Biffer Spice: “Absent a felony conviction or mental illness” means what it says–if applicant has no criminal record or mental illness, if there is no compelling reason to deny him a permit, the state or county shall issue one.
And, as an aside, I like Bill Hicks. He was one of my favorite comedians. I have several of his CDs, and he was able to make many astute observations about American culture. But basing policy decisions on what dead comedians have to say is, in my estimation, a poor idea.
Gary: I’m sure it’s a factor, but I don’t think it’s the factor. I’m no expert on British or UK culture, but I’d have to say that Britain has a much lower average population density, less income disparity, a more homogenous population, and so many other cultural factors.
Heck, not too long ago, some teens dragged another into an allow and killed him after slicing off his ear a la “Pulp Fiction.” It’s not like there’s no violent crime in Britain, and the fact that it’s sharp objects rather than guns doesn’t make it any more palatable. And Britain still surpasses the US in terrorist bombings–[url=“http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000921/ts/britain_blast_dc.html”]somebody shot a missile at MI6 headquarters* yesterday!!
Incidentally, in the US last year, as many children under 5 died from drowning in bathtubs and buckets as were killed by handguns.
It’s good to get information from someone who obiously is interested in this issue. However, the statistics used in the articles are a bit convoluted in their reasoning - they remind me most of the statistics tobacco companies used to use in showing there was no definite correlation between smoking and cancer.
I’ve never been a big believer in statistics as answers - you can usually find statistics to prove or disprove anything, when really all numbers do is provide questions rather than answers.
That’s why I’d still be obliged for any opinion you’d have on the question I asked above.
Thanks.
Apologies - our replies overlapped.
. . . maybe one day I can organize my thoughts in one post! 
Gary, it just occurred to me that, in light of the research by Lott that I posted earlier, to the effect that allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed handguns lowers the rate of violent crime, part of the difference in the gun violence rate between the UK and the US might be explained by the increasing efforts over the last 20 years of HCI and other groups to ban guns in more and more places. As people have been less able to obtain guns to protect themselves, the gun death rate has increased because criminals have felt more free to commit crimes. It’s a theory, anyway. If someone has any information about the trends in violent crime and gun violence in the UK and the US since, say, 1981, it might be interesting.
BTW, I can’t recommend enough Lott’s book, “More Guns, Less Crime,” no matter where you sit on this issue. IT at least provides a great deal of food for thought.
cheers pldennison. I would have to agree that to blindly base policy decisions on what anyone says, is probably a poor idea, be they dead comedian, alive comedian, politician, journalist, etc. To listen to someone’s opinion, and, if you agree with it, use their findings to support your own argument is probably not such a poor idea.
pldennison, thanks for the reply:
With 1/4 the population in significantly less than 1/4 the area, I’d suspect Britain does have a population density at least similar to the USA’s, if not greater. Certainly in terms of cities I would be very surprised if LA had a much higher PD than London or Manchester. I also think you’re wrong in terms of income disparity - the contrast in affluence between adjoining streets in London can be appalling, with slums within a couple of blokes of mansions.
That’s very true - no country is fortunate to find itself without some forms of violent crimes. The thing is, guns do make it a lot easier to actually kill someone, perhaps due to the distance they allow between an assailant and a victim. Even if we include all forms of homicide, the USA still has a much higher murder rate than the UK, disproportionately higher. I’m trying to get an accurate figure for this, and for other countries - as it’s only a matter of time before someone accuses me of being on a promotional campaign for Britain.
That’s really down to historical political differences with the Irish. Either that or the student term has just restarted, and it was a bit of a laugh.
That’s no doubt true, but isn’t that an awful lot of children under five being shot? How many was that, as a matter of interest?
Gary, you have stated, “I’ve never been a big believer in statistics as answers,” however you’ve thrown out a disparity in supposed gun crime rates more than once here. Do you think statistics are insufficient to answer questions, and only useful to pose a query? You’ve also asked PLD to back up his assertions with some hard evidence or a study. He’s complied, although you seem to have dismissed his sources out of hand. Now, if we’re to seriously consider your assertion on the disparity in crime rates, perhaps you’d also like to provide some source for your claim.
Without giving your your claim any serious consideration, which I refuse to do until you provide us with more than a bald assertion, I can think of a reason for a disparity in crime rates, or at least a reason why your claim is flawed.
In Point Blank, Dr. Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist, notes the many flaws in equating crime and the availability of guns in the U.S. with other countries. Kleck states it is true, for instance, that Great Britain “does indeed have both stricter gun laws and less homicide than the United States,” but “Britain’s rates of knife homicide and of killings with hands and feet are also far lower than the corresponding rates in the United States,” and “no one is foolish enough to infer from these facts that the lower violence rates were caused by a lower rate of knife ownership in Britain, or to the British having fewer hands and feet than Americans.” Great Britain “had far less violence than the United States long before it had strict gun laws,” and “England’s homicide rate relative to that of the United States was the same or even slightly worse after fifty years of strict gun control.”
Internationally, there is simply no meaningful correlation between violent crime and gun control laws. In such relatively crime-free countries as Switzerland, Israel, and New Zealand, guns are even more available than here in the United States. But in Taiwan and South Africa, two nations that most severely restrict gun ownership (violators are subject to the death penalty), the apolitical murder rates are far higher than in the U.S.
I think you are making mistake in linking cause and effect. The above seems to indicate that restrictive gun controls in England have no effect on violent crime.
I don’t have last year’s numbers at hand, but I do have this. From Dave Kopel (law professor at New York University) and Eugene Volokh (law professor at UCLA): “… according to the National Safety Council, in 1995 there were about 30 fatal gun deaths of kids aged 0 to 4 and fewer than 40 kids aged 5 to 9.”
So, we have less than 70 kids nine years old, or younger. While each of these is a tragedy, there simply isn’t the number of children dying of gunshots that the U.S. media or Whitehouse would have you believe.
IIRC, it was 42 for each category, but I don’t have my source material handy. I’ll verify at home later this evening.
Hey now don’t get me wrong I like England and English people very much. Matter of fact they are my favorite country besides the US. And I do like hot tea sometime. But since this is the “pit” I thought I should throw out “pit” type remarks.
Now for some reasons why in the US there are more gun deaths. First, I think people in England (according to the movie “European Vacation” are generally less prone to violence then say your average US citizen. (hey, its an feasible) Second, we have guns. If we didn’t have guns, there would be more knife deaths. Third if you were successful in taking all of guns then England might try to get us back. 
And Glee,
Nice to meet ya too!
What does this have to do with whether or not there are handguns in England? You either lied about England having NO handguns, or don’t know enough about the issues at hand to even debate them properly. Two choices, pick one.
No, I’m sick to shit of Brits repeating the same old refrain of “we don’t have any guns over here”, or “unlike you barbaric Amerikans, our police don’t carry any guns”, when it is a lie. They DO have and carry guns (not ALL of them, and not nearly as prevelantly as in the US, but some do), and there ARE guns in England. I have seen them with my own eyes, and I don’t even freaking live there. Either admit I am right about this, or go away.
Yes, I admit (take notes everybody) that if all other things were equal, IMO, gun related crime will be much greater in America than in England. I think that criminals will use the tools at hand, whether that be gun, knife, or mortar.
I think the lion’s share of the difference is societal, however. I think if we took 10,000 persons from the UK and put them into a “colony” in the US under US laws, that even with the same availability of guns, this group would have a much lower-rate of gun-related crime. Until they became fully acclimated into the “I’m not responsible for my own actions fuck everyone else” society we have today in the US.
And I also think that some level of gun-related crime is a societal cost that is associated with a societal right to have guns. I for one am willing to accept that cost in return to retain my right to defend my own life and defend myself from being raped.
I choose option 3. Ignore you and carry on discussing things in a rational non-points-scoring manner with people who are interested in the actual issue rather than Brit-bashing.
Cheers
As a rule, our police don’t carry guns. We have specialist Armed Response Units who are only ever called out to attend incidents involving firearms.
The gun toting police you saw at the airport were probably there in response to a (recent-ish) spate of terrorist incidents involving high profile targets (e.g. Heathrow Airport). These “targets” were on high security alert. We were as surprised as you were to see them.
Now see, that it what should have been said from the start.
Great! I have no issues at all with that.
Because a society with more freedoms requires more personal responsibility from it’s members. For a very long portion of it’s history, America was a society that valued and cherished personal responsibility. With the rapid decline and near non-existance of these values in many areas of society, there is an imbalance of the “freedom with responsibility” equation. There are two paths you can go by to restore the balance - you can focus on one side, the other, or both:
Side topic - guess which one of the two is easier for politicians to do, BTW?
I personally want as much freedom as possible, with as much responsibility as possible. America used to have a much more widespread common use (NOT ownership mind you, but common use) of firearms, with a much lower gun-related crime rate.
I could use my city where I live as an example - Overland Park, Kansas.
Kansas City Cities Comparative crime rates
Overland Park, Kansas, has some of the most lenient gun laws in the entire United States - everything is allowed that you would find elsewhere in the US except concealed carry. Overland Park Kansas is a major metropolitan suburb, with a population of 138,000 in 1998. In 1998, it had a murder rate of 2. That’s right, 2. Olathe, right next door to us (bordering us, actually) with a population of 83,403, had exactly 1 murder in 1998. And that one was with a knife - it made the news, since these are so uncommon here.
Wow - all those people, some of the most lenient gun laws in the country, nay, the World - and in 221,403 persons in 1998 there were a total of 3 murders. And note - this is out here in the barbaric “Wild West America” that is soooooo sneered at by Europeans. Can one therefore draw the conclusion that more lenient gun laws would lower our murder rate? Of course not. Not any more so than one could say stricter gun laws would raise our crime rate.
You will notice a rate of 130 murders in KC MO (Kansas City, Missouri). What it doesn’t say is that KC MO has relatively strict regulations of firearms, especially for handguns. Also, KC MO is demographically a very different city than Overland Park or Olathe, even though Overland Park nearly borders KCMO (only about 2 miles away). So what conclusions do you draw from this?
My problem with Eurpoeans in general is reflected in Biffer’s post, which is why I responded like I did. It’s bad enough to be sneered at for being a society of “gun crazed death-loving whackos” over here, but when people decide to lie or deliberately or accidentally mis-state the issue on there side (“no guns in England”, et al) it pisses this “barabaric” American off. And it’s not very polite to do so, either.
A couple of weeks ago a bunch of my chums got banned for making “pit” type remarks. I suppose the difference was that they were Brits and they were being critical of the US. I should be grateful I wasn’t banned - even though it means I’ve been branded “gay” by all of them…
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A couple of weeks ago a bunch of my chums got banned for making “pit” type remarks. I suppose the difference was that they were Brits and they were being critical of the US. I should be grateful I wasn’t banned - even though it means I’ve been branded “gay” by all of them… **
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Ignore that, I’m tired, ratty and in pain. It’s time to go home.
I’m off to throw empty bottles at motorway traffic.
That’s a deliberate mischaracterization, sloblok. Your friends were banned, temporarily I might add, for ignoring forum rules, and when advised of those same rules, choosing to flaunt them anyway and disrupting the board with multiple attacks on the administration. Get your facts straight. On this this issue as well as the subject of the debate at hand.
No harm, no foul, Beer. He knows he was misrepresenting the facts.