If you watched any of the recent segments by Piers Morgan on guns, you certainly came across how he proudly waves the stat that only fifty or so people are killed annually in England by guns vs. the 11,000-plus that are killed in the United States. Mr. Morgan points to Britain's tough gun laws of 1997 as the reason why the numbers are low.

But there are three major problems with his proud number:

     1)  If you look at page 32 of this recent UK Home Office report you will see that total Homicides in the U.K. in the years and decades before 1997, were lower than in the States. In other words, it's not as if 2,000 people were gunned down annually in England before the ban and now the numbers came crashing down to fifty a year. Their total homicide rate, by gun or knife, was for decades a fraction compared to the United States.

   2) In all but one year since 1997, more people have been murdered in the UK than in 1997 (look at page 31 of the above-linked report). So total homicides did not come down despite the Gun Ban. If you want to argue that total murders are up only due to population growth while the rate per 100K is down, wrong again. The numbers are stuck for more than two decades give or take a fraction, while in the United States the rate did drop substantially since 1997 despite people buying "high capacity" magazine guns or whatever it is that the Left hates.

    3) Finally, this is a point that everyone makes yet Mr. Morgan decides to ignore: Violent Crimes in the UK is the worst in Europe and is worse than in many third world countries. These sickening numbers started to shape up post 1997. Similiar numbers happened in Australia since their 1996 gun restrictions.

For one Tweet: UK homicides were way lower than US even before 1997; Homicides there are up since '97 and violent crimes rocketed since then.

Note: When people speak of "crime in the UK," it usually refers to England and Wales combined