FEWER GUNS, MORE CRIME:

England and Wales have the highest crime rate among the world’s leading economies, according to a new report by the United Nations.

The survey, which is likely to prove embarrassing to David Blunkett, the Home Secretary. shows that people are more likely to be mugged, burgled, robbed or assaulted here than in America, Germany, Russia, South Africa or any other of the world’s 20 largest nations. Only the Dominican Republic, New Zealand and Finland have higher crime rates than England and Wales.

It’s not just gun control of course. Gun control is just the most visible symptom of a systematic surrender to society’s worst elements that has been the core element of British crime strategy for over fifty years. Gun control is bad in itself, but it can only exist in a setting in which the right to defend oneself against aggression has already been devalued in a way that makes crime much more rewarding, and hence much more common. That’s what has happened in Britain, and it’s why the historically low British crime rates have skyrocketed.

The good news is that things have gotten bad enough that there are now voices of sanity being raised. The bad news is that the authorities still haven’t caught on, responding to cellphone theft by putting up posters telling people to keep their cellphones out of sight in public.

This reminds me of the gold-chain-snatching epidemic in Ed Koch’s New York. The response: a ban on gold chains. That was when I knew things had hit rock bottom. And I was right.

UPDATE: Iain Murray isn’t crazy about the UN survey mentioned above, but notes that the International Crime Victimization Survey also puts the Brits at the top.