During the January 1 broadcast of his Newsradio 850 KOA show, host “Gunny” Bob Newman repeatedly made the false claim that homicide and armed robbery rates in England and Australia have “gone through the roof” since they imposed significant restrictions on gun ownership. In fact, following September 30, 1997 -- the deadline for England's and Australia's buy-backs on banned guns -- England initially experienced increases in the homicide rate and number of armed robberies involving firearms, before seeing a decrease in recent years. In Australia, there has been an overall steady decline in homicide and armed robbery rates since the passage of its gun-control laws.

When a caller in favor of gun control wrongly claimed that police in England do not carry weapons, Newman asked her if she had “checked the crime rate -- the murder and armed robbery rate -- in England since they banned guns.” He then claimed, “It has gone through the roof. The same thing happened in Australia when they banned most guns down there. The crime rate with firearms went through the roof ... ”

Statistics, however, contradict Newman's assertion.

Australia began its recent reform of gun-control laws in 1996 by instituting a gun buy-back plan during an amnesty period that ended on September 30, 1997. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology's Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics, the armed robbery rate (per 100,000 people) showed a marked decline after the amnesty period expired. That drop was followed by a short spike in 2000, but Australia's armed robbery rate has been trending downward since 2001.

Australia's homicide rate (per 100,000 people) saw a similar decline. After the amnesty period ended in 1997, the homicide rate dropped, followed by a short climb in 1998. Since 1999, the homicide rate generally has been declining, with the 256 total homicides recorded in 2004 being the lowest number since 1993. Furthermore, “The percentage of homicides committed with a firearm continued a declining trend begun in 1969. In 2003, fewer than 16 percent of homicides involved firearms. The figure was similar in 2002 and 2001, down from a high of 44 percent in 1968,” according to the Australian Institute of Criminology's "Facts and Figures 2005."

A November 2006 study, published in the scientific journal Injury Prevention, found that "[i]n the 18 years before the gun law reforms [in Australia], there were 13 mass shootings in Australia, and none in the 10.5 years afterwards." In addition, the study noted that "[t]he rates per 100 000 of total firearm deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides all at least doubled their existing rates of decline after the revised gun laws."

Although England's homicide rate experienced some annual increases since 1997 -- increases explained partly by implementation of new crime reporting standards -- the rate has not “gone through the roof,” as Newman asserted. In 1997 -- the year Britain passed the Firearms Act -- the homicide rate in England and Wales was 11.8 per million people. That homicide rate increased slightly for the two years following the Firearms Act (1998-99 and 1999-2000) to 12.5 and 13.0, respectively, and then to around 15 for the following two years, before reaching a high of 18.2 in 2002-03, after a National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was instituted. But the English-Welsh homicide rate dropped back down to around 15 in 2003-04 and 2004-05.

A British Home Office report titled "Violent Crime Overview, Homicide and Gun Crime 2004/2005" noted that reported crime statistics were directly affected by implementation of the National Crime Recording Standard, which resulted in significant changes in counting rules in 1998, and again when new crime recording standards were established in 2002:

Changes to the Counting Rules in 1998 had a significant impact on violent crime, which increased by 83 per cent in the first year of the new rules (Povey et al., 1999). The introduction of the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) in April 2002 again resulted in increased recording of violent crimes, particularly less serious violence ...

Additionally, local police activity and priorities can affect the levels of reported and recorded violent crime. Recent analysis by the Metropolitan Police Service found that half of the increase in violence against the person offences between 2003/04 and 2004/05 was due to proactive policing (MPS, 2005).

Further complicating the trend in England's homicide rate* was a recording anomaly in 2002-03. Of the 953 recorded homicides in 2002-2003 (133 more recorded homicides in England than in any other year), 172 were victims of serial killer Dr. Harold Shipman, who was apprehended in September 1998. The first report from the public inquiry into the Shipman murders was published in July 2002. From 2001-02 to 2002-03, the number of recorded homicides increased by 149 (from 804 to 953), but Shipman's victims -- none of whom was killed during that same year -- account for all of that increase and more. Had the Shipman murders not been recorded that year, the homicide rate would have remained in line with the previous two years and the two years after.

Since 1997-98 (excluding the 172 Shipman killings in 2002-03), the number of recorded homicides in England and Wales ranges from a low of 608 (in 1997-98) to a high of 820 (in 2004-05), a difference of 212 homicides. While that represents a nearly 35 percent increase, a January 2006 British Crime Survey (BCS) report noted that, as a result of new counting rules and crime reporting standards, “the proportion of BCS reported incidents recorded by the police has increased from 36 per cent in 1999 to 67 per cent in 2004-05.” In addition, a July 2005 BCS report noted that "[t]he proportion of BCS violence incidents reported to the police has increased from 29.7 per cent in 1981 to 45.6 per cent in 2004/05. This increase has been particularly marked in the last few years." In other words, the BCS is finding that more people in recent years have been reporting violent crimes to police and/or law enforcement authorities have been recording more reported crimes.

According to the British Home Office's crime statistics for England and Wales, violent crime overall has significantly declined since 1995. The Home Office's 2004-2005 report on crime in England and Wales states that "[v]iolent crime as measured by the BCS has fallen by 43 per cent since a peak in 1995, an estimated 1.8 million fewer incidents."

More specifically, the British Home Office's "Violent Crime Overview, Homicide and Gun Crime 2004/2005," shows that, although the number of robberies “in which [legal, illegal, and imitation] firearms were reported to have been used" nearly doubled from 1998-99 to 2001-02, the number has steadily fallen since 2002-03, and, by 2005, had almost returned to the lower 1998 level.

From the January 1 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Gunny Bob Show:

NEWMAN: Do you think people -- do you think Americans should have a right to own guns?

CALLER: If they want to go hunting, but what do we need a gun other than that for?

NEWMAN: Self-defense, target practice, collection.

CALLER: You know, that really leaves a really large field that I think makes us where we're at today. We see so much violence on TV, we see so much violence on videos that our kids see, that it opens it up that this is a fair game.

NEWMAN: So shouldn't we --

CALLER: I don't think that's right.

NEWMAN: -- shouldn't we ban all violence in the media, since that is causing it? Shouldn't we have to greatly reduce our First Amendment rights, then, since that is the true cause, according to you?

CALLER: You know, I'm not necessarily sure that that's the right -- I just think there needs to be a balance of some kind in the fact -- England does not have guns. Their police don't even carry weapons.

NEWMAN: Uh, that's completely false. Uh, matter of fact, many of their police carry weapons. As a matter of fact, when a police officer in England approaches you, if he is armed, he must say “armed” -- two words -- “armed police.” He must announce himself that way. And have you checked the crime rate -- the murder and armed robbery rate -- in England since they banned guns? Have you checked it, [Caller]?

CALLER: No, I have not, I have not.

NEWMAN: It has gone through the roof. The same thing happened in Australia when they banned most guns down there. The crime rate with firearms went through the roof, [Caller], because --

CALLER: So, what you're saying is --

NEWMAN: -- the criminals don't care about the law. That's why they're called “criminals.”

CALLER: And I understand that, but most average people do, but most of the criminals are the ones who were shooting and killing people.

NEWMAN: So why don't we deal --

CALLER: It's not the average people --

NEWMAN: -- so why don't we deal more harshly with the criminals instead of taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens? Why punish the innocent?

[...]

NEWMAN: The old saying is quite true: If you, uh, you know, if you ban -- if you ban guns, the criminals are going to be the ones who end up with the guns.

CALLER: Exactly. Uh, I know Colorado has concealed carry.

NEWMAN: Yep.

CALLER: Missouri does. And it's statistically proven, with that, your crime's going to go down. Just like you said in England, they did away with it, and it went up.

NEWMAN: It went through the roof. Same thing in Australia. But people don't like to hear facts like that. And they don't have to believe me; they can look it up themselves, it's right there.

[...]

NEWMAN: Now, if we would think -- you know, if more of us were armed, and -- but also knew how to use the firearms, had proper training, you know, and had -- because you can't just hand somebody a gun and say, “OK, defend yourself.” In my view, they also need training, which is very, very important in my view. But if we would simply look at it that way, fewer criminals, I think, would be pulling guns on us. And to give evidence of this, when you look at Australia and England, which have almost banned guns entirely, taking guns, most guns, away from the average citizen, the murder rate and the armed robbery rate -- uh, rate, rates -- have gone right through the roof, because the criminals know that the law-abiding citizens don't have guns anymore.

*Another factor affecting any comparison of England's violent crime rates is the fact that they are expressed in terms of per million population, whereas the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation calculates crime rates “by first dividing the total aggregated offense estimates by the aggregated populations covered by contributing [law enforcement] agencies and then multiplying the resulting figure by 100,000.”

To put England's 2005 homicide rate in perspective, compare it with that of the United States by taking the U.S. Census Bureau's estimated U.S. population for July 2005 (296.5 million) and calculating the 2005 U.S. homicide rate in terms of per million population. The number of U.S. murders in 2005 was 15,495, which would put the U.S. murder rate per million at 52.2 (15,495/296,500,000 x 1,000,000), compared with Britain's 15.5. To put England's rate in terms of per 100,000 population, excluding the anomalous year of 2002/03, England's steepest rate climb since implementing the 1997 gun restrictions was from 1.2 to 1.5 murders per 100,000 population.