This one time, at gun camp, I…
I think quite a few people in Belfast would disagree.
Beyond that, they don’t have all that many guns in the UK.
At this point in the US considering how many guns the US has, imposing gun control laws similar to what Washington DC had before the Heller decision would strike me like locking the barn door after the horse has escaped.
In fact, such laws in Washinton DC were pretty useless and since they were ruled unconstitutional I don’t think we’ve seen crime sky rocket.
Anybody for locking the barn doors before we load it up with horses again?
Here is the demographic breakdown by ‘race’ in the UK:
Yes, they are diverse…relatively speaking. But they aren’t close to as diverse as the US. Hell, we have more ‘white’ types of people than they do. 
Eh, someone would just shoot the lock off anyway.
Sure they are, unless you count Hispanics as a totally separate group.
You did notice that ‘white’ people make up over 92% of the population in the UK, according to that cite…right? Even if you want to toss in all the Hispanics into the ‘white’ category you can’t get the US up to that. You need to toss in our president and every one who has an even slightly pale complexion as ‘white’ to get us close to that here (blacks alone make up over 13% of the US population…compared to less than 8% if you count everyone not ‘white’ in the UK as ‘black’).
Come on…it’s a silly point and it doesn’t work. Yeah, the UK is diverse…but, let’s get real here. They aren’t in the same league as us diversity wise and you know it. Right?
White people are 72% of our population, not including people who identified as mixed-race. What difference do you think that 20% makes vis-a-vis gun control?
A hell of a lot of difference, to be honest. Especially when you consider that even our ‘white’ people come from a truly diverse selection of nations, while theirs comes mostly from places in the UK (i.e. Wales, Southern England, Scotland, Middle England and Ireland). We have ‘white’ folks from pretty much every country in Europe (and everywhere else ‘white’ folks live) INCLUDING all of those regions in the UK (many of which alone bring all sorts of angst and tension, such as the Irish verse the English head butting)…and that’s just one ‘race’ that you are blocking all together.
Seriously, you don’t think there is more racial type tension in the US with or without guns than in some place like the UK? And that this tension translates into more violence? You figure we are like we are simply because we’re ‘allowed’ to have guns?? 
The UK has 12,711 racially motivated hate crimes last year. The US had 4,057 in 2009 (the most recent year for which I could find Justice Department statistics). Even if we assume that 50% of the disparity is due to underreporting in the US (doubtful), we still have one eighth of the number of racially motivated crimes per capita.
as has been noted his discharge has the potential to be highly relevant. It’s logical to speculate that his white power views didn’t happen overnight and likely created the situation which got him kicked out of the Army.
His discharge was for a series of alcohol related arrests, per CBS tonight.
At a guess the disparity has more to do with differences in reporting doctrine and criteria than less racial tension in the US than in the UK. Regardless, it doesn’t show that the UK is as diverse as the US is, which it pretty clearly isn’t.
Gun control works in the UK because of a variety of factors, most of which are historical…I don’t believe the UK ever had guaranteed rights to keep and bear arms for the general population, so some form of control was always in effect there. They never had the huge amounts of private arms the US does either, so ramping up gun controls and even outright bans for most privately owned firearms was MUCH easier than it would be in the US. There are literally more guns in the US than there are Americans, so it would be a gargantuan task to round them all up, even if the population was behind it for the most part…which they surly aren’t, not at this time in history.
Think about the fact that even today in the UK there are illegal guns available…then consider the fact that we have orders of magnitude more guns than they do in private hands.
I think one could make a very strong argument, though I’d be hesitant to make it, that there is more racism against Asians in the UK than blacks in the US and that African-Americans are better integrated into US society than Asians are in the UK.
Certainly, I don’t think Asians in the UK are as remotely successful in politics or as represented among the most popular people in the country as blacks are in the US.
In fact, one thing I’ve found a bit disturbing as a fan of UK TV is the real paucity of Asian characters in UK television shows particularly in comparison to Black Britons.
Really? Other than practice to maintain proficiency around our house guns are used to do work - when feral dogs come to attack our poultry, they get shot and animal control gets a call to come dispose of the body [they tend to check them for rabies to see if it is in the feral population locally, I think it is a state program. Might be federal.] We also hunt - bambi and thumper are tasty when cooked properly. We also have used them to slaughter the occasional sheep for meat.
And yes, I do happen to have the idea that in case of home invasion I can shoot someone that is threatening my home and self - being unable to jump out a window puts me at serious risk. There is around a half hour wait before there is any sort of emergency police response, I am rural and the state police tend to patrol Willimantic which is a 20 minute drive minimum, or along rt 395 which is 20 minutes the other direction minimum.
No, I will not shoot anybody that is not threatening me - I have absolutely no interest in shooting up a temple of anybody, or a school, or post office, or grocery store. I am pretty much like most people who own guns in the US. Pretty much harmless unless threatened.
It doesn’t take a lot of the other kind to make our country a very unsafe place to live. We need tools to fight the problem. Please stop/ do not oppose laws to track guns and ensure that those that possess them are mentally stable.
White people from different parts of the UK are plenty good at shooting each other. Ask the Oirish.
… the work of fucking shit up.
… then I’d say you definitely fucked that feral dog’s shit up.
You wouldn’t be eating any bambis, thumpers or occasional sheep unless you first fucked their shit up.
And if you shoot someone sneaking out of your house with your Princess Di Commerative Plate collection, his shit will surely be fucked up.
Look, I’m not laying any moral judgement on guns, I just stated plainly what they do. Nothing gets built with a gun. A gun fucks shit up. That’s what they are designed to do and they do it well.
It shows- rather conclusively, I might add- that racial animosity plays no part in explaining why the US is more violent than the UK.
Certainly when I was a kid there were no [South] Asian characters on TV, unless I was in London or Birmingham. There, you’d see lots of South Asian newsreaders and the like.
It’s a bit different now, though. There have been Asians on Eastenders (a long running soap opera set in the shitty part of London) since the mid-eighties, and nowadays there are South Asian people on more or less all of them. There are even “Asian only” shows like Goodness Gracious Me, which was pretty much unthinkable when I was a kid.
If you look at the “most popular people in the country”, most of those people are going to be athletes and entertainers. The UK’s Asian community adopted Western music and sport (football, at any rate) relatively recently, so it’s not surprising that there aren’t many popular British Asian athletes or pop stars.
Asians have been fairly well represented on the England cricket team, and there are always outliers in music like Freddie Mercury, Biddu or Asian Dub Foundation.
As for politics, there have been Asians in Parliament since 1893, and in the Lords since 1919. All ethnic minorities are underrepresented in Parliament (only 22% of MPs are women, for example) so it’s not surprising that Asians or black British people are underrepresented.