Arming the police will cause an escalation in criminal violence  The British Crime Survey maintains that gun crime is very rare throughout the UK. The reason communities are so afraid is that the over-zealous media continually hype up individual incidences of gun crime in order to attract more readers. The statistics show that knife and gun crime are overrepresented in the news, with 25% of newspapers stories on average being dedicated to crime. [1] Because of this exaggerated coverage, there is a moral panic in which people think that if they are attacked it will be by a knife-wielding maniac. This is simply not true. There is more chance that you will be in a car accident than be attacked on the street.  Introducing guns onto the streets, even in a legal and well-intentioned manner is a trigger for increasing the number of guns that gangs and organised crime groups bring onto the street.  [1] Media Awareness Network, ‘TV Crime Facts – Teaching Backgrounder’  , accessed 20 September 2011