Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control
Joyce Lee Malcolm
December 26, 2012, 6:28 p.m. ET
After a school massacre, the U.K. banned handguns in 1998. A decade later, handgun crime had doubled.
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...Great Britain and Australia, for example, suffered mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries had very stringent gun laws when they occurred. Nevertheless, both decided that even stricter control of guns was the answer. Their experiences can be instructive.
Ms. Malcolm, a professor of law at George Mason University Law School, is the author of several books including "Guns and Violence: The English Experience," (Harvard, 2002).What to conclude? Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven't made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don't provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.
A version of this article appeared December 27, 2012, on page A13 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control.
The article is at the link provided above