Wepons and selfdefence concerns in the USA and the UK - Essay Example

Running head: Factors behind the growing concern with weapons and self-defence in the USA and the UK Factors behind the growing concern with weapons and self-defence in the USA and the UK By ____________________ Introduction No doubt guns where on one hand are used to commit crime, on the other hand are used to self-defence. But in order to analyse in what ways are guns a problem we have to look at those factors that consider firearm as a primary cause of violent crime. Whether it is suicide, murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary or any kind of larceny in whatever circumstances guns are such weapons that give a reason to commit crime. From a simple theft to a terrorist bombing, firearms play a vital role in committing crime. Do guns really help private citizens prevent crime through active self-defence and deterrence Or are they mostly used by criminals. This paper opens a window on empirical questions that have generated a small mountain of conflicting facts and opinions. There are several different factors behind the dilemma confronted by the new generation, which not only relates to the psychological factors but also emotional factors cannot be ignored in mentioning and analysing the reasons behind holding weapons. Robberies and assaults committed with guns can be a result of mental frustration resulting in the victim's death than are similar violent crimes committed with other weapons. According to case fatality rate for gun robbery, it is found that it is three times as high as for robberies with knives and ten times as high as for robberies with other weapons. "Similarly, in injuries resulting from criminal assault the case-fatality rate is closely linked to the type of weapon, as is also the case for family violence". (Cook, 2000, p. 35) There is another aspect of the same picture which states that there is much more concern of crime with weapons and self defence other than psychological one. Crime, either done with the help of weapons or without weapons, when analysed in the thought of basic assumptions, upholds the following reasons behind it: Crime is caused by the individual exercise of free will. Human beings are fundamentally rational, and most human behaviour is the result of free will coupled with rational choice. Pain and pleasure are the two central determinants of human behaviour. Crime disparages the quality of the bond, which exists between individuals and society and is therefore an immoral form of behaviour. Punishment, a necessary evil, is sometimes required to deter law violators and to serve as an example to others who would also violate the law. Crime prevention is possible through swift and certain punishment, which offsets any gains to be had through criminal behaviour. (Schmalleger, 1999, p. 230) As far as self-defence is concerned, policy interventions intended to separate guns from violence may have the perverse effect of increasing the amount of violence, and in some cases even making it more harmful. "The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), a national survey based in United States for criminology gathers information on assault, burglary, larceny, theft and robbery and is generally considered as the most reliable source of information on predatory crime as it has been in the field continuously since 1973 and incorporates the best thinking of survey methodologists. From this source, it appears that use of guns in self-defence against criminal predation is rather rare, occurring on the order of 100,000 times per year. Of particular interest is the likelihood that a gun will be used in self-defence against a home intruder. One study of data from the NCVS found that only 3% of victims were able to deploy a gun against someone who broke in while they were at home. Remembering that 40% of all households have a gun, we conclude that it is quite rare for victims to be able to deploy a gun against intruders even when they have one available". (Cook, 2000, p. 37) Gun Oriented Policies Law enforcement and regulatory agencies have intervened in these three areas as to where and how such interventions can be focused: Acquisition: Prohibit ownership by youths and criminals Regulate transactions Require secure storage Raise the excise tax on guns and ammunition Impose antitheft measures on dealers Conduct gun buy backs (Cook, 2000, p. 31) Carry To Scene Ban concealed carrying or require a license Patrol against illicit carrying Ban small easily concealed guns Screen entrants at public buildings (Cook, 2000, p. 31) Use In Crime Regulate gun design to reduce lethality Mandate sentence enhancements for gun use in crime (Cook, 2000, p. 31) United Kingdom policies are much strong than those in United States as in UK, handguns have been banned since 1996 and in the following years authorities have struggled to solve the problem of rising gun crime. According to researcher John R. Lott Jr., gun crime rose by 40 percent in the four years after the ban was enacted. (USA Today) "Specifically, the police are looking to target "chaotic" gun crime, which occurs during an episode of shooting by one person or a group of people with little systematic planning". (USA Today) "Pro-control advocates usually omit data from countries that have an all-out ban on handguns because it's hard to explain as to why the rate of guns being fired has increased, and why more innocent victims are falling by stray bullets from gang related assaults. In this case, gun-rights advocates have been quick to point out their beliefs on the matter, which is that guns are fired more frequently in areas where they are banned because criminals are able to commit more crime and proliferate in areas where they have the advantage unlike in cities in the United States where private citizens are allowed to own and carry handguns". (USA Today) UK is more concerned in implementing gun policies and is more adhere to it, that's why legal citizens are not allowed to carry handguns with them. This has made the work easier for gangsters as they don't have to worry about citizen intervention. "The only deterrent is the presence of a police officer at the exact scene of where a crime or gunfight is about to take place. When there's no badge in sight, the criminals and gang members are effectively the law and the ones with all the power". (USA Today) "London authorities have already decided to add more police officers, a strategy that has seen little if any success in the United States when you consider that even some of the smallest cities have more than 1,000 citizens for every one police officer. It is virtually impossible for the police to keep a watchful eye on every citizen, and those not within an officer's close proximity is always a potential victim". (USA Today) U.S. policy is geared to preserving the legitimate uses of most types of guns for most people while restricting access for people and types of guns that are deemed unacceptably dangerous. Firearms crime in the light of consumer's attitude, are in effect a 'challenge to managers' particularly a challenge to managers of the police and legal systems in respect of their communication with 'the public' (the consumers). "Both at national and local level, police and crime-prevention partnerships are put under pressure to explain how they are delivering their product in this case, the different identifiable 'outputs' from their ongoing struggles against firearm crime". (Ruggiero, 1998, p. 22) While considering the transcultural issues regarding weapons, crime and justice, it is often observed that criminologists and cultural workers go hand in hand, "they describe what they observe or read and evaluate it according to explicit standards by informing about their analysis of observations". (Christie, 2004, p. 109) But not all criminologists normative systems can be regarded as independent legal orders, unless we want to share the claims of some contemporary legal anthropologists that every society has a multiplicity of "legal levels," which range from family to the state, and that "law" as a social phenomenon exists in all of them. The path pursued here is an intermediate one between the traditional positivistic conception of law and the most extreme claims of legal pluralism. When weapons usage analysed on a broad spectrum, it is clear that associations such as mafia cannot be recognised as independent juridical communities within a positivistic framework of law. In the classical formulation of this approach, which was proposed by the British legal reformer John Austin in the nineteenth century, laws are the commands of the sovereign, the supreme legal authority of an independent political society, and are typically expressed through legislation and supported by state sanctions. "In this respect, a criminal justice practitioner is responsible for integrating restorative justice programs both within and outside of the conventional criminal justice process. Thus a criminologist appeals for implementing the perceived peaceful transcultural practices is often misconceived for several reasons". (2006a) For example, if we talk about, 'balanced healing conversations' between victims and offenders they may seem nice, but they tend to be reactive rather than proactive, and there is little evidence that they contribute even in cultures that practice them to less frequent predations than in cultures that do not". (2006a) On the other hand, we do not want to identify law with the customs of a society as, for example, "Bronislaw Malinowsky did in the 1920s in the small, very influential booklet Crime and Custom in Savage Society (1961), now seen as the first paving stone to the establishing of legal anthropology as a discipline in its own right". (Paoli, 2003, p. 123) The incident of 9/11 not only shocked the U.S but it was also a lesson that British criminologists didn't learn at that time. Later London bombings made them realise about the severity the weapons uphold for them. If we talk about weaponry usage, we realise that "one predictable yet little remarked consequence of the outrages committed in America on 9/11 has been an upsurge of academic interest in the study of terrorism. The number of US institutes, research centres and think thanks, which have now added this subject to their research agendas or, in some cases, have been newly established to specialise in this field has mushroomed. In Britain this increase in interest has been more modest and issues like "Terrorism" are still at stake: some universities are now beginning to recruit specialists in terrorism studies to teach the subject as part of the curriculum of political science or international relations. (Buckley, 2003, p. 32) "Most of the standard British introductory texts on politics and international relations make no reference to the concept of terrorism, or if they do it is only to dismiss it on the grounds that it is simply a pejorative term for guerrilla warfare and freedom fighting. Equally remarkable is the neglect of the use of terror by regimes and their security forces. The omission of a reference to these phenomena in the introductory texts is all the more startling in view of the fact that throughout history regimes have been responsible for campaigns of mass terror, of a lethality and destructiveness far greater in scale than those waged by sub-state groups". (Buckley, 2003, p. 32) It is important in the light of criminology to note that there is a growing international community of scholars researching weapons on a broader level that leads to terrorism. It is clearly a multidisciplinary field involving political scientists and historians, but also sociologists, psychologists, lawyers, and some scientists and technologists with particular interests in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons or in matters such as techniques of forensic investigation. The range and variety of their work is reflected in the leading journals specialising in terrorism studies. Terrorism takes many forms, and some of the more dangerous and well-resourced terrorist groups and state sponsors of terrorism have been in the business for over a quarter of a century. There are many excellent studies of the specific groups and regimes involved, comparative studies, and specialists' works on different aspects of terrorism, including terrorist ideologies and beliefs, leadership, strategy, tactics, weaponry, propaganda, and links with political parties and organized crime. There is also a rich literature on responses to terrorism particularly relating to crime and justice, including case studies and analyses of political, diplomatic, law enforcement, legislative, judicial, military, media, and international aspects of response. But one also cannot ignore many serious gaps and weaknesses in 'terrorism' regarding law and justice. One of the main reasons of this ignorance can be viewed in the light of extremely limited financial resources allocated for independent academic research. Obviously there is a considerable amount of in-house research, particularly with counter-terrorism, carried out by the research sections of government ministries and security agencies. However, most of the data and research findings of these studies are classified and tend to be rather narrowly focused on issues of particular immediate relevance to the department concerned. They are not aimed at filling some of the gaps in the terrorism literature, for example: underlying causes; emergence of and evolution of terrorist campaigns; the relationship between leaders and followers; or the dynamics of relations between the 'directors' of terrorist organizations and the political fronts, parties and overseas support networks which they develop and, in some cases, depend upon. The major weaknesses in fundamental research into terrorism can only be remedied if there is far more generous funding and coordination of academic research efforts round the world, and much greater effort to ensure closer formal and informal research cooperation between institutes within countries and across national borders. An interesting and encouraging precedent worth noting is the development of arms control and counter-proliferation studies in the 1960s and 1970s. "Britain was one of over eighty countries to suffer casualties from the attack on the World Trade Center. Initial casualty estimates proved overly pessimistic, with fewer than a hundred British deaths, but this still represents the single greatest loss to Britain from a terrorist act. (Buckley, 2003, p. 32) "Later the London terrorist attacks in July 2005 showed, an attack or multiple attacks may be mounted without warning. The Government continues to maintain a state of heightened readiness in response to the threat. It remains the Government's policy to issue warnings or advice if this ever became necessary to protect public safety in the event of a specific and credible terrorist threat". Kent Dooley in his article states "Britain's Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act (CJTCA), which permits police officer opinion testimony as to whether a terrorist suspect is a member of an illegal terrorist organization and allows adverse inferences to be drawn from that suspect's silence, can be reconciled with the fair trial provisions of the Human Rights Act (HRA). Accordingly, the CJTCA should be repealed or given a very narrow interpretation by the British Courts. The author also concludes that the CJTCA will not advance the goals for which it was passed reducing terrorist activity in the United Kingdom and bolstering the peace process in Northern Ireland". (Dooley, 2000, p. 221) "In Great Britain the primary responsibility in a terrorist situation belongs to the chief constable of the area concerned. He must ensure that the police authority can respond to "criminal" incidents. At this level of responsibility it must first be ascertained whether an incident is criminally or politically motivated and if it has an international dimension. If, for instance, an incident were to involve an embassy but was assessed as criminally inspired, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) would be merely apprised of the situation. However, if the situation involved terrorism and had an international dimension, the FCO would become directly involved in the COBR decision-making process". (Taillon, 2001, p. 42) Conclusion What makes gun control such a compelling priority for many opinion leaders and a large segment of the population is the belief that violent crime is caused by the widespread availability of firearms and could be reduced by eliminating or limiting firearms availability. It is because of this availability that since 9/11, police are opposing new challenges in the form of global terrorists using weapons of mass destruction that are the advanced form of firearms. This scenario has made UK to take bold steps while structuring policies and to think in all possible perspectives so that terrorism may be controlled from the grass root level. Although UK does not lag behind in making and implementing policies in order to control various threats but still it needs to learn lessons from its past particularly from those of London bombings References Buckley Mary & Fawn Rick, 2003. "Global Responses to Terrorism: 9/11, Afghanistan and beyond": Routledge. Place of Publication: New York. Christie Nills, 2004. "A Suitable Amount of Crime. Contributors": Routledge. Place of Publication: New York. Cook J. Philip & Ludwig Jens, 2000. "Gun Violence: The Real Costs": Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: Oxford. Dooley Kent Kevin, 2000. "Basic Rights and Anti-Terrorism Legislation: Can Britain's Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act 1998 Be Reconciled with Its Human Rights Act" in "Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law". Volume: 33. Issue: 1. Hawkins Gordon & Zimring E. Franklin, 1999. "Crime Is Not the Problem: Lethal Violence in America": Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: New York. Leitzel, James A. 1998. "Evasion and Public Policy: British and U.S. Firearm Regulation". Policy Studies 19 (2): 141-57. Paoli Letizia, 2003. "Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style": Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: New York. Ruggiero Vincenzo, South Nigel & Taylor Ian, 1998. "The New European Criminology: Crime and Social Order in Europe": Routledge. Place of Publication: London. Schmalleger, 1999. "Criminal Justice Today", fifth edition. Taillon De B. Paul, 2001. "The Evolution of Special Forces in Counter-Terrorism: The British and American Experiences": Praeger. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. USA Today, May 9 (2002) "Gun laws don't reduce crime" in < http://guncontrolpolicy.com/commentary/2.html> 2006a, < http://sun.soci.niu.edu/jthomas/papers/pmc.html> Read More