We must treat buying acid like the US does guns

As I trawled the internet for information about acid attacks yesterday – not to make sense of this inhuman criminal craze, which would be impossible, but to understand its roots – I learned a few things.

In 19th-century England, it became common enough an occurrence to be given a name: vitriolage. It was usually motivated by jealousy or rejection, and women were its primary victims. Today, vitriol attacks still occur in Pakistan, Bangladesh and the UK, and a good many US websites and message boards put its rise in Britain down to the fact that we “can’t access guns”.

While it’s hard to see this as being a constitutional failing on our part – and Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, promised at the weekend to ensure that those who used acid as a weapon felt “the full force of the law” – the gun parallel isn’t as mad as it initially sounds. After all, the same argument used in a country that sometimes seems to love its guns more than life itself could be made here in Britain: you might not be able ban noxious liquids and corrosive substances, but you can make them much harder to get hold of – even impossible for anyone under 21.

In the wrong hands, acid might not take a life, but it’s more than capable of ruining one.