UK father and son arrested for selling guns out of "armory"

LightFieldStudios/iStock/Getty Images Plus

I’ve been told countless times that the reason the UK has such a low rate of gun crime is because of their super-strict gun control laws. Criminals, they say, simply can’t get guns.

Advertisement

The thing is, we know that’s not true.

For one thing, the non-gun homicide rate in the US is higher than the UK’s total homicide rate.

For another, if there’s a market for guns, someone will find a way to provide for that market. People like these two:

A father and son who provided guns to gangsters from a weapons armoury based at their village family home have been sentenced after admitting firearms offences.

Paul Glynn, 52, and his son Joseph, 18, were arrested after police recovered a dozen illegal firearms from their property in Langley Park, County Durham.

A court heard several handguns, along with shotguns and ammunition, were found after being hidden around the house and even under one of the beds.

Durham Police said their house on Lambton Street was being used as an ‘armoury for criminals’ to equip them with deadly firearms.

The shotguns discovered during the raid in November were also believed to have been stolen from a farm in Northumbria.

Do you mean to tell me that UK criminals will steal guns, then sell them to other criminals just like here in the United States?

I’m shocked. Absolutely shocked.

The UK doesn’t have a total gun ban. I can’t think of anywhere where guns are completely and totally banned. There’s always a way for someone to get a firearm, even if it’s just the elites. As such, there will always be someone who has a firearm for whatever reason.

Because of that, someone else is going to be more than willing to steal those guns and sell them to people who shouldn’t lawfully have them.

Advertisement

Nothing in the UK’s gun regulations can prevent that, either. After all, it’s already illegal to steal things, including guns. It’s illegal to sell stolen goods in most places. It’s illegal to sell guns without a license in the UK and many other places.

So I’d love it if someone could answer a question for me: What good in preventing this kind of thing would yet another gun control law accomplish?

I only ask because most of those things are already illegal here in the US as well, and yet gun control advocates keep pretending that if we pass one more gun control law, suddenly we’d have safety and security, that our inner cities’ streets wouldn’t run red with blood, and so on.

So far, I’ve seen nothing that actually supports that, though, in part because I pay attention to crime in the UK, which has laws many of our gun control advocates would likely forfeit body parts to get here in this country. Criminals continue to get guns. They get them from all over the place, despite being an island with relatively controlled points of entry.

Guns aren’t the problem. The sooner we come to terms with that and recognize that the issue is bad people and their wanting guns, the sooner we can start working on a solution.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Sponsored