England doesn’t have a problem with violent crime. We’re told that all the time that if we had “sensible” gun laws like England, we wouldn’t have violent crime. Life would be all peace and love and puppies and rainbows.

Or…maybe not.

A gunman who reportedly held two employees hostage at a central England bowling alley was arrested Sunday night after armed police moved in. He was treated at the scene and taken to a hospital for treatment.

The two workers held for roughly four hours were released unharmed, police and ambulance officials said.

Details about the gunman’s condition were not released. He has not yet been charged or identified.

Warwickshire Police Superintendent Alex Franklin-Smith said specialist firearms squads and police negotiators rushed to Bermuda Park, the shopping center where the bowling alley is located, when reports of a possible hostage situation came in.

“We are pleased that we were able to bring this incident to a peaceful resolution and that there were no injuries,” he said.

The bowling alley’s operations director, Chris Clegg, said the two hostages were checked by medical personnel and appeared to be fine.

Earlier, Warwickshire police had warned the public to stay away from the shopping center in Nuneaton, about 7.5 miles north of the town of Coventry, but said the problem was not terrorism-related.

UNPOSSIBLE! England doesn’t have guns, so this simply couldn’t have happened there!

Except that it did.

The UK’s strict gun laws haven’t done nearly as much as gun control proponents like to think. If you compared their gun crime rate before their ban to ours at the same time, and guess what you’ll see? A much lower violent crime rate even with guns in civilian hands.

That’s because violence is far more complicated than gun control advocates want to believe. At its root are a number of other factors that need to be addressed, not just the availability of firearms.

That doesn’t even touch on the difference in reporting between the different nations.

Yet through it all, gun rights activists have said time and again that banning guns does not eliminate crime. It doesn’t even eliminate gun crime, and here’s proof. Just one of a myriad of examples from England that proves that even tough gun laws fail to eliminate gun crime.

With that in mind, doesn’t it make more sense to take a deeper look at the causes of violence and deal with those? By addressing the causes at the root, even with guns everywhere, the violence that worries so many will decrease. The great side of this is that it won’t require infringing on the sacred right to keep and bear arms.

Then again, as I’ve pointed out previously, it’s not really about decreasing violence in the first place. It’s about looking like they’re decreasing violence.

Kind of like what their UK counterparts did with about the same effectiveness. Crime is still occurring, only now the good guys who aren’t cops don’t have any way to defend themselves from bigger, stronger, and more aggressive attackers.

Whoops.