The Associated Press press reports that the Italian Senate has just approved a bill to better protect the self-defense rights of crime victims. "[T]he bill would allow people to shoot at thieves attempting to burgle homes, shops or offices, even if the target of the burglary was not judged under immediate threat, Italian daily Corriere della Sera said."
The principle of "proportionality" has long been misused against Italian crime victims. In a 2002 article, Carlos Stagnaro and I wrote: "The courts insist that the defense must be 'proportional' to the aggression — so that if a man is using his bare hands to commit rape, the woman cannot fight back with a gun. Likewise, if your home is invaded by a gang armed with knives, the courts will not allow you to use a firearm against them.
The campaign to reform Italian gun laws, which are hold-overs from the nation's Fascist era (as Stagnaro and I detailed in another article), has been in progress since Silvio Berlusconi's election in 2001. Given Italy's status as a prime target of al Qaeda, further reform of Italian laws, to enable decent people to protect themselves against sudden attacks, would be eminently sensible.
UPDATE: Several authors on the interesting and diverse Comments discussion have wondered how expansion of the Italian right to self-defense would help in the war on terrorists. As some comments note, citizens carrying firearms (or edged weapons) would not be of use in defending against a London-style attack, involving remote-control hidden bombs. Certainly true. In other situations of self-defense against Islamonazism, citizen possession of firearms can be very helpful, as illustrated by the experience of Israel and Thailand.
dream on.
Some might suggest looking to Israel as a test case. You would need to look at a nation with a significant, persistent terrorist threat, and has armed its citizenry, and a democratic society where the rule of law is supreme. You can hardly compare Italy with Somalia and expect to draw fair conclusions... Is there a better one than Israel?
I have a hunch (that's all it is) as to whether or not it helps Israel's general safety with regards to terrorism. But I'm sure someone actually has data to show.
But at the same time laws preventing people from defending themselves are being relaxed.
As a result we'll eventually be allowed to defend ourselves against bad guys but not be allowed to own the means to execute that defense.
So if I were to kill an armed burglar in my home I would eventually not be arrested for killing the guy but I would be arrested for owning a weapon capable of killing a person.
Arming the general population won't prevent many terrorist attacks, especially if the terrorists are smart as well as willing to give up their lives for their cause (as many modern day terrorists seem willing to do, in start contrast to those operating in the 1970s and '80s).
It will however limit common crime like robberies and murders, which will have a far greater positive effect on the security of the average citizen.
No one has made that claim; you're setting up a strawman.
While an armed citizenry coupled with strong self-defense laws may have made no difference in the recent London case, it is simply unsupportable as a logical matter to extrapolate "I'd count this as a wash, neither a plus nor minus." Armed citizens may very well be more successful than unarmed citizens at repelling suicide bombers, kidnappers, and hijackers. Since when have terrorists stopped using those methods?
I suspect that widespread carrying of firearms also enables the escalation of already tense situations into (more) violent crimes; rather than someone breaking an adversary's nose in the heat of passion, they can reach for a gun. A case in point would be the well-publicized incidents where "road rage" turns into homicide. Of course, the reason those incidents are so well-publicized is that they're infrequent. However, similar incidents that take place inside the home, in less public situations, are more frequent and less likely to be publicized.
My point is not that the citizenry shouldn't be armed. On the contrary, I'm a gun owner and agree that widespread gun ownership probably deters and prevents some criminal activity (I'm not so certain that it deters would-be terrorists). However, you should consider the possibility of a corresponding increase in violent crimes.
Perhaps you should look at the latest crime data for the U.S and England. In it you will find that your corresponding increase is actually a corresponding decrease in the Gun Loving U.S. of A and the utterly gunless Brits are experiencing an sizable INCREASE in violent crime. Numbers don't lie...
Also, noting that the US has nearly 2x the per capita murder rate of any country in the EU (Spain being the highest in 2000 with 2.94 and the US at 5.64), what is the purpose of rearming a nation? They are already well below an armed nation. Sure, there's all kinds of issues relating to culture etc., but I fail to see any reason to arm countries that don't suffer from the problems you cite. This is essentially assuming that a reality that exists in the U.S. exists everywhere else too.
Numbers don't lie. I'm not talking about current, year-to-year trends, but long-term, per capita figures, which, as I think Bob has pointed out, show a higher rate of violence in the U.S. than in unarmed countries.
Speaking of unarmed vs. armed countries, some of "new EU" countries happen to have very little firearms and, simultaneously, murder rates higher than US.
As for defending against terrorists? I don't think that untrained civilians are prepared for such confrontations, regardless of where they reside. Israel may be the exception, as most who carry there, are in fact trained.
You would need to look at the actual circumstances of new EU countries and why the murder rate is so high. Large presence of organized crime, large amount of gun trafficking (note, this is not what could be considered 'very little firearms'), and underdeveloped social and political structures as a result of the end of communism. The rate is also high amongst the younger age segment (under 25 years old) suggesting that access to firearms is easy and there is relatively little control. In effect, these countries are probably not as disarmed as one thinks. To arm them more would doubtfully provide any positive benefit other than to draw attention for the benchmark for violent crime (that being the U.S.)
Acutally, no. Restrictive British laws about handguns and rifles are pretty old, dating from the Firearms Act 1920, but shotguns weren't significantly restricted until 1967. Murder rates were low even before 1920, when the UK had less restrictive gun laws than a number of American states had back then.
The motivation for the Firearms Act 1920 wasn't crime, but fear of Bolshevik revolution--although Cabinet discussions show that there was a conscious decision to mislead the public by claiming that it was a crime measure. See here for a detailed examination of the materials declassified in 1969-70.
Concerning the claim that widespread gun ownership or carrying will result in an increase in other crime rates: sorry, but as logical as this might appear, the experience of those states that have liberalized their concealed weapon permit laws indicates otherwise. Murder rates, for example, which you would expect to be the most prone to rise as permits became available on a non-discretionary basis, either stayed flat or actually declined. Here is the Tennessee Law Review paper by Dave Kopel and myself on this subject.
The reason is simple: most murders are committed by people with previous felony convictions, minors, or people with mental illness problems. These are also the categories of people in the U.S. who are either completely prohibited from owning guns (under federal law) or whose purchase or possession is severely restricted under federal or state laws--and who do not qualify for permits to carry guns, even under the liberalized concealed weapon permit laws.
I also maintain a blog devoted to civilian defensive gun uses in the U.S., with links to news coverage of such events. These are very common. A week doesn't go by--sometimes a day doesn't go by--without such events making the press somewhere in the U.S.
It's unclear to me how arming the citizenry would allow "decent people to protect themselves." And David Kopel writes no rationale for this statement. And frankly, given the way Italians drive, and the tempers they exhibit while doing so, I feel much safer knowing they are not armed.
Are these two hypotheticals or grounded in case law?
This situation is quickly coming about though.
The civilian gun self defense blog is a great resource. I check it out everyday..
I am generally supportive of allowing teachers in the 3 southern border provinces to carry guns. However, like most things the devil will be in the detail and I am not sure because the policy it worked in Israel that it will in Thailand.
"Muslim extremists in Thailand���s southern provinces of Narathiwat, Yala, and Pattani have been carrying out a terrorist campaign, seeking to create an Islamic state independent of Thailand, whose population is predominantly Buddhist.
Most teachers are Buddhists, and they have been a key target of the terrorists, who have also perpetrated arsons against dozens of schools."
While the majority of Thailand's population is Buddhist, the same does not hold true for Narathiwat, Yala, and Pattani. In those 3 southern border provinces, around 85% of the people living in those 3 provinces are Muslim.
One problem in arming teachers with guns is, are you only going to arm Buddhist teachers or are you going to arm Muslim teachers as well? If you are only arm the Buddhist teachers this will create further problems between Muslims and Buddhists in the southern border provinces for 2 reasons. First, teachers who have been killed include people of both religions and Muslim teachers would likely see this as a "us" and "them" policy which discriminates against Muslim teachers. Second, it will only further exacerbate tensions between the Muslim and Buddhist communities as many in the Muslim community feel that they have long been discriminated against by the Thai government in Bangkok, particularly on employment and career advancement in the civil service. However, on the other hand, some teachers, particularly at Islamic schools are behind the increase in the recent violence.
It is now a year since the policy was introduced and there is little evidence to show that allowing (some ?) teachers to carry guns that there has been any decrease in the violence directed against teachers or against schools.