When guns are outlawed...

[unixronin]

"...Only outlaws will have guns," goes the saying.

Roughly ten years ago now, the UK de-facto banned all firearms except for the police and aristocrats.  UK government figures show that in the intervening ten years, firearm offences in the UK have risen by 89%, from 5,209 to 9,865 last year.  Not only are some UK beats now routinely patrolled by armed officers for the first time in over a hundred years, some of them are now — reportedly — routinely patrolled by officers carrying submachineguns.  (Note that the weapons shown in the thusly-captioned Daily Mail photo are not submachineguns, they are 40mm launchers for "rubber bullet" baton rounds.  The officer pictured in this related article, though, is indeed carrying a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachinegun.)

Clearly, the UK's gun control policy has failed, and failed badly.  The UK outlawed guns, and it appears indeed that now, in the UK, only outlaws (well, and police and aristocrats) have guns.

Then again, perhaps the UK police should now be filed among the outlaws, considering some of the shenanigans reported in and subsequent to last year's massive raid in which Metropolitan Police broke into over 6,700 safe-deposit boxes and removed a total of £53 million in cash plus vast amounts of personal property, most of which — despite strenuous resistance on the part of the Metropolitan Police — they have subsequently been forced by the courts to return to its lawful owners.