Paul Goodman writes a very sensible piece this morning after the awful events in Cumbria. It is absurdly easy to fall into the trap of ‘legislating in haste, repenting at leisure’ after a tragedy of this nature.
I’m trained in a variety of firearms (on reflection the range frightens me), and so I have a particularly healthy respect for the dangers that accompany them. I’ve also been on ranges in North America, both civilian and military, and seen how gun cultures differ in a variety of countries.
In the UK, we live in an urbanised society. Compared with North America or Eastern Europe, we have comparatively small wilderness hinterland that intrudes upon those involved in agriculture or lends itself to hunting. We are an island, one that does not rely on a domestically armed militia as a home guard. We prefer that our police are unarmed, and that the criminals that face them are (magically perhaps) unarmed also.
All these and many other reasons will be raised in support of even more legislation, guidelines, red tape, regulations and padlocks. The danger I would suggest is that as the powder settles we take our eye off the bigger problem. Knife crime may be much more low key, but it is more local to many and hugely more relevant on a daily basis. Fantastic work is being done is this field by a variety of organisations, such as Kids Count. It would be a major policy setback if yesterday’s high profile disaster distracted everyone from a very real crisis that’s long been on our hands.
