how it plays out

Yesterday, I spent a few minutes trying to deal with an inveterate liar – probably more time than he was worth, but the ordeal was not without its merits. In the process of digging up information to expose his lies for what the were, I stumbled across this rather interesting webpage, which, while it is dedicated to the disarming of British subjects and turning them into victims, has some surprisingly useful data contained within it.
But you have to dig around for it.
On their front page, and most of their subordinate pages, the administrators of the webpage are very careful to phrase the debate such that it looks like once-Great Britain is going through a marked decline in firearm-related crime… which is true, so long as you only look at the numbers going back to 2003. However, they appear to have made the mistake of providing data going back 10 years (in two parts) which show the lie of their words.
At the end of the reporting period in 1998 (whenever that is for once-Great Britain), the English, Welsh, and Scots, in total, suffered 13,859 firearm-related crimes. That category of criminal activity reached a high point of 25,104 at the end of the reporting period in 2003 (hence why that date is key on other pages of the site), but the reporting period ending in 2008 still yielded a number of 18,487.
If you look at the overall average, the total number of firearm-related crimes increased by approximately 33.4% in the past 10 years.
In order to provide a solid metric for that growth, once-Great Britain’s population increased from approximately 57,547,900 in 1998 to approximately 59,608,000 in 2008 – a 3.6% increase. For clarification, I am examining the population of once-Great Britain only, not the United Kingdom (the former is only England, Wales, and Scotland, while the latter includes Northern Ireland), since the webpage we are using for firearm-related crime in once-Great Britain provides no data for Northern Ireland.
Likewise, now that we have population numbers, we can look at rates – the rate of firearm-related crime among once-Great British subjects in 1998 was approximately 0.0241%, and the rate of firearm-related crime in 2008 was approximately 0.0310% – a 28.6% increase.
The rate of firearm-related crimes in once-Great Britain increased almost eight times faster than the country’s population.
Unfortunately, no real comparison can be made between once-Great Britain and America concerning firearm-related crime – given the illegal nature of firearms there, simply possessing a handgun is a convictable offense, so those numbers will invariably contribute to the total. However, those bans on firearms were more-or-less finalized in 1997 (when handguns using cartridge ammunition were banned), so while the police confiscating banned firearms and arresting those who did not turn over their property willingly could account for the rise in firearm-related crimes from then to 2003, the 28.6% increase in firearm-related crime rates in the 10 years since cannot be wholly explained by such events, a point further strengthened by the fact that the decline from 2003’s high point seems to be levelling off.
So what does once-Great Britain have to show for disarming its subjects and transforming them into willing victims? Firearm-related crime rates that are increasing almost eight times faster than its population, and a violent crime rate that is worse, for all types, than America’s… or even South Africa’s.
Remind me again how banning all firearms, disarming your populace, and turning them into defenseless victims for criminals who do exist is such a good idea?