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As I scanned the headlines on the web, a story from Times Online stuck out in my head. It was about how Tony Blair has today announced that the government will be reviewing the laws and proposals for crimes involving guns, in particular making the minimum age someone can go to prison for being in pocession of a firearm 17 rather than 21 as it is now. - So as to discourage gangs from giving younger members guns.The full story as reported can be found here.
Now, I totally agree that a crackdown on gun crime in the UK is the way to go, especially in the light of the rising amount of gun crime in London in recent weeks. However in the article Mr Blair is quoted as saying:
“It is about a specific problem within a specific criminal culture to do with guns and gangs, which doesn’t make it any less serious, incidentally, but I think it’s important therefore that we address that actual issue. How do we make sure that these groups of young people within these specific criminal cultures, who are getting into gangs at an early age and using guns, how do we clamp down on them very hard and provide solutions for that?”
I'm sorry but I really don't believe it's just a few misguided teenagers entering into gangs causing the problems - What about those smuggling them in in the first place, or manufacturing them here. Then there's the theives and drug racketeers, etc... It's not just people joinging gangs at a young age who are 'packing heat'.
But the fact remains that this is Britain, not America - Nobody should be packing heat except possibly special branches of the police.
It is probably easy to tell I am not Tony Blair's biggest fan, but I do agree with what he's doing, I just don't like the fact that he's putting all the blame onto today's youth, and not admitting that maybe if his labour government had been more tough on immigration and smuggling laws - As well as actually having a decent policy of 'Education! Education! Education!' like he was always banging on about, then maybe there wouldn't be any major problem with gangs now.
Tony Blair isn't even admitting that the plans to review the UK's gun laws have come because of the sudden influx of gun crime and murders hitting the headlines (Most occuring in London) in the past month or so. Because I'm pretty sure that if they hadn't happened, or more specifically hadn't happened in such a closed time period, Tony Blair wouldn't have made that announcement.
After reading the article I went on good old Google and I found the below chart from this page on the BBC news site.
Ok, technically this doesn't go up to 2006/7, but it does prove that Labour didn't do much to put a stop to the crimes being committed with firearms over their first term in power - Not that the figures the Tories left behind were great either.
I think today is actually one of the first times Tony Blair has properly and publically addressed the problem in any form, and even though I have no evidence in front of me to back this up, judging by the chart on my left, the gun crime figures for the present can only be even higher.
Now I don't know what those of you reading think about the story, or of the opinions and conclusions I have drawn from it, but I'm interested in hearing what others think, so leave a comment and tell me.
