No, Dear, a National Increase in Gun Crime.

There's a difference that UK politicians (most politicians, in fact) just can't seem to get through their heads.

Mayor defends town after three gun raids

A MAYOR is urging people to continue visiting her town and denied it had turned into the "Wild West" after three armed robberies in less than three weeks.

Mayor Ann Thomas said she was "absolutely shocked" at the spate of robberies in Haverhill, but felt it was part of a national increase in gun culture rather than a particular problem in the town itself.

What people like this refuse to understand is that there are two gun cultures. Three, if your society has done what the UK has managed. The first gun culture is the culture of responsible use. Normally this culture includes self-defense, but in the UK they've managed to pretty much quash that until almost none of the few remaining licensed gun owners will make a peep in public about defending themselves with a firearm. That gun culture has been eviscerated.

The second gun culture is the predatory one. What politicians refuse to understand is that "gun control" can only destroy the good "gun culture." The second culture is about power, not responsibility, and "gun control" for them basically means "easier pickings."

Ann Thomas is one of those people who sees an increase in sport shooting as something ominous - because it means an "increase in gun culture." She is one who cannot separate "violent and predatory" from "violent but protective."

So of course she holds elective office.

In an interesting associated note, the Albuquerque Tribune reports in an op-ed that a bit over 10% of the 63 homicides recorded in Albuquerque last year were self-defense. One assumes that they were all shootings, but at least three of the five incidents definitely were. One wonders that if 10% of the homicides were self-defense, how many other incidents of self-defense with a firearm occurred in which no one was shot? And one wonders what Mayor Thomas would think.

(h/t to Front Sight, Press for the informative and interesting links.