So what are the stats for ‘light sabre’ deaths?!! :dubious:
well as an australian i can tell you that people still get shot here on a fairly regular basis and while the law seems able to stop people who obey the law from owning firearms unfortunatly those who dont obey the law pretty much do as they like
go figure
as a warning to you, all those who think they can buy safety by giving away the rights of others soon find themselves with no rights and no safety either
what did hitler and stalin have in commen?
30million+victims and a firm belief in gun control
Both Hitler and Stalin also liked beer. And ate eggs. They had a firm belief that the world was round, not flat, and they believed in electricity.
Obviously, we should outlaw beer and eggs and electricity.
Here’s an example of our gun laws in action:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/3985231.stm
Now bear in mind that everyone who was caught with a gun faces a MINIMUM mandatory sentence of five years in jail.
That concentrates the mind wonderfully, and explains why the only people who have illegal guns nowadays are people who are probably looking at that sort of jail time for their other activities.
The people that those people would use guns on are others like themselves.
For some reason this myth seems to be very popular, but in fact gun control predates the nazis. All they did was ease regulations significantly in the Reichswaffengesetz (arms law) of 1938 with the purpose of arming the population and supporting the arms industry.
Maybe this is completely off the point of this discussion but for the UK as a whole the activities of paramilitaries in Northern Ireland i assume would have a significant impact on gun crime statistics. I have no cite for this, but over the last 30 years and especially since 1993 violent crime is this colourful corner of the UK must have declined. anyway… that’s all i wanted to say. thanks for listening.
How large is “large”? My city is 160,000. But how valid is it to compare that to England and Wales?
Here’s a good link:
http://overlandpark.areaconnect.com/crime1.htm
What’s notable is that Overland Park has about the least restrictions of firearms ownership and carrying that you will find in the US. You can walk into any gun store here and walk out with an AK47 or AR15, any amount of ammunition, and handguns galore. And yet…only 2 murders. And that rate of “2” is not exactly atypical, IIRC we’ve gone a couple of years with “0”. Why is that, exactly?
The reason, of course, is because you cannot compare an single city and its gun laws by itself with any other situation or region. However, it is telling as it shoots down the fallacy of “increased gun access always means more deaths”.
For the person who’s 29 and never witnessed a violent crime - another sample size of 1. I know people in the US who are older than you who have never witnessed a violent crime. I’ve not spent no more than 6 months in the UK and I’ve witnessed 2 violent crimes - physical assaults on the Tube, one of them fairly violent that had the two of us afraid we were going to be hurt.
Thus we must focus primarily on broader indicators.
In the interest of Fact, my “160,000” should read “150,000”. Typo.
Northern Ireland should be excluded from all studies about gun activity in the UK, not only because of the paramilitaries but because guns are not illegal there.
I don’t have the figures to hand but up to about 1990 the entire death toll in northern Ireland (including bombs etc) ie 20 years or more’s total was still lower than that for one year in Atlanta.
Large areas of Northern Ireland were amongst the safest places in the WORLD to live during the terrorist war.
To put this in context, the greatest loss of life by British Citizens in a terrorist incident was on the 11th of September in America.
Draconian laws are usually passed ***after * ** some incident and not before. One would suspect that it wasn’t a sparcity of guns that lead to such laws.
Yes, but it was 20 years ago , they don’t roll over deaths for decades. :rolleyes: You could also check out DC, though it will be interesting to watch what happens when the ban ends. I think the handgun ban there just ended or is about to…
From a European perspective the US view on gun control is rather bizarre.
The reference to the recent crime increase in UK, seems raher selective, since most countries in Western Europe for decades have had very strict gun laws compared to the US - and far less crime.
In Norway, where I live, the gun laws have been restrictive for a long time. Private gun permits are only granted to registered marksmen and hunters. And a person is only allowed to bear a firearm in connection with hunting or organised shooting. With regard to using a firearm against intruders in a person home, I belive Norway have similar laws and practices as in England. You are entitled to use a handgun only if this is a necessary precaution to guard the life of yourself or others. To be allowed to shoot intruders even if your own life is not in danger is in my book to allow private executions of burglars - barbaric.
The overall crime rate in Norway is overall far lower than the US. The murder rate per capita per year is around 1 per 100 000.
I belive it is raher self-evident that liberal gun laws and practices would increase crime, not the other way around. The result of firing a gun on a person is obviously quite often death, compared to an attack with other weapons (knives, bats etc) or no weapon at all. As far as I know most murder victims in the US (as in Norway) are killed by a family member or other person close to them. Hence the availibility of guns in private homes, will most liekly dramatically increase the risk of a lethal result of domestic disputes.
Oscar5
Norway
Obviously, a study of shootings omits the vast majority of defensive firearm use (criminal threatens honest citizen, honest citizen gives criminal a look down a gun barrel, criminal rushes off in search of clean underwear). That’s why nobody takes this Kellerman rot seriously.
He did – drove his poor landlady to distraction with his habit of indoor marksmanship practice (among other things).
A quick Google search turned up this commentary (DOC format) on firearms in the Canon (and Victorian London generally):
Thus, a case based on distinguishing between “modern” times and earlier history needs to put the line well into the twentieth century.
glee writes:
> In 30+ years in London and 15+ in the countryside, I have never seen a gun,
> fired a gun or even heard one being fired. Nobody I know has ever owned a
> gun, or expressed any interest in them. (I did witness an armoured car robbery
> once - the criminals were armed with wooden clubs.)
> Only in the last 10 years have I seen an armed policeman. (They carry guns at
> major airports, and to protect dignitaries.)
For what it’s worth, it should be pointed out that there are large portions of the U.S. where it’s also rare to see a gun (with the one exception that the police and some security guards carry guns). I’m 52. I spent the first eighteen years of my life on a farm in Ohio and have lived in the Washington, D.C. suburbs for twenty of the last twenty-three years. I also lived for three years each in Sarasota, Florida and Austin, Texas and for four years in Columbus, Ohio. (I lived for three years in England, but I won’t be counting that for the purposes of my American experiences.) Other than seeing guns in the holsters of policemen, security guards, and maybe some soldiers (and never once did they draw or shoot those guns), the only guns I have ever seen are the following:
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The Japanese rifle that my father brought back from World War II. I don’t believe it’s had any ammunition in it since he brought it back. My cousin who collects military memorabilia bought it a couple of years ago.
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Some people hunting near my family’s farm when I was young, although I believe that that is getting rare now.
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Kids shooting B-B guns when I was young, and I believe that is also getting rare now.
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I’ve probably also seen guns in museums, but those obviously weren’t working models.
I have never heard anyone I know discuss whether they keep a gun in their house. This doesn’t, of course, mean that none of them has a gun in their house, but they certainly never mention it. No one that I know ever discusses hunting or anything else to do with guns.
Not really. Even assuming that such references are a reasonably factual account of gun ownerserhip within a certain class, neither Holmes or Watson could really be described as one of the masses.
Well.
This thread has wandered off a ways from Tony Martin and Joyce Lee Malcolm.
I won’t try to steer it back, but would like to add a data point.
Tim Lambert has done a pretty good job of researching and summarizing recent self-defense cases in the UK, and has a post discussing Malcolm’s belief that self-defense is no longer recognized there (at least in the case of burglars).
Bottom line: Cecil’s summary of self-defense law in the UK appears to be about on the money.
Welcome, oscar5. We’re happy to hear your viewpoint. I just want to make the comment that it is also generally illegal here in the United States to use deadly force, with any instrument, not just a firearm, unless one truly believes one is in immediate and mortal danger. There are, I believe only a couple of our states which give its citizens the right to use deadly force for the protection of property alone. And in those rare cases, you can be sure there’ll be a court hearing.
Street crime jumped up in Britain from 1999 onwards due to the popularity of mobile phones with school children. Instead of having kids walking around with a few pounds for their lunch they were walking to school with a £100 phone in their pocket. Most of these weren’t reported though because most children use pay-as-you-go phones which aren’t usually insured. The people doing the mugging were sometimes crackheads severely in debt desperate for some money but often teenagers.
This resulted in a large number of children carrying a knife around with them but most either just stopped carrying them around with them or just put up with it and replaced the phone. Many muggers started threatening with knives, but it was very rare to be mugged at gunpoint. This did lead to people being a lot more concerned about their safety on the streets though.
Personally, I have found the number of people robbing for phones on the streets much less in the past couple of years. This is partly due to being older (14 year old boys were the most likely target), partly due to the stricter laws on reprogramming phones meaning most stolen phones are only useful in other countries and probably partly due to the police walking around on the streets a bit more rather than just driving around.
As for gun crime, I live in St Pauls in Bristol, which is a predominantly Jamaican area famous for its crack dealing. Violent crime does occur on a regular basis including shootings every now and then but it is almost always either gangs shooting each other or drug dealers making examples out of crackheads who haven’t paid up. There have been 3 instances in the past few years of an alleged ‘gun sighting’ where somebody who thought they saw someone with a gun phoned the police. In every case it involved the entire street being shut down for a day or two with armed police pointing assault rifles at the suspected house - clearing out all the residents - and waiting for the person to come out. All of them ended without anyone getting hurt and only one or two of these times was there actually a gun.
The recent shooting in Nottingham and that New Year one in Birmingham make the headlines because they are so rare. The vast majority of killings are gang-related or drug-related which is why so many people want drugs to be distributed by the government rather than the gangs.
Also there seems to be a bit of confusion between cause and effect. Tougher gun laws are likely to be cause by an increase in gun crime, not the other way around.