ALL THE WAY DOWN THE SLIPPERY SLOPE:

GUN PROHIBITION IN ENGLAND AND SOME LESSONS FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES IN AMERICA

Table of Contents
I. Introduction

II. Wrenching Freedom From the King--The 1689 English Bill of Rights and the Right to Arms

III. The Late Nineteenth Century

IV. The Early Twentieth Century through World War II
        A. The First Step
        B. Dangerous Weapons
        C. Dangerous People
        D. The Firearms Act
        E. Genuine Danger

V. The Turbulent 1960s

VI. The British Gun Control System in Practice: Administrative Abuse

VII. Momentum for Prohibition
        A. Hungerford
        B. Dunblane
        C. The Next Steps

VIII. The Campaign against Self-Defense

IX. Other Civil Liberties
        A. Freedom of Speech and of the Press
        B. Terrorism
        C. Judicial Review and the Courts
        D. The Role of Gun Controls

X. The Causes of British Decline--and Some Danger Signs for Slippery Slopes
        A. Seven Factors
        B. Balancing instead of Checks and Balances
                1. A Balancing Test?
                2. Checks and Balances
        C. Written Constitutions
        D. Civil Liberties Groups
                1. The Right to Life
                2. United We Stand?
                3. Continued Appeasement?

XI. Conclusion: Towards Closer Analysis of Slippery Slopes

Endnotes
 

I. Introduction

This Essay aims to refine the understanding of slippery slopes by examining a particular nation that did slide all the way down the slippery slope.(p.400) When the twentieth century began, the right to arms in Great Britain was robust, and subject to virtually no restrictions. As the century closes, the right has been almost obliterated. In studying the destruction of the British right to arms, this Essay draws conclusions about how slippery slopes operate in real life, and about what kinds of conditions increase or decrease the risk that the first steps down a hill will turn into a slide down a slippery slope.

For purposes of this Essay, the reader will not be asked to make a judgement about the righteousness of the (former) British right to arms or the wisdom of current British gun prohibitions and controls. Instead, the object is simply to examine how a right that is widely respected and unrestricted can, one "reasonable" step at a time, be extinguished. This Essay pays particular attention to how the public's "rights consciousness," which forms such a strong barrier against repressive laws, can weaken and then disappear. The investigation of the British experience offers some insights about the current gun control debate in the United States, and also about ongoing debates over other civil liberties. This Essay does not require that the reader have any affection for the British right to arms; presumably, the reader does have affection for some civil liberties, and the Essay aims to discover principles about how slippery slopes operate. These principles can be applied to any debate where slippery slopes are an issue.

Part II of this Essay briefly sets forth the legal background of the British right to bear arms, as it developed from ancient times to the late nineteenth century. Part III describes the unimpaired British right to arms of the late nineteenth century and the changes in popular culture that began to threaten that right. Part IV describes how social unrest before World War I intensified the pressure for gun control, and finally resulted in the creation of a licensing system for rifles and handguns after the war. The gun control system was gradually expanded in the 1930s, relaxed in enforcement during World War II when Nazi invasion loomed, and then re-imposed with full force. Part V focuses on the turbulent 1960s, and how the government enacted a mild licensing system for shotguns, in order to deflect public cries for re-imposition of the death penalty, following the murder of three policemen by criminals using pistols. Part VI describes how the British gun licensing system is administered today and how police discretion is used to make the system much more restrictive, even without changes in statutory language. Part VII analyzes the conditions that have created the momentum for the gradual prohibition of all firearms ownership in Great Britain, and how isolated but sensational crimes are used as launching pads for further steps to prohibition. In Part VIII the Essay looks at how armed self-defense has, without statutory change, gone from being a "good reason" for the granting of a gun license to being prohibited. The decline of other British civil liberties in the late twentieth century, such as freedom of speech, protection from warrantless searches, and criminal procedure safeguards, is discussed in Part (p.401)IX. Finally, Part X summarizes and elaborates on some of the conditions that make possible a fall down the slippery slope.

Throughout this Essay, parallels are drawn between British history and the modern gun control debate in the United States, because the issue of whether any particular set of controls will set the stage for gun prohibition is one of the hotly contested questions in the contemporary discussion.

II. Wrenching Freedom From the King--The 1689 English Bill of Rights and the Right to Arms

The Tudor monarchs tried to prevent hunting with crossbows, and later with firearms, by commoners by setting a minimum annual income from land as a condition of hunting, or of possession of crossbows and handguns.[12] They were unsuccessful and, after first liberalizing the prohibitions, Henry VIII's government repealed them in 1546.[13] As the Tudor era ended, individual armament (typically with long bows) and an individual obligation to serve in the militia was the norm for Englishmen. Historians view the widespread individual ownership of arms as an important factor in the "moderation of monarchial rule and the development of the concept of individual liberties"[14] in England during a period when absolute, divine-right royal rule was expanding as the norm in continental Europe.[15](p.402)

In the period leading up to the Glorious Revolution, the Stuart monarchs adopted a radical policy of personal disarmament toward those who politically threatened their royal prerogatives. This included the militia of armed freemen as well as direct political rivals. Through a series of parliamentary enactments, they tried registration of possession, registration of sales, hunting restrictions,[16] possession bans ostensibly aimed at controlling illegal hunting, restrictions on personal arms possessed by the militia,[17] warrantless searches, and confiscations.[18] By 1689, the Stuart monarchs had succeeded, not at full disarmament, but at alienating their "allies" as well as their opponents and losing their throne in a bloodless revolution.

When William of Orange and Mary arrived to begin their reign on England's throne, the country's political leaders recognized the need to rein in any tendency of the new monarchs toward the excessive royal power the nation had just suffered under James II. Thus, William and Mary were required to accept a "declaration of rights" as a definitive statement of the rights of their subjects. That declaration was later enacted as the Bill of Rights.[19] The Declaration of Rights was prepared in great haste, limited to noncontroversial matters, and viewed as a statement of the existing rights of Englishmen. It contained only two individual rights applicable to the general public: to petition and to arms. Furthermore, it only effectively limited the monarch, not the Parliament. Even though the Bill of Rights was by its terms to be upheld "in all times to come," nothing one Parliament does can constrain the actions of subsequent Parliaments.[20] That was the problem with the Bill of Rights being enacted as statute, however important a statute. The Anglo-American legal world would not implement a genuine constitution until 1776, when newly-independent Virginia created her first.

The experience under the Stuarts, demonstrating the political uses of disarmament, convinced many in the Convention Parliament that there was great danger to the security of English liberties from a disarmed citizenry.[21] In Commons, member after member complained about the loss of liberty (p.403)they had personally suffered when disarmed of their private arms by actions "authorized" under the 1662 Militia Act, the 1671 Game Act, and various other laws. Since the new monarchy was to be a limited one, the members saw both a personal and national interest in the ability of ordinary Englishmen to possess their own defensive arms to restrain the Crown. After much discussion and numerous revisions, the right to arms evolved into a statement that "the Subjects which are protestants may have Arms for their Defense suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by law."[22] Historian Joyce Lee Malcolm concluded that:

[t]he last-minute amendments that changed that article from a guarantee of a popular power into an individual right to have arms was a compromise forced on the Whigs. The vague clauses about arms "suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law" left the way open for legislative clarification and for perpetuation of restrictions .... But though the right could be circumscribed, it had been affirmed. The proof of how comprehensive the article was meant to be would emerge from future actions of Parliament and the courts.[23]

The right of his majesty's Protestant subjects, to have arms for their own defense, and to use them for lawful purposes, is most clear and undeniable. It seems, indeed, to be considered, by the ancient laws of this kingdom, not only as a right, but as a duty; for all subjects of the realm, who are able to bear arms are bound to be ready, at all times, to assist the sheriff, and other civil magistrates, in the execution of the laws and the preservation of the public peace. And that right, which every Protestant most unquestionably possesses, individually, may, and in many cases must, be exercised collectively, is likewise a point which I conceive to be most clearly (p.404)established by the authority of judicial decisions and ancient acts of parliament, as well as by reason and common sense.[25]

From the day when the Stuarts fled to France, there were virtually no restrictions on an Englishman's right to own and carry firearms, providing that he did not hunt with them, for the next two centuries. The only notable exceptions were the Seizure of Arms Act and the Training Prevention Act, which banned drilling with firearms and allowed confiscation of guns from revolutionaries in selected regions.[29] The Acts were the product of social unrest related to the Industrial Revolution, climaxing in the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, in which government forces killed unarmed demonstrators. The Acts expired by their own terms in 1822. Even while the 1819 Acts were in force, the case of Rex v. Dewhurst explained that the "suitable to their condition" clause in the Bill of Rights's "Arms for their Defense" guarantee did not allow the government to disarm "people in the ordinary class of life."[30](p.405)

III. The Late Nineteenth Century

As revolvers got cheaper and better, concern arose regarding the increase in firepower available to the public. And in fact, the change from one or two shot weapons to the repeat-firing, five or six shot revolver represented perhaps the greatest advance in small arms civilian firepower that has ever occurred. Compared to the seemingly more benign single-shot muzzle-loaders of the past, the revolver seemed a frightening innovation.[33]

Revolvers were also getting less expensive, and concerns began to grow about the availability to criminals of cheap German revolvers.[34] Cheap guns were, in some eyes, associated with hated minority groups. For example, in the late 1860s, the London Lloyd's Newspaper blamed a crime wave on "foreign refuse" with their guns and knives. The newspaper stated that "[t]he revolver's appearance ... we owe to the importation of reckless characters from America .... The Fenian [Irish-American] desperadoes have sown weapons of violence in our poorer districts."[35]

All of these developments have their parallels in modern United States. The current popularity of semi-automatic pistols, with a magazine capacity of thirteen, fifteen, or seventeen rounds, frightens some people who view the old six-shooter as a harmless traditional weapon. Furthermore, the fact that semi-automatics were invented over 100 years ago does not stop the press from portraying them as dangerous new guns, just as the revolvers of the 1850s were portrayed as dangerous new guns in the 1880s.

Prejudice and discrimination against ethnic groups persist. While United States gun control advocates do not complain much about Irish immigrants with guns, they do warn about the dangers of Blacks armed with "ghetto guns." The derisive term for inexpensive handguns, "Saturday Night (p.406)Specials," has a racist lineage to the term "niggertown Saturday night."[36] The phrase "niggertown Saturday night" apparently mixed with the nineteenth century phrase "suicide special," which is a cheap single action revolver, to form "Saturday night special."

Revolvers were one technological development that began to make some Britons rethink the desirability of the right to bear arms. The second development was the growth of the mass circulation press. Newspapers, like guns, had been around for quite a while, but the late nineteenth century witnessed several printing innovations that made printing of vast quantities of newspapers extremely cheap.

The Walter press, patented in England in 1866, introduced stereotype plates. Printers discovered ways to make sheets of any desired length, thereby allowing rolls of paper to be fed into cylinder presses, and greatly accelerating printing speed. Machines for folding newspapers were brought on-line. By the late nineteenth century, typesetting machines were coming into use. All of these developments made possible the production of low-cost newspapers, which even poor people could buy every day. As audiences expanded, papers became increasingly sensationalist, and the "yellow journalism" of publishers such as the United States' Joseph Pulitzer was born.

Hearst's [errata: Pulitzer's] British counterparts were fervently devoted to sensation, and especially loved lurid crime stories. In 1883 a pair of armed burglaries in the London suburbs set off a round of press hysteria about armed criminals. The press notwithstanding, crime with firearms was rare. As this Essay will detail, the propensity of the press to sensationalize what sociologists call "atrocity tales" to create "moral panics" while demanding greater government regulation is one of the factors dramatically increasing the risk that a nation will descend down a slippery slope; but while media sensationalism can spur action, media attention is not necessarily sufficient by itself to produce results. Eighteen-eighty-three did see the first serious attempt at gun control in many decades, when Parliament considered and rejected a bill to ban the "unreasonable" carrying of a concealed firearm. In 1895, strong pistol controls were rejected by a two to one margin in the House of Commons.

The developments of the British press, and the press attitude towards crime and guns in the late 19th century, have their own parallels in the United States today. Television news is cutting loose its last ties to traditional standards imposed from the days of print journalism. In the "infotainment" produced by organizations such as NBC News, depiction of reality is less important than the production of entertaining and compelling "news" pieces. Thus, when the "assault weapon" panic of 1989 broke out, television journalists paid little attention to whether "assault weapons" actually were the "weapon of choice" of criminals. Instead of being on the reality of gun (p.407)crime, the focus was on the sensational footage of guns firing full automatic, while newscasters decried the availability of semi-automatics. Police statistics show that so-called assault weapons are used in about 1% of gun crime.[37] In other contexts, displaying one thing while talking about another would be decried as fraud.

As the nineteenth century came to a close in Britain the press had not as yet persuaded the public to adopt gun controls. Buyers of any type of gun, from derringers to Gatling guns faced no background check, no need for police permission, and no registration. As criminologist Colin Greenwood wrote, "[a]nyone, be he convicted criminal, lunatic, drunkard or child, could legally acquire any type of firearm."[38] Additionally, anyone could carry any gun anywhere. The English gun crime rate was at its all-time low. A somewhat similar situation prevailed on the American frontier in the 1880s where everyone who chose to be, was armed, and "[t]he old, the young, the unwilling, the weak and the female ... were ... safe from harm."[39] The frontier crime rates, except for the results of "voluntary" bar fights among dissolute young men, were less than a tenth of the rates in modern-day United States and British cities.

The official attitude about guns was summed up by Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the Marquess of Salisbury, who in 1900 said he would "laud the day when there is a rifle in every cottage in England." Led by the Duke of Norfolk and the mayors of London and Liverpool, a number of gentlemen formed a cooperative association that year to promote the creation of rifle clubs for working men. The Prime Minister and the rest of the aristocracy viewed the widespread ownership of rifles by the working classes as an asset to national security, especially in light of the growing tension with imperial Germany.[40] While shotguns were seen as bird-hunting toys of the landed gentry, rifles were lauded as military arms suitable for everyone. Yet, within a century, the right to bear arms in Britain would be well on the road to extinction. The extinction had little to do with gun ownership itself, but instead related to the British government's growing mistrust of the British people, and the apathetic attitude of British gun owners.(p.408)

IV. The Early Twentieth Century through World War II

A. The First Step

The Pistols Act attracted only slight opposition, and passed easily. The law had no discernible statistical effect on crime or accidents. Firearms suicides did fall, but the decline was more than matched by an increase in suicide by poisons and knives.[42] The homicide rate rose after the Pistols Act became law, but it is impossible to attribute this rise to the new law with any certainty. The bill defined pistols as guns having a barrel of nine inches or less, and thus pistols with nine-and-a-half inch barrels were soon popular.

While the Act was, in the short run, harmless to gun owners, the Act was of considerable long-term importance. By allowing the Act to pass, British gun owners had accepted the proposition that the government could set the terms and conditions for gun ownership by law-abiding subjects.[43] As Frederick Schauer points out, for a government body to decide "X and not Y" means that the government body has implicitly asserted a jurisdiction to decide between X and Y. Hence, to decide "X not Y" is to assert, indirectly, an authority in the future to choose "Y not X."[44] Thus, for Parliament to choose very mild gun controls versus strict controls was to assert Parliament's authority to decide the nature of gun control.[45] As this Essay shall discuss in regards to the granting of police authority over gun licensing, establishing the proposition that a government entity has any authority over a subject is an essential, but not sufficient, element for a trip down the slippery slope.

B. Dangerous Weapons

As the coronation of George V approached, one United States newspaper, the Boston Advertiser, warned about the difficulty of protecting the coronation march "so long as there is a generous scattering of automatic pistols among the 70,000 aliens in the Whitechapel district." The paper fretted about aliens in the United States and Britain with their "automatic pistols," which were "far more dangerous" than a bomb. The Advertiser defined an "automatic pistol" as a "quick-firing revolver," and called for gun registration, restrictions on ammunition sales, and a ban on carrying any concealed gun, all with the goal of "disarming alien criminals."[47]

What was the "automatic pistol/quick-firing revolver" that so concerned the newspaper? In 1901, the British company of Webley-Fosberry introduced an "automatic revolver."[48] It reloaded with the same principle as a semi-automatic pistol, but held the ammunition in a cylinder, like a revolver. It was an inferior gun. If not gripped tightly, it would misfire. Dirt and dust made the gun fail. Although the gun's most deadly feature was, supposedly, its rapid-fire capability, rapid firing also made the gun malfunction.[49] The so-called automatic revolver that was "more dangerous than the bomb" was more dangerous in the minds of overheated newspaper editorialists than in reality. In this way it is comparable to today's "undetectable plastic gun," which is non-existent, and the "cop-killer teflon bullet," which was actually invented by police officers.[50]

As the Webley-Fosberry and its modern equivalents show, media pressure for new laws does not necessarily have to be based on real-world conditions. That is, an item need not necessarily be particularly dangerous in (p.410)order for the media to describe it as dangerous. For example, whatever else may be said about marijuana, we now know that the "Reefer madness" stories from the mass media in the 1920s and 1930s were scientifically inaccurate; marijuana does not impel users to commit violent crimes. However, when the media and public know little about an item, such as Webley-Fosberry revolvers, self-loading firearms, or marijuana, it is easy for reporters to talk themselves and their audience into a panic.

C. Dangerous People

As in modern United States, sensational police confrontations with extremists also helped build support for gun control. In December 1910, three London policemen investigating a burglary at a Houndsditch jewelry shop were murdered by rifle fire. A furious search began for "Peter the Painter," the Russian anarchist believed responsible. The police uncovered one cache of arms in London: a pistol, 150 bullets, and some dangerous chemicals. The discovery led to front-page newspaper stories about anarchist arsenals, which were non-existent, all over the East End of London. The police caught up with London's anarchist network on January 3, 1911, at 100 Sidney Street. The police threw stones through the windows, and the anarchists inside responded with rifle fire. Seven-hundred and fifty policemen, supplemented by a Scots Guardsman unit, besieged Sidney Street. Home Secretary Winston Churchill arrived on the scene as the police were firing artillery and preparing to deploy mines. Banner headlines throughout the British Empire were already detailing the dramatic police confrontation with the anarchist nest. Churchill, accompanied by a police inspector and a Scots Guardsman with a hunting gun, strode up to the door of 100 Sidney Street; the inspector kicked the door down. Inside were the dead bodies of two anarchists. "Peter the Painter" was nowhere in sight. London's three-man anarchist network was destroyed.[52] The "Siege of Sidney Street" turned out to have been vastly overplayed by both the police and the press. A violent fringe of the anarchist movement was, however, a genuine threat; President William McKinley was only one of several world leaders assassinated by anarchists.(p.411)

While the "Siege of Sidney Street" convinced New Zealand to tighten its own gun laws, the British Parliament rejected new controls. Parliament turned down the Aliens (Prevention of Crime) Bill, that would have barred aliens from possessing [errata: and carrying] firearms without permission of the local Chief Officer of Police.[53] The 1993 Virginia legislature had less fortitude than the 1911 British Parliament. After a Pakistani national used a Kalashnikov rifle to murder three people outside of CIA headquarters, the Virginia legislature rushed to enact broad restrictions on gun carrying by legal resident aliens.[54]

British resistance to gun controls finally cracked in 1914 when Great Britain entered The Great War, later to be dubbed World War I. The government imposed comprehensive, stringent controls as "temporary" measures to protect national security during the war. Similarly, the United States continues to live under various "temporary" or "emergency" restrictions on liberty enacted during the First or Second World Wars.[55] Few restrictions on liberty, especially when imposed by fiat, are announced as permanent. Even when Julius Caesar and, later, Octavian, destroyed the Roman Republic by making themselves military dictators for life, they claimed to be exercising only temporary powers because of an emergency.

Randolph Bourne observed that "war is the health of the state," and it was World War I that set in motion the growth of the British government to the size where it could begin to destroy the right to arms, a right that the British people had enjoyed with little hindrance for over two centuries. After war broke out in August 1914, the British government began assuming "emergency" powers for itself. "Defense of the Realm Regulations" were enacted that required a license to buy pistols, rifles, or ammunition at retail. As the war came to a conclusion in 1918, many British gun owners no doubt expected that the wartime regulations would soon be repealed and Britons would again enjoy the right to purchase the firearm of their choice without government permission. But the government had other ideas.

The disaster of World War I had bred the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Armies of the new Soviet state swept into Poland, and more and more workers of the world joined strikes called by radical labor leaders who predicted the overthrow of capitalism. Many Communists and other radicals thought the World Revolution was at hand. All over the English-speaking world governments feared the end. The reaction was fierce. In the United States, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launched the "Palmer raids." Aliens were deported without hearings, and United States citizens were searched and arrested without warrants and held without bail. While the United States was torn by strikes and race riots, Canada witnessed the government (p.412)massacre of peaceful demonstrators at the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919.

In Britain, the government worried about what would happen when the war ended and the gun controls expired. A secret government committee on arms traffic warned of danger from two sources: the "savage or semi-civilized tribesmen in outlying parts of the British Empire" who might obtain surplus war arms, and "the anarchist or 'intellectual' malcontent of the great cities, whose weapon is the bomb and the automatic pistol."[56] At a Cabinet meeting on January 17, 1919, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff raised the threat of "Red Revolution and blood and war at home and abroad." He suggested that the government make sure of its arms. The next month, the Prime Minister was asking which parts of the army would remain loyal. The Cabinet discussed arming university men, stockbrokers, and trusted clerks to fight any revolution.[57] The Minister of Transport, Sir Eric Geddes, predicted "a revolutionary outbreak in Glasgow, Liverpool or London in the early spring, when a definite attempt may be made to seize the reins of government." "It is not inconceivable," Geddes warned, "that a dramatic and successful coup d'etat in some large center of population might win the support of the unthinking mass of labour." Using the Irish gun licensing system as a model, the Cabinet made plans to disarm enemies of the state and to prepare arms for distribution "to friends of the Government."[58]

Although popular revolution was the motive, the Home Secretary presented the government's 1920 gun bill to Parliament as strictly a measure "to prevent criminals and persons of that description from being able to have revolvers and to use them." In fact, the problem of criminal, non-political misuse of firearms remained minuscule.[59] Of course 1920 would not be the last time a government lied in order to promote gun control.

In 1989 in the United States, various police administrators and drug enforcement bureaucrats set off a national panic about "assault weapons" by claiming that semi-automatic rifles were the "weapon of choice" of drug dealers and other criminals. Actually, police statistics regarding gun seizures showed that the guns accounted for only about 1% of gun crime. Most people in the United States swallowed the 1989 lie about "assault weapon" crime, and most Britons in 1920 swallowed the lie about handgun crime. Indeed, the carnage of World War I, which was caused in good part by the outdated tactics of the British and French general staffs, had produced a general revulsion against anything associated with the military, including rifles (p.413)and handguns.

Thus the Firearms Act of 1920 sailed through Parliament. Britons who had formerly enjoyed a right to arms were now allowed to possess pistols and rifles only if they proved they had "good reason" for receiving a police permit.[60] Shotguns and airguns, which were perceived as "sporting" weapons, remained exempt from British government control.

Similarly, the horror of use of poison gas during World War I's trench warfare made the Firearms Act's ban on small CS self-defense spray canisters seem unobjectionable.[61] In the hands of British citizens, CS was considered by the central government to be impossibly dangerous, requiring complete prohibition--much more dangerous than a rifle or shotgun. Yet when the CS is in the hands of the government, the central government now mandates that CS be considered benign. When local police authorities protested the Home Secretary's issuance of CS gas and plastic bullets to local police forces and argued that the central government had no authority to force police departments to employ dangerous weapons against their will, the court ruled for the central government on the theory that the Crown's "prerogative power to keep the peace" allowed the Home Secretary to "do all reasonably necessary to preserve the peace of the realm."[62]

The treatment of CS is emblematic of the transformation of British arms policy during the twentieth century. Principles about the use of force were changed from the traditional Anglo-American to the Weberian, with the monopoly of force becoming crucial to the state's definition of its rightful power. Instead of worrying about cheap German handguns among the people, the British would have been better to guard against fancy German ideas among the government.

D. The Firearms Act

The threat of Bolshevik revolution, which had been the impetus for the (p.414)Firearms Act, had faded quickly as the Communist government of the Soviet Union found it necessary to spend all its energy gaining full control over its own people, rather than exporting revolution. Ordinary firearms crime in Britain, which was the pretext for the Firearms Act, remained minimal. Despite the pacific state of affairs, the government did not move to repeal the unneeded gun controls, but instead began to expand the controls.

In 1934, a government task force, the Bodkin Committee, was formed to study the Firearms Act. The Committee collected statistics on misuse of the guns that were not currently regulated, such as shotguns and airguns, and collected no statistics on the guns under control, namely rifles and handguns. The Committee concluded that there was no persuasive evidence for repeal of any part of the Firearms Act.[64] Since the Bodkin Committee had avoided looking for evidence about how the Firearms Act was actually working, it was not surprising that the Committee found no evidence in favor of decontrol.

Spurred by the Bodkin Committee, the British government in 1936 enacted legislation to outlaw (with a few minor exceptions) possession of short-barreled shotguns and fully automatic firearms.[65] The law was partly patterned after the 1934 National Firearms Act in the United States, which taxed and registered, but did not prohibit, such guns.[66] In 1973 and 1988, when the government was attempting to expand controls still further, gun control advocates claimed that the Bodkin Committee report was clear proof of how well the Firearms Act of 1920 was working, and why its controls should be extended to other guns.[67]

As a result of alcohol prohibition, the United States in the 1920s and early 1930s did have a problem with criminal abuse of machine guns, a fad among the organized crime gangsters who earned lucrative incomes supplying bootleg alcohol, although most such firearms were owned by peaceable citizens. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 had sent the American murder rate into a nosedive, but in 1934 Congress went ahead and enacted the National Firearms Act anyway.

In Britain, there had been no alcohol prohibition, and hence no crime problem with automatics, or other guns. Before 1920, any British adult could purchase a machine gun; after 1920, any Briton with a Firearms Certificate could purchase a machine gun. During the 1936 British debate, the government could not point to a single instance of a machine gun being misused in Britain,[68] yet the guns were banned anyway. The government (p.415)explained its actions by arguing that automatics were crime guns in the United States and there was no legitimate reason for civilians to possess them. The same rationale is used today in the drive to outlaw semi-automatic firearms in the United States. Since some government officials believe that people do not "need" semi-automatic firearms for hunting, the officials believe that such guns should be prohibited, whether or not the guns are frequently used in crime.

"O, reason not the need!" shouted King Lear after his two traitorous daughters, Regan and Goneril, disarmed him by taking away his armed retinue.[69] Goneril and Regan had asked why the King needed even a single armed retainer, since Goneril's army and Regan's army would protect him. The King's "reason not the need" response was his way of saying the he should not have to justify what he wanted; he should not have to convince his daughters that he had a good reason for wanting to be armed. Unfortunately, for British gun owners, as for King Lear, it was too late. King Lear had already turned the power in the kingdom over to Regan and Goneril; British gun owners had agreed that rifle and pistol ownership should be allowed only when the government, not the citizen, believed that there was a "good reason" for it. Thus, the burden of proof in public debate was reversed. The government was not required to show that there was a need to ban short shotguns or automatic rifles; indeed, the misuse of these guns in Great Britain was so unusual that the British government could never have shown a "need" for the bans. Instead, the government faced a much lower burden. Did the government believe that citizens had a "need" for the guns in question? Obviously some law-abiding citizens thought they did, since the citizens had chosen to purchase such guns. For example, short shotguns are easy to maneuver in a confined setting, and hence are very well-suited for home defense against a burglar. Likewise, machine guns are enjoyed for target shooting and collecting, and are useable for home defense.

The Firearms Act of 1920 had not, of course, banned short shotguns or automatic rifles. The former were ignored by the Act, while the latter were subject only to a lenient licensing system. The Firearms Act had, however, moved the baseline for gun control, and had helped to shift public attitudes. The concept of a "right" to arms was giving way to a privilege, based on whether the government determined that the would-be gun-owner had a "need" according to the government's standard.

Frederick Schauer's classic article on slippery slopes distinguishes the pure slippery slope argument[70] from its "close relation" that Schauer calls "the argument from excess breadth."[71] The latter argument points to the danger of adopting a policy on grounds that are too broad.[72] He points to the (p.416)example of censorship of information about how to build nuclear weapons. If the rationale for censorship is excessively broad--"the information is dangerous to public safety"--then allowing censorship of the nuclear missile information creates a precedent for censorship of many other things.[73] In contrast, if the grounds for a restrictive action are narrow--"this information has a very high risk of directly causing millions of deaths"--then there is much less risk that a desirable action, like the censorship nuclear missile construction information, will lead to undesirable actions, like the censorship of detective novels from which criminals might learn crime techniques.

The 1934 British ban on short shotguns and machine guns was a classic instance of the dangers of an excessively broad rationale. The government decided that nobody outside the government "needed" such items. Thus, the "good reason" requirement of the 1920 Firearms Act set the stage for the 1934 gun ban rationale, that "people outside the government don't need this," which in turn would set the stage for further prohibitions.

Another type of argument that Schauer identifies as a close relation to the classic slippery slope argument is "the argument from added authority." Here, the argument is that "granting additional authority to the decisionmaker inevitably increases the likelihood of a wide range of possible future events, one of which might be the danger case."[74] The British Firearms Act of 1920 offers a clear example of the dangers against which Schauer's "added authority" argument warns. Before the Firearms Act, the police had no role in deciding who could own a gun. The Firearms Act instructed them to issue licenses (Firearms Certificates) to all applicants who had a "good reason" for wanting a rifle or pistol. Starting in 1936 the British police began adding a requirement to Firearms Certificates that the guns be stored securely.[75] As shotguns were not licensed, there was no such requirement for them.

While the safe storage requirement might, in the abstract seem reasonable, it was eventually enforced in a highly unreasonable manner by a police bureaucracy often determined to make firearms owners suffer as much harassment as possible.[76] More importantly, Parliament--the voice of the people--did not vote to impose storage requirements on gun-owners. Whatever the merits of the storage rules, they were imposed not by the representatives of the people, but by administrators who were acting without legal authority. Without the licensing system, the police never would have had the opportunity to exercise such illegal power. As the Essay discusses in more (p.417)detail below, once even the most innocuous licensing system is in place, it is more possible (although not necessarily inevitable) that increasingly severe restrictions will be placed on the licensees by administrative fiat. The recognition of this danger is one reason why the First Amendment's prohibition on prior restraints is so wise. The rule prohibiting prior restraint recognizes that any system for licensing the press creates a risk that system will be administratively abused.

E. Genuine Danger

Prime Minister Winston Churchill's book Their Finest Hour details the arrival of shipments of U.S. government rifles and field artillery pieces in the summer of 1940. Churchill personally supervised the deliveries to ensure that they were sent on fast ships, and distributed first to Home Guard members in coastal zones. Churchill thought that the American donations (p.418) were "entirely on a different level from anything we have transported across the Atlantic except for the Canadian division itself." Churchill warned an advisor that "the loss of these rifles and field-guns [if the transport ships were sunk by Nazi submarines] would be a disaster of the first order." He later recalled that "[w]hen the ships from America approached our shores with their priceless arms, special trains were waiting in all the ports to receive their cargoes." "The Home Guard in every county, in every town, in every village, sat up all through the night to receive them .... By the end of July we were an armed nation ... a lot of our men and some women had weapons in their hands."[81]

As World War II ended[82] the British government did what it could to prevent the men who had risked their lives in defense of freedom and Britain from holding onto guns acquired during the war. Troop ships returning to England were searched for souvenir or captured rifles and men caught attempting to bring firearms home were punished. Guns that had been donated by American civilians were collected from the Home Guard and destroyed by the British government.[83] In spite of these measures, large quantities of firearms still slipped into Britain, where many of them remain to this day in attics and under floor boards. At least some British gun owners, like their United States counterparts in today's gun-confiscating jurisdictions such as New Jersey and New York City, were beginning to conclude that their government did not trust them, and that their government could not be trusted to deal with them fairly. In 1946, the Home Secretary announced a policy change: henceforth, self-defense would not be considered a good reason for being granted a Firearms Certificate.[84]

The next rounds of legislative action were aimed at knives, rather than guns. The 1953 Prevention of Crime Act outlawed the carrying of an "offensive weapon" and put the burden of proof on anyone found with an "offensive weapon," such as a knife, to prove that he had a reasonable excuse. In 1959, the Home Office pushed for, and won, a ban on self-loading knives. Self-loading knives are knives that use a spring or other mechanism so that they can be opened with one hand. These "flick knives," as they were called in Britain, were not any more of a crime problem than other knives, but the rationale for their ban was the same as for the 1937 ban on certain guns. The (p.419)government did not see any reason why a person would need a self-loading knife.[85] Furthermore, just as machine guns had been associated with American gangsters, "flick knives," which are called "switchblades" in the United States, were associated with American juvenile delinquents.

The British government in the 1950s left the subject of gun control alone. Crime was still quite low, and issues such as national health care and the Cold War dominated the political dialogue. Even so, the maintenance of the existing, relatively mild, structure of rifle and pistol licensing would have important consequences. As the Firearms Act remained in force year after year, a smaller and smaller percentage of the population could remember a time in their own lives when a Briton could buy a rifle or pistol because he had a right to do so rather than because he had convinced a police administrator that there was a "good reason" for him to purchase the gun. As the post-1920 generation grew up, the licensing provisions of the Firearms Act began to seem less like a change from previous conditions and more like part of ordinary social circumstances. A similar process is at work in the United States, where only part of the population remembers the days before 1968 when federal registration was not required for people to purchase firearms.[86]

V. The Turbulent 1960s

Had there been a sudden surge in shotgun crime in the six week period? Not at all, but three policemen at Shephard's Bush had been murdered with (p.420)illegal revolvers. Popular outcry for capital punishment was fervent, and Jenkins, an abolitionist, responded by announcing new shotgun controls, in an attempt to divert attention from the noose.[90]

In retrospect, Mr. Jenkins' shotgun controls made no logical sense. Regulating shotguns would obviously have no impact on criminal use of unlicensed revolvers, the guns used to murder the three policemen. Jenkins claimed that "criminal use of shotguns is increasing rapidly, still more rapidly than that of other weapons." The "rapidly" increasing type of crime associated with shotguns, however, involved mostly poaching or property damage rather than armed robberies or murders. Nevertheless, by showing that he was "doing something" about crime by proposing shotgun controls, Mr. Jenkins effectively achieved his main goal, which was to divert public attention from the death penalty. The Jenkins tactic has been used by many other politicians since then, including former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who is a proponent of gun prohibition and an opponent of the death penalty.

This brings to light a third factor that may help push a civil right down the slippery slope: the exercise of the right may be unproblematic, but pushes for restriction on the right may satisfy unrelated political needs. The more likely that media or other interest groups are to be hostile to the exercise of the right, the greater the prospect that further infringing on the right may fulfill the political need of distracting attention from other matters.

At Jenkins' request the British government began drafting the legislation that became the Criminal Justice Act of 1967. The new act required a license for the purchase of shotguns.[91] Like the Gun Control Act of 1968 in the United States,[92] Britain's 1967 Act was part of a comprehensive crime package that included a variety of infringements on civil liberties. For example, the British Act abolished the necessity for unanimous jury verdicts in criminal trials, eliminated the requirement for a full hearing of evidence at committal hearings, and restricted press coverage of those hearings.[93]

Under the 1967 system, which is still in force for the most part, a person wishing to obtain his first shotgun needed to obtain a "shotgun certificate." The local police could reject an applicant if they believed that his "possession of a shotgun would endanger public safety." The police were required to grant the certificate unless the applicant had a particular defect in his background such as a criminal record or history of mental illness.[94] An applicant was required to supply a countersignatory, a person who would attest to the accuracy of the information in the application. During an investigation (p.421)period that could last several weeks, the police might visit the applicant's home.[95] In the first decades of the system, about ninety-eight percent of all applications were granted.

Once the £12 shotgun certificate was granted, the law allowed a citizen to purchase as many shotguns as he wished.[96] Private transfers among certificate holders were legal and uncontrolled.[97] As with the Firearms Act of 1920, the statutory language of the 1967 shotgun law was eminently reasonable, and unobjectionable except to a civil liberties purist.

The 1967 law contained one other provision that illustrated a key strategy of how to push something down a slippery slope: it is easier to legislate against people who cannot vote, or who are not yet born, than against adults who want to retain their rights. Reducing the number people who will, one day in the future, care about exercising a particular right is a good way to ensure that, on that future day, new restrictions on the right will be politically easier to enact. Thus, the 1967 law did nothing to take away guns from law-abiding adults, but the Act did severely restrict gun transfers to minors. It became illegal for a father to give even an airgun as a gift to his thirteen-year-old son.[98] The fewer young people who enjoy the exercise of a civil liberty such as the shooting sports, the fewer adults there will eventually be to defend that civil liberty.[99]

This conditioning young people not to believe they have rights can exist in other contexts, of course. For example, the current American practice of denying American schoolchildren constitutional protection from locker searches,[100] dog sniffs, metal detectors, and random drug testing[101] is a good way to raise a generation with little appreciation for the Fourth Amendment.

VI. The British Gun Control System in Practice: Administrative Abuse

Severe enforcement of the rifle and handgun licensing system would not have worked in 1922. Too many gun owners would have been outraged by the rapid move from a free society to one of repressive controls. By initially enforcing the 1920 legislation with moderation, and then with gradually increasing severity, the British government acclimated British gun owners to higher and higher levels of control. The British government used the same principle as do people who are cooking frogs. If a cook throws a frog in a pot of boiling water, he will jump out, but if the cook puts a frog in a pot of moderately warm water, and gradually raises the temperature, the frog will slowly lose consciousness, and be unable to escape by the time the water gets to a boil.

The frog-cooking principle helps explain why America's Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI), and the other anti-gun lobbies are so desperate to pass any kind of gun control, even controls that most observers agree will accomplish very little. By lobbying for the enactment of, for example, the Brady Bill, HCI established the principle of a national gun licensing system. Once a lenient national handgun licensing system was established in 1993, the foundation was laid so that the licensing system can gradually be tightened. The push has already begun, as President Clinton echoes HCI's demand that Congress close the "loophole" in the Brady Act that allows private individuals, those persons not in the gun business, to sell firearms to each other without going through the federal Brady background check.

The British "firearms certificate" system of 1920 had required that a person who wished to possess a rifle or handgun prove he had "a good reason."[102] In the early years of the system, self-defense had been considered "a good reason,"[103] but, by the 1960s, it was a well-established police practice that only "sporting" purposes, and not self-defense could justify issuance of a rifle or handgun license. Parliament had never voted to outlaw defensive gun ownership, but self-defense fell victim to what Schauer calls "the consequences of linguistic imprecision."[104] When a legal rule is expressed in imprecise terms there is a heightened risk that subsequent interpreters of the rule may apply the rule differently than the formulators of the rule would have.[105] Thus, while self-defense was a "good reason" in 1921, in later decades the government had decided that a "good reason" did not include (p.423)self-defense. In practice, being a certified member of a government-approved target shooting club became the only way a person could legally purchase a pistol.[106]

Under regulations implementing Britain's 1997 Firearms (Amendment) Act, gun club members must now register every time they use a range, and must record which particular gun they use. If the gun-owner does not use some of his legally-registered guns at the range often enough, his permission to own those guns will be revoked.[107]

Having control over rifle and handgun owners through a licensing system, the police began inventing their own conditions to put on licenses. The police practice was not entirely legal, but it was generally accepted by a compliant public. Similar practices occur in United States jurisdictions such as New York city, where licensing authorities sometimes add their own, extra-legal, restrictions to handgun licenses. In the 1980s, then-New York Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward told his firearms licensing staff to refuse to issue any licenses for the Glock pistol. The prohibition ended when the media found out that Commissioner Ward himself carried a Glock pistol.

When the safe storage requirement was introduced for rifles and handguns in the 1930s, it was enforced in a reasonable manner by the police. Leaving one's handgun on the front porch was not acceptable; keeping it on a dark closet shelf was perfectly fine. Similarly, in the few United States jurisdictions that have imposed storage requirements in recent years, the law is usually enforced in a reasonable manner--at least for now.

From the 1930s through the 1960s, the security requirement simply meant that Firearms Certificate holders were told of their responsibility for secure storage. Starting in the early 1970s, the police began performing home inspections as part of the Firearms Certificate issuance in order to assess the applicant's security.[108] After the 1996 Dunblane shootings, some police forces began performing spot checks on persons who already held Firearms Certificates. Apparently the home searches were done to make sure that the firearms really were locked up.

Parliament never granted the police home inspection authority, nor did Parliament enact legislation saying that a hardened safe is the only acceptable storage method. However, that is what the police in many jurisdictions require anyway. In fact, many gun owners who bought safes that the police said were acceptable are now being forced to buy new safes because the local police have arbitrarily changed the standards. In many districts, an "acceptable safe" is now one that can withstand a half-hour attack by a burglar who arrives with a full set of safe-opening tools.

Sometimes the police require the purchase of two safes: the first one for the gun and the second one for separate storage of ammunition. A Briton (p.424)buying a low-powered, £5 rimfire rifle may have to spend £100 on a safe. Likewise, a person with five handguns (before the 1997 ban) might have been ordered to add a £1000 electronic security system.[109] Added to the cost of the illegal requirement for hardened safes is the escalating cost of Firearms or Shotgun Certificates. Home inspections are expensive for the police, and thus the cost of Firearms Certificates or Shotgun Certificates has been raised again and again, far above the rate of inflation, in order to cover the costs of the intrusive inspections, as well as the cost of many gross inefficiencies in police processing of applications.[110] The net effect of the heavy security costs is to reduce legal gun ownership by the less wealthy classes, as in the days of Henry VIII, Charles I, who was later beheaded during the English Civil War, and James II, who was driven out of the country by the Glorious Revolution.

The increasing severity of the application of the gun licensing system is no accident. A 1970 internal government document, the McKay Report was turned into a 1973 British government Green Paper, which proposed a host of new controls.[111] The British shooting lobbies, however, mobilized and the Green Paper was withdrawn.[112] Law professor Richard Harding, Australia's then-leading academic advocate of gun control, criticized the Green Paper as "statistically defective ... [and] ... scientifically quite useless."[113] Harding was looking at whether the proposed laws would reduce gun crime, gun suicide, or other gun misuse. The proponents of the Green Paper, on the other hand, did not care whether more gun control would reduce gun misuse. The earlier, secret draft of the Green Paper (the McKay Report) had stated that "a reduction in the number of firearms in private hands is a desirable end in itself."[114]

The Green Paper was withdrawn thanks to strong pressure from British gun-owners--and never turned into a formal proposal for new law (a White Paper). However, the Green Paper still set the government's agenda for the next two decades. Some parts were saved for introduction when political circumstances were right, for example after a notorious gun crime. Other parts soon began to be enforced immediately, by police fiat.

One Green Paper item would have required prospective rifle hunters to receive written invitation from the owner of the land where they would shoot, and then take the letter to the police. The police would investigate the safety of the hunt and other factors before granting permission. Several Chief Constables adopted this proposal and others from the Green Paper as "force policy" and enforced them as if they were law.[115] A certificate for rifle (p.425)possession now often includes "territorial conditions" specifying exactly where the person may hunt.[116] While it is not legally necessary for shooters to have written permission to hunt on a particular piece of land, police have been stopping shooters, demanding written proof of permission, and threatening to confiscate guns from persons who cannot produce the proof.[117]

Police abuses appear in every aspect of gun licensing. As Police Review magazine noted: "There is an easily identifiable police attitude towards the possession of guns by members of the public. Every possible difficulty should be put in their way." The stated police position is "to reduce to an absolute minimum the number of firearms, including shotguns, in hands of members of the public."[118] Thus, without legal authority, the police have begun to phase out firearms collections by refusing new applications.[119] Police departments have incorrectly told hunters that certain legal restrictions on hunting with semi-automatics also apply to hunting with pump-action guns.[120] The police have also, again without legal authority, required applicants for shotguns capable of holding more than two shells to prove a special need for the gun.[121] Furthermore, if a policeman has a personal interest in the shooting sports, that interest may disqualify him from being assigned to any role in the police gun licensing program. Policemen who know virtually nothing about guns, but who can be counted on to have a hostile attitude towards gun owners, are often picked for the gun licensing jobs.

Parliament has no interest in investigating police abuses of the gun licensing laws. One reason is that many of the abuses are instigated by the Home Office, which is controlled by the leaders of the party in power in Parliament. The courts are submissive to police "discretion." As a formal matter, applicants may appeal police denials of permit application, but the courts are generally deferential to police decisions. Hearsay evidence is admissible against the applicant. An appellant does not have a right to present evidence on his own behalf, nor does an applicant who has been denied have a right to find out the basis for the denial until the trial begins.[122] The Labour Party, now in power, argues that rejected applicants should never be told the basis of the denial.

The only practical way that British gun owners could have avoided abuse of the licensing laws would have been to resist the first proposed laws (p.426)that allowed the police to determine who could get a gun license. However the gun owners never would have dreamed of resisting, because such a law seemed so "reasonable." Having meekly accepted the wishes of the police and the ruling party for "reasonable" controls, by the early 1970's British rifle and handgun owners found themselves in a boiling pot of severe controls from which escape was no longer possible. British shotgun owners, ignoring the fate of their rifle and handgun-owning brethren, jumped into their own pot of then-lukewarm water when they accepted the 1966 shotgun licensing proposals.

VII. Momentum for Prohibition

An example of tranquil-period control was the Firearms Act of 1982, which introduced restrictive licensing for imitation firearms that could be converted to fire live ammunition. The original proposal had been to implement the 1973 Green Paper's outright ban on realistic imitation or toy firearms. The sponsor of the new law against imitation firearms promised that it would help stem "the rising tide of crime and terrorism," although he pointed to no crime or terrorist act committed with a converted imitation weapon. A new Crossbows Act outlawed purchase by persons under seventeen.[123]

Under new "safety" regulations regarding explosives, persons who possess modern gunpowder or blackpowder are now subject to unannounced, warrantless inspections of their home at any time to make sure that the powder is properly stored. The government, of course, promises that its inspections will not be unreasonable, but "reasonableness" is often in the eye of the beholder.[124]

While gun crime is not as common as in the United States, gun crime incidents inevitably attract sensational media attention that becomes the basis for further tightening of controls. In the fall of 1989, for example, a person who had been rejected for membership in a firearms club stole a handgun from the locked trunk of a club member and shot a Manchester policeman. In another case a probationary member of a firearms club, learning that he had a fatal disease, killed one club member, stole a gun from the club, and shot a personal enemy. The Home Secretary, at the urging of the (p.427)Manchester police department, issued a new set of restrictions on firearms clubs, including sharp restrictions on bringing guests to a range to shoot a firearm.[125] The practical effect of the new restrictions was to reduce the entry of new members into many firearms clubs.[126]

Thanks to decades of such restrictions aimed at restricting entry into the shooting sports, the vast majority of the public has no familiarity with guns, other than what media choose to let them know.[127] Legal British gun owners now constitute only four percent of total households,[128] with perhaps another small percentage of the population possessing illegal, unregistered guns.[129] Given that many Britons have no personal acquaintance with anyone who they know to be a sporting shooter, it is not surprising that seventy-six percent of the population supports banning all guns.[130] Thus, the people who used long guns in the field sports--who confidently expected that whatever controls government imposed on the rabble in the cities who wanted handguns, genteel deer rifles and hand-made shotguns would be left alone--have been proven disastrously wrong.

Strong rights usually need a strong sociological foundation. Approximately half of American homes contain a gun, and a quarter contain a hand gun. Thus, except in a few cities like New York where gun ownership is rare, gun bans in the United States are nearly impossible to enact; too many voters would be unhappy. Consequently gun prohibition in the United States must focus on very small segments of the gun-owning population. That is why "assault weapon" bans, which cover only about one or two percent of the total firearms stock, are so much easier to enact than handgun bans. Even with "assault weapons," it is usually necessary to exempt the Ruger Mini-14 and Mini-30 rifles since these rifles, while functionally identical to banned guns, have too large an ownership base.[131]

A few sensational burglaries in the 1880s had created the first calls for restrictive British gun laws. A century later, some sensational crimes would initiate the final stages of British gun prohibition. In-between the 1880s and the 1980s, an initially reasonable and then gradually more restrictive licensing system had reduced the number of gun owners so far that they had little (p.428)political clout. The gun-owners were of much less political significance than the media, which had become venomously anti-gun.

A. Hungerford

The media's reaction, especially the print media's, was intense. The tabloid press ran editorials instructing the public how to spot potential mass murderers--advising suspicion of anyone who lived alone or was generally a "loner," who lived with his mother, or who was a bit quiet.[135] The tabloid press and the respectable press both pushed heavily for more stringent gun laws.[136] Pressure also mounted for tighter censorship of violent television.

The Hungerford atrocity was the only instance in which a self-loading rifle had been used in a British homicide. Punishing every owner of an object because one person misused the object might seem unfair, but two factors worked in favor of prohibition. First, the cabinet leadership observed that the number of owners of self-loading rifles was relatively small, so no important number of voters would be offended. Second, shotgun owners, who are by far the largest group of gun owners, generally decided that they did not care what the government did to someone else's rifles.[137]

Parliament responded. Semi-automatic centerfire rifles, which had been legally owned for nearly a century, were banned.[138] Pump-action rifles were banned as well, since it was argued that these guns could be substituted for semi-automatics. Practical Rifle Shooting, the fastest-growing sport in Britain, vanished temporarily, although participants eventually switched to bolt-action rifles.[139](p.429)

The shotgunners, however, made a disastrous error. The Association of Chiefs of Police had long been pushing to bring shotguns into the restrictive "Section 1" of the Firearms Act, which strictly controlled rifles and pistols. The ACPO worked out a deal with the Thatcher administration to take a major step in the ACPO's direction. As part of the legislation responding to a crime with a rifle, controls on shotguns were made significantly more stringent. There was little criminological rationale for the extra restrictions on shotguns; indeed, the extra police personnel required to administer the licenses would have to be diverted from other tasks. A Home Office Research Study written the year before Hungerford had concluded:

To make shotguns subject to the same controls as pistols ... would have considerable resource implications for the police .... Nor is there any real optimism that anything would be achieved by such a move since pistols ... are already subject to the very strict controls and yet ... are used in more cases of armed crime than shotguns.[140]

Most importantly, the law specified that an applicant for a Shotgun Certificate, which was required for shotguns capable of holding only one or two shells, could be denied if the applicant did not have a "good reason" for wanting to own shotgun. Although the statute placed the burden on proof on the police, to show that there was not a good reason, police practice immediately shifted the burden back to the applicant to show that she did have a good reason. Self-defense, of course, was deemed not to be good reason. Persons who were active members of shooting clubs, recreational hunters, and farmers engaged in pest control were all deemed by the police to have demonstrated good reason, but a person who merely wanted to retain legal possession of a family heirloom was not considered by the police to have a (p.430)good reason.[143] By the time two cycles of renewals for the Shotgun Certificates, which were only valid for three years, had been completed, the number of legal owners of shotguns had fallen by a quarter. This sharply reversed the steady growth of gun ownership in the previous two decades.[144]

While the relatively liberal pre-1988 shotgun system had allowed significant growth in the number of legal shotgun owners, the greater police discretion over rifles and pistol licenses had allowed police to reduce continually the number of legal owners of rifles or pistols. The 256,000 holders of Firearms Certificates in 1968 had been cut to 173,000 by 1994.[145] Approximately one-third of the group of Firearms Certificate holders owned handguns.

The most important remaining difference between Firearms Certificates for rifles and pistols and Shotgun Certificates was that holders of the latter did not need police permission for every new acquisition. Once a person was granted as Shotgun Certificate, he could still acquire as many shotguns as he wanted, although he had to report each acquisition to the government. In contrast, Firearms Certificate holders have been required, ever since the original Firearms Act of 1920, to receive a police-granted "variance" for each new acquisition. Generally speaking, the police are skeptical about claims that Firearms Certificate holders have a "good reason" for wanting additional guns. Consequently, if a target shooter has one rifle in the .308 caliber, he will not be allowed to acquire a second rifle in the same caliber.[146] To bring all shotguns under Section one of the Firearms Act, a step which has not yet been taken, would have huge implications for shotgun acquisition. A person who legally owned one 12-gauge shotgun would not be allowed to own more than one.

Home Secretary Douglas Hurd told an audience that most the provisions in the 1988 Firearm Act had been prepared long before Hungerford, and the government had simply been waiting for the right moment to push them.[147]

B. Dunblane

The tabloid press went wild with angry stories about gun-owners, portraying anyone who would own a gun as sexually inadequate and mentally ill. The Labour Party immediately called for a ban on all handguns over .22 calibre, using the same rationale that had been employed in earlier gun bans: "We can think of no good reason why a larger calibre handgun should ever lawfully be held for sporting purposes."[150] The fact that at least 40,000 Britons engaged in target shooting with guns over .22 caliber apparently did not qualify as a "good reason."[151] Thus, "good reason" continued its metamorphosis. In 1921, "good reason" had meant "the applicant has no nefarious purpose." In 1996, "good reason" meant "no reason can be good enough, if the gun is a handgun."

The Tory government, headed by John Major, convened a Dunblane Public Enquiry. The Enquiry received presentations on firearms policy from groups and experts on all sides of the gun issue. The most powerful submission, however, based on what the report concluded, came from the British Home Office. The Home Office presented a report citing claims from two international studies that high gun ownership rates--even legal, regulated gun ownership--caused high rates of criminal violence. These claims were seriously flawed; in Great Britain, within the United States, within Australia, and within continental Europe, the regions with the highest rates of legal gun ownership (such as rural England, the Rocky Mountain states, Queensland, and Switzerland) tend to have the lowest violence rates.[152] But the Dunblane Commission, misled by the Home Office, came back with a report that recommended dozens of ways to tighten the already-restrictive gun licensing system, and impose more controls on licensed gun owners.

The Home Office's deception of the Dunblane Enquiry highlights another condition that may increase slippery slope risks: the government's ability to produce "data" that "prove" the need for more government power. Deliberately misleading data from the government was hardly unique to the Dunblane Enquiry. In the United States, we have J. Edgar Hoover's production of false data about interstate car theft to boost FBI funding,[153] deceptive anti-gun research created by the federal Centers for Disease Control,[154] and a breathtaking variety of lies in support of the "War on Drugs"[155] to name just (p.432)a few. Television, of course, can also be deceptive. In 1993, NBC News was caught red-handed rigging pickup trucks to explode and burn in order to support a news program.[156] Since the term "assault weapon" came into the media vocabulary, the technique of showing footage of machine guns firing in fully-automatic mode while the voice-over discusses other types of firearms has become routine. This practice continues even after the station acknowledges that the image is false or the result of outright fakery.[157]

While the Dunblane Enquiry did recommend many new controls, the Enquiry did not recommend banning all handguns.[158] Prime Minister John Major's Conservative government had decided to accept what it knew would be the Cullen recommendations, tightening the licensing system still more, but not banning handguns. However, then Labour Party leaders brought Dunblane spokesperson Anne Pearston to a rally, and, in effect, denounced opponents of a handgun ban as accomplices in the murder of school children. Prime Minister Major, who was already doing badly in the polls, crumbled. He promptly announced that the Conservative government would ban handguns above .22 caliber, and .22 caliber handguns would have to be stored at shooting clubs, not in homes.[159]

A few months later, Labour Party leader Tony Blair was swept into office in a landslide. One of his first acts was to complete the handgun ban by removing the exemption for .22s.[160] The Home Office was unable to produce any statistics regarding the use of .22 pistols in crime.[161] Prior data showed that the Firearms Certificate system worked about as well as any human system could to keep criminals from lawfully acquiring guns, or from stealing them from lawful owners. A study by the London Metropolitan Police Inspector of 657 armed robberies in the London area from January 1988 to June 1991 found that half the robberies were perpetrated with imitation firearms. Of the remaining 328 real weapons, only one involved a gun which had ever been within the Firearms Certificate system.[162] Dunblane was the only British mass murder in this century with a lawfully registered pistol. But gun ownership in general, and pistols in particular, had become rare, and consequently anathematized, once a few generations had (p.433)grown up under the regime created by the Firearms Act of 1920. A two-to-one majority in Parliament found it commonsense that the crime of one person should lead to the collective punishment of 57,000 others.

Since 1921, all lawfully-owned handguns in Great Britain are registered with the government, so handgun owners have little choice but to surrender their guns in exchange for payment according to government schedule. Gun registration has laid a foundation for confiscation not only in Great Britain, but also in New York City, where the 1967 registration system for long guns was used in the early 1990s to confiscate lawfully owned semiautomatic rifles. Nevertheless, United States gun control advocates continue to insist that the United States gun rights advocates are "paranoid" for resisting registration because it might lead to confiscation. The gun control advocates reason that they do not intend to confiscate registered guns. However, the gun control advocates fail to consider what their successors might advocate. The British Parliament who created the gun registration system in 1920 had no intention of banning handguns. But that 1920 Parliament failed to foresee the danger that a registration system, even if created with the best intentions, could later be used for confiscation. Thus, it is eminently sensible for civil liberties advocates in the United States to resist registration of persons who exercise constitutional rights, not because registration is excessively burdensome in itself, but because registration amounts to greasing the slippery slope.[163]

C. The Next Steps

A ban on all real guns will probably not suffice, however. Many British gun owners now own deactivated "replica" guns that cannot be fired. The guns are merely decorative pieces, and are less dangerous than a cricket bat. For some gun owners, deactivation was the only way they could retain possession of a prized semiautomatic. Other gun owners simply found the hassles of the police licensing system too much to overcome, and had their family heirloom guns deactivated into non-firing ex-weapons. With deactivation, at least, the family could retain the gun without need to spend vast sums on police security requirements. This last "loophole," however, in the British gun laws may be closed in a few years, as the police are now lobbying to require that owners of deactivated or replica guns get the same license that would be required for guns which can fire ammunition.

Have all these controls and abusive enforcement of controls actually made Britain safer? Armed crime in Britain is higher than it has been in at least two centuries. Armed crime is literally one hundred times more common than at the turn of the century when Britain had no weapons controls. Crime victimization surveys show that, per capita, assault in England and Wales occurs between two and three times more often than in the United States. These same surveys demonstrate that robbery occurs 1.4 times more, and burglary occurs 1.7 times more.[168] In contrast to criminologists in the United States, British criminologists have displayed little interest in studying whether their nation's gun laws do any good. Accordingly, definitive statements about cause and effect should be avoided. One can, however, say that as British gun laws have grown more severe, the country has grown more dangerous.

VIII. The Campaign against Self-Defense

A is struck by a ruffian, X; A has a revolver in his pocket. He must not then and there fire upon X, but, to avoid crime, must first (p.435)retreat as far as he can. X pursues; A is driven up against a wall. Then, and not till then, A, if he has no other means of repelling attack, may justifiably fire at X.[170]

Today, as a result of Parliament's 1967 abrogation of the common law rules on justifiable use of deadly force, should a person use a firearm for protection against a violent home intruder, he will be arrested, and a case will be brought against him by the Crown Prosecution Service.[173] In one notorious case, an elderly lady tried to frighten off a gang of thugs by firing a blank from her imitation firearm. She was arrested and charged with the crime of putting someone in fear with an imitation firearm.[174]

With gun ownership for self-protection now completely illegal (unless one works for the government), Britons have begun switching to other forms of protection. The government considers this an intolerable affront. Having, through administrative interpretation, delegitimized gun ownership for self-defense, the British government has been able to outlaw a variety of defensive items. For example, non-lethal chemical defense sprays, such as Mace, are now illegal in Britain, as are electric stun devices.[175]

Some Britons are turning to guard dogs.[176] Unfortunately dogs, unlike guns and knives, have a will of their own and sometimes attack innocent people on their own volition. The number of people injured by dogs has been rising, and the press is calling for bans on Rottweilers, Dobermans, and other "devil dogs." Under 1991 legislation, all pit bulls must be neutered or euthanized.

Other citizens choose to protect themselves with knives, but carrying a knife for defensive protection is considered illegal possession of an offensive weapon. One American tourist learned about this Orwellian offensive weapon law the hard way. After she used a pen knife to stab some men who were attacking her, a British court convicted her of carrying an offensive weapon. Her intention to use the pen knife for lawful defensive purposes (p.436)converted the pen knife, under British legal newspeak, into an illegal "offensive weapon."[177] In 1996, knife-carrying was made presumptively illegal, even without the "offensive" intent to use the weapon defensively. A person accused of the crime is allowed "to prove that he had a good reason or lawful authority for having" the knife when he did.

Early one evening in March 1987, Eric Butler, a fifty-six-year-old executive with B.P. Chemicals, was attacked while riding the London subway. Two men came after Butler and, as one witness described, began "strangling him and smashing his head against the door; his face was red and his eyes were popping out." No passenger on the subway moved to help him. "My air supply was being cut off," Butler later testified, "my eyes became blurred and I feared for my life." Concealed inside Butler's walking stick was a three-foot blade. Butler unsheathed the blade; "I lunged at the man wildly with my swordstick. I resorted to it as my last means of defense." He stabbed an attacker's stomach. The attackers were charged with unlawful wounding. Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon. The court gave him a suspended sentence, but denounced the "breach of the law which has become so prevalent in London in recent months that one has to look for a deterrent."[178] Butler's self-defense was the only known instance of use of a swordstick in a "crime."[179] Home Secretary Douglas Hurd, using powers granted under the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, immediately outlawed possession of swordsticks.[180] The Act has also been used to ban blowpipes and other exotica which, while hardly a crime problem, were determined by the Home Secretary not be the sorts of things which he thought any Briton could have a good reason to possess.[181]

No prosecution for defending oneself is too absurd. Consider a report from the Evening Standard newspaper in London, dated October 31, 1996:

A man who uses a knife as a tool of his trade was jailed today after police found him carrying three of them in his car. Dean Payne, 26, is the first person to be jailed under a new law making the carrying of a knife punishable by imprisonment. Payne told ... magistrates that he had to provide his own knife for his job cutting straps around newspaper bundles at the distribution plant where he works .... Police found the three knives--a lock knife, a small printer's knife, and a Stanley knife--in a routine search of his car.... The court agreed he had no intention of using the knives for "offensive" purposes but jailed him for two weeks anyway.(p.437)

....

[The magistrate said] "I have to view your conduct in light of the great public fear of people going around with knives...I consider the only proper punishment is one depriving you of your liberty."