Timmyhawk

CHANGE THE HOME DEFENCE LAWS? HERE’S SOME WRONG ARGUMENTS
I only just now got round to checking out the current Speccie. Some good articles in there. I have mixed feelings about this one by Ross Clark on now-cancelled changes to the home defence laws. I probably have mixed feelings about it because I have mixed feelings about the whole issue.
One of my concerns with greater licence for homeowners is the risk that it would increasingly lead to situations were innocents were unacceptably harmed by home defence measures. As Clark ends his article:

Point made. However, this problem should be easy to solve by restricting a toughened up law to inside the house or flat. In any case Ross Clark is jumping forward a little too fast, as the proposed changes were in fact quite mild and certainly did not amount to the dismantling of “civilised values”. Leaving that aside it is of course the criminal activity which truly undermines society.

Here’s the next argument:

This is the argument that if homeowners are allowed greater licence in defending themselves that will simply lead to burglars arming themselves in return, thus increasing the net amount of violence and damage, rather than reducing it.
This idea is wrong. Empirically so. Measured over the past century or so, the law has increasingly restricted the exercise of home and self defence. Simultaneously this has not led to less crime and less violent crime, but the opposite. Burglaries, what we’re talking about here specifically, has steeply shot up. This seems to suggest that crime has risen as the risks involved in it have fallen. From this it can be concluded that a tougher home defence law would deter potential burglars by increasing the opportunity cost to intolerable levels.
Of course there are other aspects to be considered, but better defended homes do not automatically lead to better armed burglars. The debate needs to tale that into account. Clark unfortunately misses this. Actually he contradicts himself, when he calls for the police to operate with “more vigour” – surely this would also lead to criminals arming themselves even more heavily in order to be stronger than the police. Surely Clark doesn’t want to encourage such a domestic arms race.
On the other hand, it’s more likely I’m right and a more vigourous response against criminal activity by both police and thevictims of crime would help push crime down.

In the end, as it goes with politics, the whole public demand will probably die down when the right event comes along:

That we be a bad thing because this is an important debate, but that’s the way it’ll go I’m afraid.