Tuesday 22 January 2008

There is no such thing as "Gun Crime".

There is no such thing as gun crime! This cannot be true, I hear about it on the radio, read about it in the press, and see it on the T.V news reports. In fact, gun crime is all about me in the media. Well, yes, it is and no, it is not. A gun is an inanimate object and therefore is not capable of doing anything, except possibly rust. Crime is crime, the addition of any object, gun, knife, baseball bat, hammer, you get the picture, is an irrelevance. You will be intimidated by some thug with any of the previously mentioned items and end up equally as badly injured or dead. What the mass media, with the blessing of governments past and present is doing is trying to tell you that one type of crime is worse than another type of crime.
If you speak to people who have been mugged, violently assaulted, had their house broken into or car stolen, they all have the same feelings, feelings of being violated and fear for their safety. In the case of house breaking, they are statistically unlikely to be in the house at the time. Nevertheless, by identifying a crime as a "gun crime" or "knife crime", politicians are able to distract your attention. Whilst they pass ever increasing restrictive laws on the overwhelming majority of the public, who will pass their lives by without ever having contact with the police. These laws are a placebo to make you think that the government is on the ball and doing all it can to protect the public at large. Crimes involving firearms are a very small percentage of crime overall less than 2%. The firearms used by these criminals are traded illegally and the weapon of choice is a handgun made illegal to all law-abiding members of society in 1997. Legislation that is more recent has made the possession of, no, not a knife but a bladed or pointed instrument an offence without just cause or reason. This can cause you a great deal of trouble if like me you have carried a knife all your life, well from the age of six, every day. You will now need a reason.
All theses laws that have been railroaded through the legal system have yet to protect or save one individual. Laws are the guidelines that society lives by. In the mean time, the crime rate rises and politicians strain for ways to restrict further our abilities of responsibility and self-reliance in the name of making us safer, without addressing the underlying problem caused by an exceedingly small minority element in society.
Therefore, the next time you catch the evening news or pick up a paper and the headline is “gun crime”, “knife crime” or perhaps, one day “baseball bat crime” on the rise. Take the time to think, of all the laws passed in recent years what has been the result upon (a) the public at large and (b) criminals. As a law-abiding member of society, your freedoms have been curtailed for your liberty all in the name of “your safety” to be protected by the state. As a criminal, well, it’s business as usual.

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