In today’s media landscape, when something like the rioting in London happens, you can be sure that each side of the political spectrum will draw their own conclusions from it.
Current discussion of the riots generally falls into two camps: those on the left who connect the riots to economic inequality and recent austerity cuts to social services, and those on the right who scoff at any such attempt to “make excuses” for what they believe to be nothing more than a mob of subhumans spoiled by the welfare state. Of course, the predictable racial invective is there too, as a quick scan of the comments on any article about the riots will reveal.
But I would like to discuss a somewhat less obvious issue raised by what’s going on: that of gun control. At Samizdata, London-based Brian Micklethwait writes:
“The Police, as we advocates of the don’t-disarm-the-victims-of-crime policy have been pointing out for decades, can’t be everywhere. They cannot instantaneously attend every crime, and magically prevent it. Only the potential or actual victims of crime can sometimes immediately prevent or immediately punish crime, provided only that they not forbidden to.”
On this side of the Atlantic, Instapundit chimes in:
“Unlike L.A., there are no Korean shopkeepers with AR-15s to help contain the looting.”
The first thing that should be too obvious to mention is that these people seem to live in some sort of magical universe where, if guns were made more easily available in Britain (where gun control is extremely strict and effective), they would only end up in the hands of law-abiding citizens trying to protect themselves and their property.
Either the idea of rioters armed with guns somehow doesn’t occur to them, or they think that righteous citizens would be able to easily outgun the hoodlums because real life is just like a Charles Bronson movie.
It’s also ironic that the LA riots of 1992 have been invoked. In fact, this example works against the pro-gun argument in two ways. First, it gives the lie to the notion that “an armed society is a polite society” and that the mere fact of gun ownership is a deterrent to such riots occurring.
More importantly, the figures don’t support the argument. 53 people were killed in the six days of the LA riots, 35 of them by gunfire. By contrast, in the four days of the current riots there has been one confirmed fatality so far, with possible reports of a few more.
It shouldn’t need explaining that guns added to an incendiary and chaotic situation will result in more deaths, and not just those of criminals and looters. But in the interest of precision, let’s take a moment to look through the details from the 1992 riots. 21 of the deaths – more than half of the shooting fatalities and nearly half of the total fatalities – were shootings by people other than law enforcement officers or store owners defending themselves.
Most of the other gun fatalities were people shot by the police. It bears noting that while some of these police shootings appear to be unjustified, others occurred precisely because the suspect had a weapon.
The specifics of many of these deaths run counter to the narrative that the presence of guns would make such a situation safer for law-abiding citizens. One 18-year old was killed in a gun battle between two groups of Koreans who mistook each other for looters. A Vietnamese delivery man was called a racial slur and then shot. A man who had stopped to help victims of a car accident was gunned down by passerby. Another was shot by rioters as he begged them not to burn down his house.
Reading through these accounts, instances of the popular right-wing scenario of property owners heroically defending themselves against looters are few and far between. (This, of course, also ignores the question of whether killing to defend your property as opposed to your life is justifiable, but let’s not even touch that one.)
Let’s be clear: the police can’t be everywhere at once, and it absolutely sucks to feel helpless to defend yourself. But you know what sucks more? Getting shot. Most of us are not Rambo, and real life is not an action movie. Call me a coward, but I’d rather take my chances running or hiding from a mob armed with bricks and beer bottles than get into a shootout with gun-wielding criminals.
All in all, I am still baffled that someone can look at a scene like the one now unfolding in London and other cities and think “Hmm, you know what would make this better? More guns.”
Update: There are now three more dead in Birmingham.
