The single best identifying characteristic of somebody who has nothing to say is posting an insult based on username. That’s two of you lame-oids in one thread, isn’t it?
He ought to have understood it; he is the one who offered it.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15797305&postcount=38
Nobody suggested it prior to his bringing it up. He just wanted to be adamant about his psychopathic position.
And then…
MeanOldLady, please don’t try to introduce logic into this thread.
I didn’t imply any causation, I just presented the numbers.* Nice attempt at a strawman, though.
*And I think I muffed it a bit–Lobo talks about gun murders, and the article talks about gun crime. Close enough for a response to the likes of Lobo, though.
Randall, you’re lucky you’re not ugly because you sure are dumb.
Obviously banning guns did not CAUSE increased gun violence, and I’m not saying you said that. But that is also not to say because it has increased, that curbing gun ownership did nothing to rein in violence. Crime goes up, prices go up, change happens. So why are you like, “Well crime has gone up after they banned guns, so there you have it, folks. Banning guns is useless!” Talk about not understanding cause/effect relationships.
I cannot confirm or deny I mentioned that purely for “what, seriously ?!” shock value and attention whoring purposes. My attorney will plead the fifth on my behalf.
Better question:
How many murders were there in England last year?
I don’t know, but now that ther are (nearly) no guns in private hands, they’ve started to look at forbidding knives - most murders are now comitted by knife there, these days. They are at the point where carrying a kitchen knife to your neighbors house to help with the cooking could be considered a crime.
Slippery slope, anyone?
But that’s what the pro-gun people claim all the time is the inevitable result of gun control. “Outlaw guns and only outlaws will have guns”, the whole idea that your home is a fortress and you have to be armed to the teeth to keep the lurking hordes of (usually brown) criminals from invading your house & killing & raping everyone.
If 2009 will do (it’s the most recent UN figures for both countries I could find with a quick search)
The UK - 722 in total, or 1.2 for every 100,000 people
The US - 15,399, or 5 murders for every 100,000 people.
By the way, talk of the UK forbidding knives is absolute bollocks. Carrying a knife in a public place unless you’ve got reasonable cause is illegal. So, your scenario (popping round to the neighbours with a roll of knives and a tenderising mallet if you so require) is perfectly legit. Carrying a filleting knife into a pub, not so much.
Oh, and while we’re doing fact checks, in England alone there’s over 1.8 million licensed shotguns and firearms. In Scotland there’s proportionally more, as it’s a more rural population. I’m not sure how a couple of million guns can be classed as “(nearly) no guns in private hands”.
Oh, teleportation, definitely. Then I could simply teleport behind my victims to slaughter them with knives.
People will still rape others despite laws against rape, thus we should legalise rape.
The comparison isn’t perfect, since people do not have a constitutional right to consume alcohol and certain counties ban alcohol. However, we can discuss reasonable limits on alcohol consumption where all parties are represented. For instance, like with guns, there are age restrictions on purchasing alcohol. It is illegal to have an open container of alcohol in public places or vehicles in most states, for instance. It is illegal to drive while under the influence of a certain amount of alcohol. Perhaps as a consequence of this, there has been a decrease in self reports of drunk driving by teenagers (and there are fewer vehicle deaths per mile driven).
Most of these things involve risks to participants who volunteer in taking part, though.
This is an appeal to tradition.
The Daily Mail is a joke. The 1997 bill probably had no impact whatsoever on crime, but there has been a consistent decline in gun crime for the past seven years.
That’s a truly horrendous comparison. You’re comparing gun uses with “regularly getting stoned of your gourd” (which I didn’t know had psychoactive properties). A more accurate comparison would be either to compare guns and drugs (plenty of legal drugs and examples of legal gun ownership and use*), or to compare shooting innocent people and routinely getting stoned.
*Remember, even the most restrictive countries have armed members of the military and some armed units in the constabulary.
Most of the involuntary harm from drug use comes from enforcement, though. Not to mention that most drug related deaths come from drugs which are legal to consume.
Another dishonest comparison. Between a half and a third of Americans have consumed marijuana, which is illegal at the federal level. Far fewer are convicted of theft, violent crime or are unemployed.
Why, that’s barely 0.03 guns per person ! Not good, chaps, not good at all. At this rate you’ll never be safe, you see.
Electrical squash is gonna be a sudden craze.
Would you like to tell me how many mass shootings there have been in Australia since the tightening of gun laws after the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996?
Here’s a hint: less than 1.
Monash University
Wrong. There was a mass shooting at a university in 2002. 7 people shot, 2 killed.
Two mass shootings in six years? Please. We’ve had two mass shooting in one week here in the states … and that isn’t even uncommon.
When the general populace gets as upset with our rapidly vanishing privacy I’ll maybe reconsider our gun laws. There already should be no expectation that your e-mail is private or what you write on a message board such as this, so basically any thoughts that you wouldn’t want your spouse or your boss to know about should not be typed out on the internet. Best stick to snail mail.
The government must love the advent of smart phones and other mobile devices. Better turn them off if you’re going somewhere that you would prefer nobody know about. Search warrants are no longer needed to listen in on our conversations according to the justice department because, you know, there should be no expectation of privacy because wireless communication are out in the open and can’t be secured.
Also here come the Drones! All in the name of our safety and to help in fighting crime and TERRORISM.
Yeah I’m going of on a tangent that isn’t really on topic but for the people here who don’t understand why people like me are so insistent on the right to have guns. That is mine.
The tyranny of the state should be a very real concern for everyone. Also don’t get me started on some of the power hungry fascist who work for the NSA, FBI, DEA, etc.
I’m not some redneck state militia moron. I even briefly considered voting Democrat this past election. 
Just give it some thought before wishing all of the privately held guns would go away.
A silly argument; the government could crush you like a bug if it was so inclined, guns or no guns. Gun ownership was high among the Iraqi populace under Saddam Hussein (we confiscated a lot); he didn’t care, it didn’t threaten his power in any way, and his military was a joke in comparison.
Okay, done. Not seeing how your guns are preventing my loss of civil liberties, while they are simultaneously placing me at increased risk for extremely painful losses.
What are you planning to do, shoot down black helicopters with your glock?