ja_mageia

The BBC news on Thursday night featured a report on the upcoming Supreme Court decision on the Chicago gun ban; litigation launched after the successful case of DC v Heller, which overturned a similar outright prohibition on handguns in Washington DC.

The legal argument is actually very interesting, and detailed opinions on it can be accessed at the Cato Institute here. However, even for those who don’t share my academic interest in 2nd Amendment jurisprudence, the BBC’s report was worth watching. It largely focussed on the effect of laws already in force in Wisconsin, which allow the open-carry, but not concealed-carry, of handguns. It showed how responsible, law-abiding citizens carrying guns openly leads to people both feeling and being safer.

The story that ran slightly later in the news concerned the jobs due to be lost at train station ticket offices across London, chiefly because of the advent of the automated Oyster card. The RMT Union gave its predictable little spiel arguing in effect for swapping motor cars for cycle rickshaws, because they don’t understand the economic benefits of technological advancement. However, a lot of customers interviewed by the reporter did seem genuinely concerned that a lack of visible staff at stations would lead to an increase in crime.

That’s when the connexion between the stories struck me. Why don’t we stop relying on low-paid staff at stations to provide visible security, and instead have open-carry firearms laws?

Open-carry is very ‘visible’ – far more so than staff in neon jackets on station platforms, or standing behind ticket counters. It allows people to take charge of their own security. In addition, it empowers people to look out for one another as good neighbours, rather than relying on there always being someone official on hand to bail them out. It also means that criminals, who in our country seem to have no qualms about carrying and using knives to assault innocent citizens, would be placed at a disadvantage – far more of a disadvantage, in fact, than they are if, carrying knives, they are confronted by a station clerk, not carrying a knife.

Lord Carlisle of Berriew, Britain's one-man watchdog snapping at the heels of anti-terrorist legislation, has called on the government's stop and search system to be scrapped because it is poisoning relations between the police and the public. Like the system of criminal records checks which treats every parent helping out with school activities as a paedophile, it should go.

The present stop and search system was introduced under the Terrorism Act 2000. It gave the police powers to stop and search people, without having to give reasons, in areas specified by ministers. You might have thought the idea was to stop people with rucksacks who were eyeing up nuclear power stations or water treatment plants. But within weeks of the Act being passed, ministers declared the whole of London a stop and search area. So police can now stop anyone anywhere the metropolis, at any time, with no reason. As indeed, they do.

Of course, the bureaucratic mentality makes it worse, because in order to prove that they are not discriminating against particular groups, the police have to fill out yellow forms with your name, address, sex, height, race and much more on it. The result is that what ought to be a friendly enquiry ('You've been standing outside this government office quite a time, sir, can I ask your purpose?' 'Oh, simple as that, eh?' Very good, sir, thank you, have a nice day.') into something adversarial – and where the police have all the muscle: refuse to give your details or tell them not to be so daft and boil their heads, and you will be arrested. No wonder that the public now see the police not as their servants and protectors, but as agents of a bully state.

Eamonn Butler's DIY manual for fixing Britain – The Alternative Manifesto – is now out! Get it here.

We are continually being told that the causes of crime are both complex, built into the very structures of our society, and simple: it's all inequality, innit? Poverty, deprivation, righteous anger at the greed of the rich: fill in your own quotations from Polly Toynbee here.

However, there's another theory entirey: that much crime, if not most of it, is opportunistic. It takes place because those who would have more and are willing to get more through either violence or other illegality meet up with those who have the more and cannot defend it. Our problem is of course that we very rarely get the sort of natural experiment that we need in order to test which of these two is correct: or, if we are to be fair, or both could have some relevance, which explains the greater part of it. Rarely, but not never:

The Baltimore example is that over the period of the recent blizzards – when most potential victims were stationary, and not accessible to the police, the crime rate dropped.

For example, murders – of which there were 18 in the first 37 days of the year – dropped to 0 in 9 days.

Now it certainly isn't possibly true that inequality, poverty, deprivation or righteous anger dropped in those days of the snowstorms. It's also most certainly not true that policing had anything to do with it as they were as trapped as everyone else. No, we're rather left with our second explanation: the root cause of crime appears to be the opportunity to commit a crime. When that opportunity isn't there, nor is the crime.