered to remind citizens of the fate of those who indulge in gun crime. Inside the stockade briefly dwell citizens who have been arrested on gun charges. Some are there for the possession of a single round of ammunition; others are there just for being in the proximity of someone with a gun. Within this barbed=1Ewired, watch=1Etowered, machine gun dominated prison, defendan= ts are detained, tried and sentenced within a seven day period. Trials are closed to the public and the media is only permitted to publish the defendant's name, the charge, the verdict, and the sentence. There is no bail, and no jury except in capital cases. Conviction in this gun court means a sentence of indefinite detention, even for that single bullet. Later this is changed to mandatory life imprisonment. You only have to be fourteen years old to qualify. Do the people protest about all that? In fact, polls reveal popular support= in the region of 86% to 89%. Of course, all that must have been sixty years ago and under a dictatorship. Wasn't it? Or is it conceivable that such a set of events would take place in the modern world? The fact is that this chilling set of events is exactly what did take place in democratically governed Jamaica as recently as 1974. Here is the story. Homicide and violent crime began to increase sharply in that country in 1965. By 1974, when a prominent businessman was murdered, the media whipped up a national frenzy for drastic remedy. As has so often been the case in other countries, nobody thought to examine the root causes of it all. If they did then they ignored or concealed it. There is littie doubt that the real reasons for lawless trends are mostly social and economic ills. Anyway, Prime Minister Michael Manley told the Jamaican people that the nation "needed radical surgery for a grave disease." He added, "There is no place in this society for a gun, now or ever." The House of Representatives moved swiftly to bring in new and tough laws. The Gun Court Act and the Firearms Act outlawed private ownership of guns and ammunition. The upper classes, however, who had always had permits, were allowed to keep one gun. The permit list (de facto gun registration) was used to seize other firearms. (This kind of confiscation also happened in Victoria, Australia, not so long ago, when .223s were seized by police after naive citizens had registered their guns.) A new prison, the blood red, barbed=1Fwired, machine gun dominated stockade already mentioned, was set up and named the "Rehabilitation Centre" shades of old Russia. It soon became known as "Stalag 17". Is it possible to think of a "Stalag" being erected in a modern day country? =1Fis it possible to imagine one in Australia? The Jamaican Rifle Association made it known that the disarming of ordinary citizens would eventually create a crime wave. The media scoffed at the idea, just as they do here. The new and very severe measures appeared at first to be a success. Gun control people were very pleased with the whole program. The previous year there had been 124 gun murders. In the first half of the following year homicide fell by 78%. In the second half it was 22% down. However, machetes, the all purpose work tool of banana cultivating countries, were increasingly used to kill. Murders with them rose from 99 to 144 the same year. But, even so, killings fell overall by 14%. Shooting with criminal intent fell by 52%, in the first six months; in the second half of the year it was down by 20%. Non=1Egun robbery also fell by 58% in the first six months, yet rose by 30% in the second half of the year. Robbery with guns fell 28% in that same year. Significantly, breaking and entering and assaults showed little change. Such conditions only lasted one year. By mid 1975 crime was as bad as it had been before and most people wanted Stalag 17 abolished. By 1978, polls revealed that in Kingston one in three adults had been robbed; in rural areas it was one in five. By 1980 violence had reached stunning proportions. 933 Jamaicans were killed. Of these, 556 were by gunmen and 234 by security forces! (Presumably the balance of 143 met their end by knife and machete.) At the same time the Gun Court had started to collapse. The causes were length of trials, limited resources of ballistics experts, non=1Eattendance by civilian and police witnesses, inefficient services of processes for witnesses, frequent adjournments, lack of police transport, and shortage of defence lawyers. Worse still, the gun laws were seen as an invitation to murder. Human rights observers maintained that much of the killing was unjustifiable. Many were police assassinations of criminals, and some were even just the settling of personal scores. Innocent bystanders were often killed, too. The assertion that a victim of police homicide had been killed in a shoot=1Eout was often accepted without investigation, even when no guns were produced in evidence. In some years, the rate of people killedby police in Jamaica exceeded the= rate of Americans killed in USA by anyone. Excesses of police violence drqve citizens to new heights of violence, claimed human rightists, because such conduct seemed to legitimise it. In his Gun Control, criminologist William Calathese wrote, "The attempt to control firearms criminals through passage of mandatory firearm legislation failed..." He continued: "...although the Act professed to deter firearm crime, it eliminated fundamental constitutional rights and sharply refocused the attention of the people from social and economic reasons for crime to the more modest hope of deterring firearm crime." It is worth noting that this is a constantly recurring theme among those writers who look into firearms control. Again and again we find legislation trying to distract the people's attention from more profound social problems, by the means of putting undue emphasis on the gun; instead of calling firearms abuse an effect of social ills, they call it a cause. "The social control functions of the Gun Court cannot be over emphasised," Calathese said; "the Act always had the potential for social control due to its oppressive legislative form since its immediate cause was the legislators, the agents of political crime, and its true purpose was not the resolution of firearm crime but, more immediately, the balance of class forces, economic necessity, and ideological pressures." =46urther, it was alleged, government attempted to conceal the true nature o= f things, "by highly developed skills of political management in propagating myths of the deterrent value of an oppressive piece of criminal legislation." In addition to that, a former Commissioner of Corrections in Jamaica, together with a consulting psychiatrist, complained that, "the Gun Court drama diverted society from the more difficult tasks of revising the judiciary and constitutional processes to deal with some of the problems that contribute to crime in the country." A United Nations criminologist asserted that the Gun Court aggravated crime because it alienated the people from the government. The severe criminal sentencing in Jamaica, especiatly the life sentencing for guns, "through its punitiveness contributed more than anything to the deterioration of the crime situation." A Commissioner for Corrections in Jamaica argued that all the criminal laws were selectively enforced. He accused the police of beating and torturing confessions out of defendants, and condemned police conduct for perpetuating the nation's cycle of violence. Many Gun Court prisoners vehemently asserted their innocence, and many of them came from underprivileged or dis advantaged classes. The Jamaican experiment, reminiscent of old fascist empires from World War II, failed miserably. It collapsed in violence and bloodshed on both sides. =46oornote: No doubt many Australians have already reached the conclusion that gun laws, as enacted and applied, are the mark of weak government unable or unwilling to tackle real root causes; violence can onlyflourish in the fertile soil of government selective morality and the practising of official ideologif al and undemocratic discrimination. It is nothing less than ironic that in Jamaica alleged gun offenders were guarded and p,reventedfrom escaping hy others with guns. It seems to have escaped the official mind that guns in society not only prevent freedom hut also ensure it. Society can only be properly served by truth issuing from good government and reported hy a responsible press. Anything else ensures continuous unrest and ultimately serious trouble. If government succeeds in alienating the people, what might he the result? Like it or not, there is much historical precedent to say the day will come when an enemy from without will come knocking on the nation's door. How will citizens oppressed from within for many years react? Where then will the riflemen be? Indeed, where will be the rifles?