They refuse to sanction the notion that their police should routinely be armed. And three years ago, they meekly allowed nay, encouraged their Parlia- ment to ban handguns. He was evidently too polite to point out that every other nation in Western Europe also fails the Heston test of courage abysmally The NRA president famously re- marked a few months ago that his gun could be taken away from him only if pried from his dead hands. Heston deplored the fact that Britain banned handguns in 1997, after the tragedy in Dunblane, Scotland, when a crazed gunman shot dead 16 1st-grade pupils and their teacher and wounded 17. Crime in Britain, he noted, has in- creased since then.
Nobody can argue with that.
Even before 1997, a mere 1.5 percent of the population owned guns, and most of them were farmers who kept shotguns to control foxes, rabbits and other pests. One who did is serving a life sentence after killing a young man who broke into his farm home. After farmers, most of the gun owners in Britain are hunters. By contrast, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms es- timates that American firearms dealers sell about 7.5 million guns a year. With all the firepower available in the U.S., the country has a hom- icide rate six times that of Britain.