Guns and Violence: The English Experience: Amazon.co.uk: Joyce Lee Malcolm: Books

Review

This book will stimulate renewed discussion and examination of guns in society...Malcolm's book is highly recommended. -- Thomas A. Karel Library Journal 20020415 In recent decades, much scholarship has been devoted to the history of crime and violence in England from the Middle Ages to the present. Joyce Lee Malcolm's lucid volume is a welcome synthesis of such work and the related factor of gunholding. -- Richard M. Brown Washington Times 20020721 Joyce Lee Malcolm brings new evidence that guns reduce violence. Professor Malcolm's carefully researched book is a study of guns and violence in England from the Middle Ages through the present day. When the English were armed to the teeth, violent crime was rare. Now that the English are disarmed, violent crime has exploded. Indeed, crime in England is out of control. -- Paul Craig Roberts Washington Times 20020730 In addition to presenting the big picture with plenty of detail, Ms. Malcolm describes some of the more difficult aspects of this whole debate--changing definitions of crime, unreported crimes, wavering enthusiasm for strict law enforcement. Altogether she makes a forceful case, clearly and fairly. Even the most hardened anti-gunners...will want to read Guns and Violence, if only to see what ammunition their opponents now possess. -- Kimberley A. Strassel Wall Street Journal 20020806 It is refreshing to see a study of the complex issues surrounding firearms in the UK played with a straight bat...[Malcolm's] book...breaks new ground in the debate...[and] tackles many of the myths surround the effectiveness of firearms controls in England...Well written and very readable. It also provides ammunition to counter the arguments of those who want to see Britain turned into a gun-free zone. It is also heartening to see a respected academic make a contribution to the firearms debate which is well researched, objective and based on intellectually sustainable conclusions. -- Bill Harriman Shooting Times & Country Magazine 20021121 Surprisingly, it has taken an American Professor of History to produce a book that looks at the subject from its origins and takes us forward to the present day. The quality and nature of the research is astonishing. Professor Malcolm takes us back to the Middle Ages to study the state of crime when firearms were not widely available. Looking to a vast array of records that have survived, she is able to create the best possible picture of the state of crime...This book convincingly disposes of so many myths about English firearms controls that it will have to be read twice by the doubters amongst remaining gun owners in this country. -- Colin Greenwood Target Sports 20021101 The scholar concerned with the comprehensive study of the right to bear arms, the extent of gun ownership, and gun control and its impact on violent crime in a society must certainly read Guns and Violence: The English Experience...Malcolm has written a fine book on which English gun owners would be able to mount a legitimate challenge to England's reaction to the government-defined gun "problem." As for her academic readers, Malcolm has delivered to us a fine historical and contemporary account of England's relationship to guns and whether violence does indeed accompany gun ownership. -- Darrell D. Irwin International Criminal Justice Review

Product Description

Behind the passionate debate over gun control and armed crime lurk assumptions about the link between guns and violence. Indeed, the belief that more guns in private hands means higher rates of armed crime underlies most modern gun control legislation. But are these assumptions valid?

Investigating the complex and controversial issue of the real relationship between guns and violence, Joyce Lee Malcolm presents an incisive, thoroughly researched historical study of England, whose strict gun laws and low rates of violent crime are often cited as proof that gun control works. To place the private ownership of guns in context, Malcolm offers a wide-ranging examination of English society from the Middle Ages to the late twentieth century, analyzing changing attitudes toward crime and punishment, the impact of war, economic shifts, and contrasting legal codes on violence. She looks at the level of armed crime in England before its modern restrictive gun legislation, the limitations that gun laws have imposed, and whether those measures have succeeded in reducing the rate of armed crime.

Malcolm also offers a revealing comparison of the experience in England experience with that in the modern United States. Today Americans own some 200 million guns and have seen eight consecutive years of declining violence, while the English--prohibited from carrying weapons and limited in their right to self-defense have suffered a dramatic increase in rates of violent crime.

This timely and thought-provoking book takes a crucial step in illuminating the actual relationship between guns and violence in modern society.

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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

An Excellent Exposure 1 Mar 2008

By Canada Dry

Format:Paperback

This is an excellent and very readable book that concisely reviews and comments upon the history of firearms and firearms legislation in Britain. The author Joyce Lee Malcolm lifts the lid on what has transpired to demonstrate that by and large the encroaching and often unnecessary legislation has not been in the best interests of the law abiding majority. In addition to the controversial subject of firearms she deals at length with the historical right of English citizens to defend themselves, their families and their homes against violent criminals and how this right has been eroded to the point of elimination by successive governments using false or misleading reasoning. More disturbing is her revelation of the way that the Home Office used secret and unaccountable police directives, at odds with the 1689 Bill of Rights and English common law, to gradually undermine and remove the justification for self-defence. The years 1997 to the present day make sad reading, as having removed the right to self-defence and vigorously prosecuted those victims of crime who dared to defend themselves, the police authorities have failed year on year to curb rising violent crime. In fact in some areas they have withdrawn publically from the responsibility to defeat it. Some of the examples given by the author of the way that criminal rights have taken precedence over victims rights beggar belief. Also of significance is that much of the legislation responsible for this state of affairs was seen as questionable and was opposed at the time of its introduction, the warnings of unintended consequences being ignored. This is by no means a sensationalist book, but the very clear laying out of chronology and facts carry great weight. The path taken by the authorities is exposed as ultimately self-destructive and the only gain appears to have been by those criminals able and willing to perpetrate violence against the public. The police emerge in a very poor light, at some considerable distance from the laudable ideals which brought them into being. This book should be required reading for every politician, lawyer and senior police officer. Very highly recommended.

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33 of 41 people found the following review helpful

On target and should not be ignored. 12 Aug 2002

By S. Andrews

Format:Hardcover

When it come to gun-ownership, British politicians are quick to tell us that "we must never become like America".

But is this really true ? In this astonishing book, a leading and respected US criminologist shows that the United States has actually achieved a substantial reduction in it`s overall crime rate by allowing it`s citizans the use of defensive firearms.
In contrast, during the same period, the UK`s crime rate has risen proportionally as British Subjects are disarmed by sucessive governments.

The author has gained access to a joint US Dept of Justice & British Home Office 1995 study which compares rates of crime in both countries. This study concludes that you are three times more likely to be mugged and four times more likely to suffer aggrevated burglary or "Home Invasion" in the UK , than in the United States. Why the difference ? Joyce Lee Malcolm presents evidence from a survey of convicted burglars who openly state that they will not risk burglaring a house when they believed the owner to have access to a gun. Professor Malcolm then gives us a comprehensive account of other authoritive studies.

The author examines the history of gun control in Britain, shows its constitutional basis in both countries, and chillingly details how the freedom to self defence has been progressively criminalised in the United Kingdom.

This is the most important book on this complicated and emotive subject since Colin Greenwoods 1969 work.

As crime mounts year on year, our politicans will ignore it at their peril.

Explains the 2011 British looting outbreak 28 Feb 2012

By JPMT

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This rigorously scholarly book comprehensively demolishes the thesis that violent British crime is reduced by disarming the populace. That demolition will not surprise Americans such as the author, particularly if they've read More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws (Studies in Law & Economics). But the book will not please the British ruling class, particularity because it exposes the creepy 70-year sequence of legislative steps that led to that disarming - it's now criminal offense for a Briton to carry anything that might in any circumstances be considered an offensive weapon, even a penknife.

The book looks at almost a thousand years of British violence. That's not an easy task, since the definitions of violent crimes have changed over time, and so the author must adjust reported crime figures to ensure comparability. The result shows that by the end of the 19th Century, when Britons were routinely armed, the murder rate had followed a centuries' long decline to an all-time low.

The author looks at the legal basis for the bearing of arms, the 1689 Bill of Rights, upon which the American revolutionaries based their splendid Constitution. And the book explains why it made sense for every man (actually Protestant men) to carry guns: quite simply, it kept the peace. Just as it does in modern Switzerland, with a gun in every home. Because, why is a criminal going to attempt violence when his victims are likely to take him out?

The author shows how the armed and free Briton became, over time, to be regarded as a threat to public order. Not unreasonably from the elite's perspective after the French and subsequent European revolutions. And how the introduction of a professional police force was used to slowly erode the Bill of Rights.

And most importantly, how that erosion led to a progressive rise in the murder rate starting at the end of the 19th Century, to the point where British newspapers now report heinous crimes every day.

Of course this book won't change anything. But it tells you all you need to know about last year's British riots. Because with all weapons criminalized only criminals had them, and with a pusillanimous police force the shopkeepers were left defenseless.