Posted by Phil Lee (216.250.238.47) on November 18, 2000 at 19:31:
With regard to handgun registration and licensing around the world, it is completely inaccurate to state the countries of the world embarked on handgun registration and owner licensing as a public safety measure in the modern sense of the term. The motivation for these measures had little to do with preventing ordinary armed crime, but were in fact enacted in the post World War 1 period to prevent civil uprisings as had occurred in Russia. I quote here from the Report of Committee on the Control of Firearms (graphic PDF -- 3Mbytes), written by Home Office officials in 1918, an unpublished secret report (text transcription PDF -- 62Kbytes) made to the Minister of Reconstruction:
"We regard the whole position as one of considerable gravity. There are two distinct categories of person from whom danger is to be apprehended, viz., (1) the savage or semi-civilised tribesman in outlying parts of the British Empire, whose main demand is for rifles and ammunition, and (2) the anarchist or ‘intellectual’ malcontent of the great cities, whose weapons are the bomb and the automatic pistol. There is some force in the view ... that the latter will in future prove the more dangerous of the two. At any rate, his activities will call for unceasing vigilance, and very special precautions will be necessary to control the trade in automatic pistols, which, apart from their extreme deadliness, are, by reason of their size and shape, more easily smuggled than any other type of weapon."
This report led to the Firearms Act 1920, which forms the basis of the current control of firearms in the United Kingdom today. Similar provisions were also enacted throughout the British Empire, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand for essentially the same reasons. These provisions also form the basis of their current control of firearms.