“Between April and November 2001, the number of murders in the Metropolitan Police area [London] committed with a firearm soared by almost 90% over the same period a year earlier,” the BBC News reports.

Armed street robberies rose, in the same period, from 435 to 667 in 2001 – an increase of 53% – while overall in the capital there were 45,255 street robberies and snatches last year, against 32,497 in 2000.

Much of the blame has been pinned on the trade in stolen mobile phones and up to half of all muggings are now thought to be for mobiles.

Or, as many libertarians will tell you, much of “the blame” has to do with criminals — unconcerned, it seems, with silly paper “bans” on handguns — learning that they now call the shots, so to speak:

[…] only a few years ago the British government led a rigid crackdown on gun ownership.

Following the Dunblane massacre in 1996, in which 16 schoolchildren were killed by a lone gunman, the government hoped to nip in the bud Britain’s burgeoning firearms culture with an outright ban on handguns.

Although all privately-owned handguns in Britain are now officially illegal, the tightened rules seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld.

Imagine that.

Create a city filled with docile, fatted sheep and you’re bound to attract a few packs of enterprising and unscrupulous wolves happy to feast on them.

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