The gun fetishists just won't stop talking foolishness, will they? They've gleefully seized on this story:

Gun crime in England and Wales rose to record levels in the past year, with nearly 200 incidents every week.

There were 10,250 incidents, including 80 murders, involving firearms in the year to April, 276 (about 3 per cent) more than the previous year and double the number recorded five years ago.

The lesson Instapundit draws from this is: "More Gun Control, More Crime." Lee at Right-Thinking from the Left Coast just goes totally unhinged: "Yet more evidence that gun control is an utter, abject failure, no matter where it is tried," he writes.

Ahem.

Here are U.S. gun-crime statistics from the Justice Department.

* Gun crimes in the U.S. per 100,000 population: 124.6

* Gun murders per 100,000 population: 3.9

Now here's the British government's count of the population of England and Wales in 2001: 52,041,916 people.

* 10,250 gun crimes per 52,041,916 people in England and Wales is 19.7 gun crimes per 100,000 population. The U.S. total is 124.6.

* 80 gun murders per 52,041,916 people in England and Wales is 0.2 gun murders per 100,000 population (actually 0.1537222, but I'm rounding up because the number's over 1.5). The U.S. total is 3.9.

Yes, the census figures in England and Wales are for 2001 and the crime stas are for 2002. But you get the idea.

And the very story Insty and Lee were citing included an England/U.S. comparison (with slightly different numbers) -- but I guess they hoped you wouldn't read it.