Proof that gun control works!

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OICW

Reason & Logic > Religion
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2656875.stm

As gun crime leaps by 35% in a year, plans are afoot for a further crack down on firearms. Yet what we need is more guns, not fewer, says a US academic.

"If guns are outlawed," an American bumper sticker warns, "only outlaws will have guns." With gun crime in Britain soaring in the face of the strictest gun control laws of any democracy, the UK seems about to prove that warning prophetic.

For 80 years the safety of the British people has been staked on the premise that fewer private guns means less crime, indeed that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger.

Government assured Britons they needed no weapons, society would protect them. If that were so in 1920 when the first firearms restrictions were passed, or in 1953 when Britons were forbidden to carry any article for their protection, it no longer is.

The failure of this general disarmament to stem, or even slow, armed and violent crime could not be more blatant. According to a recent UN study, England and Wales have the highest crime rate and worst record for "very serious" offences of the 18 industrial countries surveyed.

But would allowing law-abiding people to "have arms for their defence", as the 1689 English Bill of Rights promised, increase violence? Would Britain be following America's bad example?


The 'wild west' image is out of date

Old stereotypes die hard and the vision of Britain as a peaceable kingdom, America as "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic" is out of date. It is true that in contrast to Britain's tight gun restrictions, half of American households have firearms, and 33 states now permit law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons.

But despite, or because, of this, violent crime in America has been plummeting for 10 consecutive years, even as British violence has been rising. By 1995 English rates of violent crime were already far higher than America's for every major violent crime except murder and rape.

You are now six times more likely to be mugged in London than New York. Why? Because as common law appreciated, not only does an armed individual have the ability to protect himself or herself but criminals are less likely to attack them. They help keep the peace. A study found American burglars fear armed home-owners more than the police. As a result burglaries are much rarer and only 13% occur when people are at home, in contrast to 53% in England.

Much is made of the higher American rate for murder. That is true and has been for some time. But as the Office of Health Economics in London found, not weapons availability, but "particular cultural factors" are to blame.

A study comparing New York and London over 200 years found the New York homicide rate consistently five times the London rate, although for most of that period residents of both cities had unrestricted access to firearms.

When guns were available in England they were seldom used in crime. A government study for 1890-1892 found an average of one handgun homicide a year in a population of 30 million. But murder rates for both countries are now changing. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and by last year it was 3.5 times. With American rates described as "in startling free-fall" and British rates as of October 2002 the highest for 100 years the two are on a path to converge.

The price of British government insistence upon a monopoly of force comes at a high social cost.

First, it is unrealistic. No police force, however large, can protect everyone. Further, hundreds of thousands of police hours are spent monitoring firearms restrictions, rather than patrolling the streets. And changes in the law of self-defence have left ordinary people at the mercy of thugs.

According to Glanville Williams in his Textbook of Criminal Law, self-defence is "now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it still forms part of the law".

Nearly a century before that American bumper sticker was slapped on the first bumper, the great English jurist, AV Dicey cautioned: "Discourage self-help, and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians." He knew public safety is not enhanced by depriving people of their right to personal safety.

Joyce Lee Malcolm, professor of history, is author of Guns and Violence: The English Experience, published in June 2002.

Who says it doesn't work? :rolleyes:
 

anaemic

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Jan 7, 2002
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ugh, what distorted statistics they have in this article.
first off gun crime has risen to a whopping 9,900 crimes involving a firearm, in the year. and the word INVOLVING which i stress again simply means there was a gun present on the scene, not 10,000 people shot each year with guns, or 10,000 people who pulled out a gun and threatened somone, please compare this figure to americas, even work out a ratio if you want against the population.
secondly "gun crime" in the uk is not the sort of business that involves average people on the street. te HUGE majority of all gun related offences that occur each year are in gang warfare. or "criminals fighting other criminals" in council estate arguments
giving people the right to own guns in their house is again stupid, seen as burglary is at a 25 year low.
any i'll probably agree about the likey to get mugged walking down the street. but the most theyre likely to take is your cash, or your mobile phone. thats really worth shooting somone for, your mobile phone.
gun crime is on the increase in london especially because guns are easier come by, the number of weapons being smuggled in is on the rise. and so people who wouldve once gone around with a pipe or a knife, suddenly find they can buy a gun just as easy.

if you legalise guns your giving easy access to all the smallfry who want to cause trouble. whereas if you leave it as it is the bigger fish may have their guns but theyre not bothered about punhcing some old granny for a ****ing 40 quid pension slip.
 

NotBillMurray

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Mar 11, 2001
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By contrast, from here
Guns were used in only 0.3% of notifiable offences in 1999/00. Even in relation to violent crime, only 4.7% of robberies and 8.5% of homicides involved guns, so the violence problem in Britain is, to a very large extent, not gun-related.

Handgun homicide figures are very low and since 1980 have fluctuated from a low of 7 in 1988, through to 35 in 1993 and a previous high of 39 in 1997. So the 42 handgun murders in 1999 do not represent a statistically significant increase.

The only thing more meaningless than a kill count in INF are gun related statistics. I don't know of any issue where statisticians can simultaneously provide accurately contradictory values than the gun issue (and this both pro and con).

Whatever
 

Zundfolge

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Dec 13, 1999
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first off gun crime has risen to a whopping 9,900 crimes involving a firearm...
The point everyone seem to be missing is that crime in the UK is going up whereas crime in the US is going down ... all the while more and more states are allowing law abiding citizens to carry concealed guns and gun control is tighter in the UK. If legal access to firearms increased crime and gun control reduced crime then we'd see opposite statistical trends.
secondly "gun crime" in the uk is not the sort of business that involves average people on the street. te HUGE majority of all gun related offences that occur each year are in gang warfare.
Same here ... this notion that most gun deaths in the US are "little Bobby finds daddy's gun and shoots littls Suzy" or "wacked out goth kid shoots up school" is just stupid.

the HUGE majority of all gun related offences that occur each year are in gang warfare EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

any i'll probably agree about the likey to get mugged walking down the street. but the most theyre likely to take is your cash, or your mobile phone. thats really worth shooting somone for, your mobile phone.
If you want to trust the average criminal to stop at taking your stuff and not injuring or killing you then fine ... but as for me, I'd rather shoot the bastard. In addition to insuring my own safety, there is an added benifit of removing a criminal from the streets.
gun crime is on the increase in london especially because guns are easier come by, the number of weapons being smuggled in is on the rise. and so people who wouldve once gone around with a pipe or a knife, suddenly find they can buy a gun just as easy.
But that can't be possible ... once the government makes something illegal its impossible for anyone to get (that explains why drugs are so difficult to find).

All gun control laws do is keep the law abiding from owning guns ... and its not the law abiding that are raping, robbing and murdering.
if you legalise guns your giving easy access to all the smallfry who want to cause trouble.
Ya got it bass ackwards there. legalizing guns makes it possible for granny to have a gun. Criminals are going to get them whether they are legal or not they are criminals for God's sake ... the very definition of criminal is one who has no regard for the law!
 
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Big_Duke_06

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Zundfolge said:
...If you want to trust the average criminal to stop at taking your stuff and not injuring or killing you then fine ... but as for me, I'd rather shoot the bastard....

Inspector Harry Callahan said:
"Well, when an adult male is chasing a female with intent to commit rape, I shoot the bastard. That's my policy."

:lol:

Matthew
 
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spm1138

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This countries laws and attitude towards self defence is... well, imagine if all the laws had been written by Freon ;)
 

SaraP

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It would appear that Tiffy and his comrades in the English armed forces are the sum total of brave Englishmen.

As the citizens of England have allowed the sole enforcer of their rights to be taken away from them without even a murmur of complaint, I am forced to conclude that the vast majority of them are either too stupid to think for themselves or too cowardly to speak up. Either way, they would get no practical benefit whatsoever from the ability to own firearms of any time; a man who will not stand for what is right (be it from cowardice or ignorance) with a ballot will certainly not stand for it with a bullet. Such people are fit only to be slaves -- for they already are slaves in all but name.
 
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MetalMickey

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It would appear that Tiffy and his comrades in the English armed forces are the sum total of brave Englishmen.

As the citizens of England have allowed the sole enforcer of their rights to be taken away from them without even a murmur of complaint, I am forced to conclude that the vast majority of them are either too stupid to think for themselves or too cowardly to speak up. Either way, they would get no practical benefit whatsoever from the ability to own firearms of any time; a man who will not stand for what is right (be it from cowardice or ignorance) with a ballot will certainly not stand for it with a bullet. Such people are fit only to be slaves -- for they already are slaves in all but name.

I have to laugh at this picture you paint of gun owners as defenders of all that is good and free. Where was the gun-toting right when the PATRIOT act was introduced? Where is the NRA in the face of PATRIOT II? Was a single bullet fired in anger against your governments stripping of civil rights in the face of this so-called terrorist threat?

Shocking as it may seem to you, but maybe people in the UK dont share your values and ideas about guns. Perhaps you should start a campaign to invade the UK and force them to co-operate. :rolleyes:
 
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SaraP

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Feb 12, 2002
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MetalMickey said:
I have to laugh at this picture you paint of gun owners as defenders of all that is good and free. Where was the gun-toting right when the PATRIOT act was introduced? Where is the NRA in the face of PATRIOT II? Was a single bullet fired in anger against your governments stripping of civil rights in the face of this so-called terrorist threat?

Gun owners are the last and most drastic line of defense; while the current situation in the U.S. is certainly disturbing, that level of reaction is not yet justified.

Shocking as it may seem to you, but maybe people in the UK dont share your values and ideas about guns. Perhaps you should start a campaign to invade the UK and force them to co-operate. :rolleyes:

Why would I bother? While I'm normally an extremely helpful person, I see no reason whatsoever to do so much as lift a finger to help people who won't help themselves first. Besides, the British have a history of ripping off America when it tries to help them; just look at what they did after WWII.
 

The_Pikeman

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Nov 20, 2001
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Besides, the British have a history of ripping off America when it tries to help them; just look at what they did after WWII.

That better be a joke otherwise you do some research.
As for gun control I'm happyn with the law as it stands I know of no one that has been in a gun related crime, and as I know people that reside in camden thas saying something. All this talk of crime is exagerated I honestly dont think that crime has increased that much, and remember I live in the most violent place in the uk according to the stats.
-How.
 

anaemic

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the most violent place in the uk is wales ? repeated counts of assault against sheep on a daily basis ? ;)