It used to be said that what happened in America today would happen in the UK five years later. With the growth in communications this time period has been reduced considerably. Although our social and criminal problems may not be as extreme as they are in the United States, there may be things we can learn from the other side of the Atlantic in order to avoid such problems here. But now we don't have five years to learn these lessons.
The increasing amount of violence in the United States in recent years has led to measures to control gun purchases and limit their availability. Against the arguments of gun control lobbyists, who want to further decrease the number of weapons, or even ban guns altogether, are the voices of those who contend that gun bans are unrealistic solutions to crime, and serve only to deny a valid form of self-defence to law-abiding citizens.
Going beyond the emotional appeals and stilted rhetoric on gun control, Guns: Who Should Have Them? tackles the problems in a straight-forward, intelligent manner. Each chapter in this powerful volume, written by leading experts in law, criminology, medicine, psychiatry, and feminist studies, addresses a major issue in the gun control debate.
The conclusions of this carefully detailed and superbly argued study are difficult to deny: "gun control" is a red herring that has been deflecting attention from the true causes of crime, namely the breakdown of the family; failed social welfare programmes; and increasingly hopelessness among male youths, especially in troubled inner cities.
475 pages
ISBN 0-87975-958-5