Amanpour: "After [a school massacre in] Dunblane, they put in these bans, they put in these punishments, fines, jail sentences, etc., and it's true that straight afterward there wasn't a huge change, but 2002, 2003 until 2011 the rate plummeted by 44 percent."So what really happened in Britain? What Amanpour conveniently failed to mention was that the handgun ban went into effect on Jan. 1, 1997. After that, the rate of murders went up sharply for seven years.It is true that the homicide rate fell after 2003, but that was clearly following a dramatic increase after the ban. Indeed, 15 years after the ban, the homicide rate was still slightly higher than it was before the ban in 1996. For 14 of the 15 years after the ban, the murder rate was higher than it was in 1996.Nor is it clear that the drop after 2002 and 2003 can be attributed to the handgun ban. More likely it was the effect of a large, 13 percent increase in the number of police who started in 2002.
