Joyce Lee Malcolm’s article in Reason online is here

In that article she claims that “And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime [in England] more than doubled.” and asserts that this increase was caused by British gun control.

It took me less than five minutes to find the official English crime statistics.

Going to the section on violent crime I find the following:

“Estimates from the BCS reveal large and consistent falls in violent crime overall since 1995.”

“Longer-term trends in violence overall continue to show significant declines. Comparison of results reported to the BCS in 2001/02 with those for earlier years show a 17 per cent decline in BCS violence since 1999, a 22 per cent decline since 1997 and a 33 per cent decline since 1995, all of these decreases being statistically significant”

“The fall in violent crime may seem surprising, given media attention to violent crime. However, the BCS suggests that violent crime in general has been falling for some time. Although BCS estimates present an average experience of violence, it is possible that the very rare but more extreme incidents of violence have increased at the same time. It is the latter that are more often reported in the media.”

I have written to Malcolm asking her if she will withdraw her article and replace it with one attributing the violent crime decrease to gun control.