Some Londoners are taking notice of the progress the U.S. has made with respect to gun freedom and violent crime.

Over the last 25 years the number of firearms in private hands in the United States has more than doubled. At the same time the violent crime rate has dropped dramatically, with the significant downswing following the spread of right-to-carry legislation. The US Bureau of Justice observes that "firearms-related crime has plummeted since 1993", and it has declined also as a proportion of overall violent offences. Violent crime in total has declined so much since 1994 that it has now reached, the bureau states, "the lowest level ever recorded". While American "gun culture" is still regularly the sensational subject of media demonisation in Britain, the grim fact is that in this country we now suffer three times the level of violent crime committed in the United States.

Personally, I think it's common sense, although it's not all that common these days. A world without guns is a factual impossibility. The only possible scenarios are: everyone has guns; and only the government and the criminals have guns. In places that insist on banning guns, like the city of Washington D.C., the latter prospect can be exceptionally deadly.