Disarmed Britons Helpless Against Rioters
A leading Second Amendment scholar was interviewed about the loss of gun rights in the United Kingdom and the early August riots there by “Guns & Patriots” on Aug. 13, four days after returning from Great Britain.
“The Labor Party immediately jumped on the riots and blamed them on the austerity budget cuts of the Conservative Party,” said Prof. Joyce Lee Malcolm, who teaches courses on common law and the Constitution, specifically the Second Amendment, at George Mason University Law School in Fairfax, Va. “But, they pulled that back because it became quickly obvious that it was sheer hooliganism.”
Malcolm, who is the author of several books, including To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right and Guns and Violence: The English Experience, said she and her husband were having a holiday in Scotland, so while they were not in the English cities experiencing mayhem, she was able to follow the events in the British media in real time.
“While I was there, the riots spread from London to Manchester and Birmingham, so there was a lot of copycat criminality going on,” Malcolm said. “People were shocked.”