Shooter incident at elementary school in Uvalde, Texas - 19 children and 2 adults dead
But didn't the homicide rate in the UK actually increase after the gun ban?
Assuming this is referring to the Firearms Act introduced in 1997, the year after the Dunblane massacre in which sixteen children and one teacher were killed, the overall homicide rate in 1996 was 11.4 per million in 1996. In 1997 it was 11.7 and in 1998 it was 11.7. It peaked in 2003 (when the 173 victims of Harold Shipman were recorded) at 17.9, and is currently (2021 figure) 9.9.
For context, the homicide rate in the USA in 1996 was 74 per million, and in 2019 was 50 per million.
So what is it that says? The homicide rate in the UK was already much lower than the USA, and we already had far fewer shootings. So why would anyone expect the 1997 Act to have resulted in an immediate reduction in the overall homicide rate here? Unlike in the USA, there wasn't that much to reduce overall. The goal wasn't to somehow eliminate murder at the stroke of a pen. The goal of the 1997 Act (and similarly, the goal of the Firearms Act 1988, following the Hungerford massacre in 1987) was to greatly reduce the chances of tragic events like those happening.
You know what
hasn't happened again to date? Any school shootings. Children here aren't doing active shooter drills. We're not worrying about whether the school has enough guards, or whether they're sufficiently well armed to defend the school against heavily armed attackers.
I believe they want to ban kitchen knives now...
If anyone believes that, they should start seriously questioning the nature of the sources of whatever it is they've read that has them believing it.
The UK is far from perfect, and does recognise knife crime as a problem, and does take measures - sane measures, not 'banning kitchen knives' - to try to limit it.
But then, that might be one reason why the UK's knife homicide rate is
also lower than the USA's. Per person, we have vastly fewer deaths from shooting, a bit fewer stabbings to death, and overall, just, much less murder.
That's not to say gun control is the one single solution. But, and I can't stress this enough, there isn't one single solution. It's not sensible gun regulation
or improved mental health care
or tackling gang violence
or addressing causes of crime like poverty and lack of opportunities,
it's all of them.
Any attempt to address the problem which tries to put everything on one thing is likely to fail, because if it doesn't do that one thing fantastically well, the consequences are multiplied through the absence of any attempt to address other factors.