Despite their prim distaste for violence and guns, it seems that England’s government can’t quite get all the ‘bad’ out of people.
One would almost think evil people will do evil things no matter how many weapons you take away.
In the West Midlands area outside London, studies recently showed that knife crime is up 103% since 2014.
This averages 14 knife crimes a day.
But it’s not just that people have switched to knives from guns. No, gun crime is also up nearly 33% since 2014.
The most common victim of knife crime in this region is kids of school age.
Of course, we tend to think of young children when we hear that, but this is often gang violence involving older teens.
Meanwhile, murder, grievous bodily harm, and other violent crimes also increased, this time by 17% in one year!
Maybe It Wasn’t The Guns?
Are there other factors to violent crime besides the weapons chosen?
Besides the guns and knives and acid that the attackers choose?
Of course there are.
There are all the factors that make people uncomfortable to talk about, so we just pretend they’re not there.
In the West Midlands, police blame this rise in crime on gang violence.
A drop in the price of heroin and cocaine led to turf wars as gangs tried to expand into rivals’ territory in attempts to keep their profits high.
Another common reason given for the rise in violence is widespread poverty in the area.
No mention is ever made of the fact that poverty has been widespread in one area or another for all time.
That didn’t turn those areas into a war zone.
One woman suggested another possible reason: people are carrying knives because they’re afraid for their safety.
“Every young person I speak to who carries a knife says they do so for protection,” says Alison Cope. Cope’s son Joshua Ribera was stabbed to death in 2013. “We need to be addressing what they’re actually scared of.”
England’s solution to violent crime is the same as always: More police, more surveillance, more cameras.
They’ve also created school programs to teach kids not to hurt other people.
It seems like the progressive left is the same across the world.
Blame the guns for the crime and disarm the population.
When that doesn’t work, create a police state to monitor everybody and everything, taking liberties away from citizens in the process.
When that doesn’t work, spend lots of money on ‘educational programs’ teaching kids things that kids used to know before you disarmed the citizens and took their liberties away.
Failed Policies Take Decades To Die
The next time you see somebody crowing about how great things are in gun free countries, send them this article.
It makes the news when New Zealand disarms their citizens and it’s hailed as a great victory for safety and preventing violence.
But then data like this comes out and disproves the Left’s narrative.
You can take all the guns away.
You can make a butter knife illegal.
But the criminal element of society will just continue to operate as they always have, except now they’ll be in a field of unarmed victims.
And violence will grow unchecked because the police can’t be everywhere to stop everything.
And regular citizens, now afraid for their lives, will start to break the law by carrying something to defend themselves with and now you have a whole new class of “criminals” to prosecute and try at great expense.
What a joke.
These old leftist ideas need to die, before more people do.