Here is a report on the test-firing of a new rifle:
187 shots were fired in three minutes and thirty seconds and one full
fifteen shot magazine was fired in only 10.8 seconds.
Does that sound like a machine gun? A “semi-automatic assault weapon”? Actually it is an 1862 test report of the then-new lever-action Henry rifle, manufactured by Winchester. If you have ever seen a Henry rifle, it was probably in the hands of someone at a cowboy re-enactment, using historic firearms from 150 years ago.
The Winchester Henry is a lever-action, meaning that after each shot, the user must pull out a lever, and then push it back in, in order to eject the empty shell casing, and then load a new round into the firing chamber.
The lever-action Winchester is not an automatic. It is not a semi-automatic. It was invented decades before either of those types of firearms.
And yet that old-fashioned Henry lever action rifle can fire one bullet per second.
By comparison, the murderer at Sandy Hook fired 150 shots over a 20 minute period, before the police arrived. In other words, a rate of fewer than 8 shots per minute. This is a rate of fire far slower than the capabilities of a lever-action Henry Rifle from 1862, or a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle from 2010. Indeed, his rate of fire could have been far exceeded by a competent person using very old technology, such as a break-open double-barreled shotgun.
International Comparisons
Some Americans, including Howard Dean, the former chair of the
Democratic National Committee, have advocated the mass confiscation of
firearms. Their model is the confiscations that took place in the past quarter-
century in Great Britain.
This dystopian situation in Great Britain actually shows the perils of
repressive anti-gun laws:
• A woman in Great Britain is three times more likely to be raped than
an American woman.
• In the United States, only about 13% of home burglaries take place
when the occupants are home, but in Great Britain, about 59% do.
American burglars report that they avoid occupied homes because of
the risk of getting shot. English burglars prefer occupied homes,
because there will be wallets and purses with cash, which does not
have to be fenced at a discount. British criminals have little risk of
confronting a victim who possesses a firearm. Even the small
percentage of British homes which have a lawfully-owned gun would
not be able to unlock the gun from one safe, and then unlock the
ammunition from another safe, in time to use the gun against a home
invader. It should hardly be surprising, then, that Britain has a much
higher rate of home invasion burglaries than does the United States. 50
• Overall, the violent crime rate in England and Wales is far above the
American rate. (Using the standard definition for the four most
common major violent crimes: homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated
assault.)
• According to the United Nations (not exactly a “pro-gun” organization),
Scotland is the most violent nation in the developed world. 51
In the early 20 th century, the Great Britain had virtually no gun control,
virtually no gun control. Today, it has a plethora of both.
What went wrong? Various minor and ineffectual gun controls were
enacted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; proposals for
more extensive controls ran into strenuous opposition in Parliament from
MPs who still believed in natural rights. The advocacy for gun control was
almost always accompanied by a bodyguard of lies, such as when the
government, fearful of a workers rebellion, pushed through the Firearms Act
of 1920. The government falsely told the public that gun crimes were rapidly
increasing, and hid the law’s true motive (political control) from the public,
presenting the law as a mere anti-crime measure. 52 In practice, the law
eliminated the right of British subjects to be armed, and turned it into a
privilege. The Firearms Act also began a decades-long process of eliminating
the public’s duty to protect their society and right to protect themselves. By
the late 20 th century, Great Britain had one of the lowest rates of gun
ownership in the Western World. Only 4% of British households would admit
gun ownership to a telephone pollster. 53
In 1998, after a known pedophile used a handgun to murder kindergarten
children in Dunblane, Scotland, the Parliament banned non-government
possession of handguns. As a result the Gun Control Network (a prohibition
advocacy group) enthused that “present British controls over firearms are
regarded as ‘the gold standard’ in many countries.” According to GCN
spokesperson Mrs. Gill Marshall-Andrews, “the fact that we have a gold
standard is something to be proud of….” 54
A July 2001 study from King’s College London’s Centre for Defence
Studies found that handgun-related crime increased by nearly 40% in the two
years following implementation of the handgun ban. The study also found
that there had been “no direct link” between lawful possession of guns by
licensed citizens and misuse of guns by criminals. According to the King’s
College report, although the 1998 handgun ban resulted in over 160,000
licensed handguns being withdrawn from personal possession, “the UK
appears not to have succeeded in creating the gun free society for which
many have wished. Gun related violence continues to rise and the streets of
Britain…seem no more safe.” 55
A few weeks before the King’s College study was released, Home Office
figures showed that violent crime in Great Britain was rising at the second
fastest rate in the world, well above the U.S. rate, and on par with crime-
ridden South Africa. 56 In February 2001, it was reported that 26 percent of
persons living in England and Wales had been victims of crime in 1999. 57
Home Secretary Jack Straw admitted, “levels of victimisation are higher than
in most comparable countries for most categories of crime.” On May 4, 2001,
The Telegraph disclosed that the risk of a citizen being assaulted was “higher
in Britain than almost anywhere else in the industrialized world, including
America.” 58
As King’s College observed, with passage of the Firearms Act of 1997, “it
was confidently assumed that the new legislation effectively banning
handguns would have the direct effect of reducing certain types of violent
crime by reducing access to weapons.” 59 The news media promised that the
“world’s toughest laws will help to keep weapons off the streets.” 60
Yet faster than British gun-owners could surrender their previously-
registered handguns for destruction, guns began flooding into Great Britain
from the international black market (especially from eastern Europe and
China), driven by the demands of the country’s rapidly developing criminal
gun culture. 61
It is true that there are far fewer gun deaths in Great Britain than in the
United States. Most of the difference is due to different methods of suicide;
guns being scarce in Great Britain, suicides are perpetrated with other
methods.
The one major criminal justice statistic in which Great Britain appears to
be doing better than the U.S. is the homicide rate, with the U.S. rate at a
little more than 4, and the England and Wales rate at 1.4. However, the U.S.
rate is based on initial reports of homicides, and includes lawful self-defense
killings (about 10-15% of the total); the England and Wales rate is based only
on final dispositions, so that an unsolved murder, or a murder which is
pleaded down to a lesser offense, is not counted a homicide. In addition,
multiple murders are counted as only a single homicide for Scottish
statistics. 62
But let’s assume that the entire difference is the homicide rates between
the U.S. and Great Britain is due to gun control. The advocates of British-
style controls in America ought to acknowledge the fearsome price that gun
control has exacted on the British people: an astronomical rate of rape, of
home invasions, and of violent crime in general.
Senate Testimony on Gun Control Jan. 30, 2013
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