[Archived] Gun Law Debate: Please keep posts civil and conversational

[Mike E]

Never thought the argument would be 'guns are humane' haha

[SydneyRover]

Your missing the point. Your homicide rate has NOT decreased as a result of your gun ban. Your chances of avoiding or surviving being murdered as a statistical matter has not improved.

So by banning guns, you've not decreased your chances of being murdered. You have decreased your chances of being murdered with a gun, but you've selected a more medieval (and likely more painful) method of death which will occur at equal or greater rate than before the UK banned guns.

Which isn't surprising as the UK's homicide rate pre-guns was significantly higher than post-guns. It doesn't take much effort or time kill someone with a club (bat, pipe wrench or hammer) or a knife or any other method. All it takes is the will.

So while your gun ban hasn't had a downward effect on your homicide rate, it does correlate to your rate of other violent crime increasing almost 250% and home invasions have skyrocketing. Congratulations UK, you've made your situation worse.

Your posts are getting increasingly ridiculous.

Those stats you posted show an increase in murders in 1950-1974 compared to 1974-1994. Shock horror! I'm pretty sure if you look at figures around most Western countries you would see a similar pattern for various reasons. In fact, the very same graph from the USA that you posted shows a large increase in homicides over that time too. There hasn't really been one moment of gun control legislation in the UK, just a series of amendments applying further and further restrictions. So I'm not sure which legislation are referring to.

Those graphs you posted earlier ( http://mygunculture.com/2011/01/12/uk-gun-ban-creates-more-interesting-graphs/ ) show a complete lack of understanding about context. I would agree that the legislation in 1997 had little effect. But that's because it wasn't an outright gun ban, gun control was already particularly strict before it. It was a ban on handguns, which were already tightly controlled. Gun culture in the UK is nothing like that in the US and very few people needed or were able to own guns in the first place. Outside of the countryside (where rifles are more popular) the only people likely to own guns whose access to guns were further restricted were members of gun clubs. Who formed a tiny, tiny minority of the population. Thus no appreciable drop in homicide rates.

A lot of your argument seems to be based on an assumption that all homicides are gang or drug related.

Was Sandy Hook related to this? How about Columbine? Aurora? Was Gifford's shooting related to gangs?

Could they have been carried out by a cricket bat? Or a knife?

Is it easy to kill someone from 5 metres away with a knife or a cricket bat?

Would so many of these have happened in countries where it was significantly harder to get hold of guns?

You also are over egging the issues of gangs/violent drug dealers in the US compared to the UK.

Yes some pockets of the US have a gang problem which outstrips anywhere in the UK or Europe. However there are also big swathes of the US where the problem is significantly less as I'm pretty a higher percentage of your population lives rurally than in the UK. Where in Arkansas, Connecticut, Virginia or Colarado would you say has a big gang problem?

In many of UK towns we still have gang problems and considering the vast majority of our country lives in either towns or cities that's a big factor. Overall the US probably has the gang issue worse but certainly not to the extent you claim it to be. And certainly not to the extent that would explain your overall homicide rate being FOUR times higher than the UK.

There's an article here about how in one of those pockets, Chicago, gang related gun crime is getting worse. However even in this hot bed of gang related crime, at a particularly bad time for gang crime at that, there's still over a third of murders not to do with gangs, and one would expect this 62% figure to be dramatically lower in the rest of the US:

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2012/Gangs-and-Politicians-Statistics-and-Charts-How-Gang-Crime-Stacks-Up/

And why mention Australia when it weakens your argument further? Here's an article from the Arizona Daily Star:

http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/other-nations-restrictive-gun-laws-cut-down-on-shooting-deaths/article_fbdcca11-0e03-545a-9f90-8d15edf354ab.html

With this statistic:

Following the 1996 Port Arthur, Tasmania, massacre of 35 people, Australia acted quickly to effectively ban assault weapons. A mandatory buyback obtained more than 650,000 of these guns from existing owners. Australia also tightened requirements for licensing, registration and safe gun storage of firearms.

The result? In the 18 years before the intervention, Australia had 13 mass shootings. In the dozen years since, there has not been a single one. The laws also helped reduce firearm suicide and non-mass shooting firearm homicide.

Additionally gun control laws will often not have an immediate effect. Mandatory buy backs would be almost impossible to do in the US and I agree no President should ever try this at least not on a federal level. If stricter gun control laws were passed five years ago, would Sandy Hook have still happened? Probably, as chances are Adam Lanza's mother still would have had those guns kept in her cabinet. However were they enacted thirty years ago, would they have happened? Probably not as those guns wouldn't have been so readily available.

This is just one case but it illustrates the point that stricter gun control laws in the US won't have an immediate effect as they won't reduce the guns currently in circulation. However they will curb new sales and lead to a gradual drop off, and the benefits will almost certainly be seen in future generations.

[adopted scouser]

No love for Piers Morgan but that Alex bloke is a loon

[DanLad]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/gorilla-sales-skyrocket-after-latest-gorilla-attac,30860/

[ABBEY]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/bengals-lineman-arrested-gun-airport-220408177--nfl.html

[jim mk2]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/gorilla-sales-skyrocket-after-latest-gorilla-attac,30860/

Very good. Makes a monkey out of the NRA argument.

[thenodrog]

I think I'd prefer a cut or even a deep wound to a bullet anywhere. Even if you survive both, the bullet requires removing before stitches. It's little reasons like that which make the argument for gun control so much more credible.

The fact is that with a gun you run the risk of killing someone in a half-mile radius. Subbing that for a fist/knife/sword/axe/vase/fryingpan Dagger, Rope, Lead Piping, Candlestick, Revolver, Wrench. you can only punch/cut/stab/shank/smash/twang someone in a 3ft radius. Death is less likely and anyone who intervenes in such a crime can do so without the risk of death. The perpetrator of the crime also lives to see his head get checked.

[SydneyRover]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21153340

Joke country.

[Adam C]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21153340

Joke country.

If only everyone had been armed like that nice man from the NRA suggested.

[Steve Moss]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/bengals-lineman-arrested-gun-airport-220408177--nfl.html

Sounds like he made an honest mistake. I hope the prosecutor is sensible.

I agree with David Mamet's view on government and gun control: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/01/28/gun-laws-and-the-fools-of-chelm-by-david-mamet.html

[Speedie Dived]

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/bengals-lineman-arrested-gun-airport-220408177--nfl.html

Sounds like he made an honest mistake. I hope the prosecutor is sensible.

I agree with David Mamet's view on government and gun control: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/01/28/gun-laws-and-the-fools-of-chelm-by-david-mamet.html

Holy Christ, mind blown how someone can agree with that set off eclectic nonsense. The government rant was my fav part, was gutted they left out the bit about Area 51

[jim mk2]

Another day, another shooting

THREE SHOT AT US OFFICE COMPLEX

Three people have been shot at an office complex in Phoenix, Arizona, police said.

Their conditions are not yet known.

Video footage showed one person being taken out of the building on a gurney.

Numerous people at the complex could be seen watching from balconies.

Sergeant Tommy Thompson told KNXV TV the building was being evacuated and the gunman is believed to have fled.

Fire engines, police vehicles and at least one ambulance were at the scene.

AP

[thenodrog]

How about banning vagina's Jim?

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/29/vagina-murder-plot-brazilian-man-wife-poisoning-_n_2572836.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

[jim mk2]

Good idea - you'd be the first.

[thenodrog]

Good one.

However if I dredge my schoolyard memories ........... it's such as me that make Dicks like you stand to attention.

[Steve Moss]

Jim- You're right, its a tragedy (not the death by vagina but the senseless office shooting).

Of course, this last Tuesday a mother and her young son might not be alive if she hadn't been able to get to her two handguns: http://www.click2houston.com/news/Home-invasion-suspect-arrested-after-woman-opens-fire/-/1735978/18331728/-/format/rss_2.0/-/s329rz/-/index.html

And on Monday who knows what would have happened to these two college roommates when four thugs invaded their home, if one of them had not been able to get to his pistol: http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/crime-law/fairborn-police-investigate-shooting-on-victoria-a/nT8pZ/

I suppose that each could have trusted to the mercies of the home invaders but they look a motley sort and not the kind I would suppose would demonstrate excessive sympathy for their fellow man. And what the three masked men intended to do with the duct tape in the mother's bedroom, we'll never know but there is at least a fair risk it was nothing consensual.

In England it appears preferable to allow these homeowners and their families to be victims. Assault, rape, robbery, etc. appears to be preferable to giving a law abiding citizen the means of fighting back on equal or more than equal terms. Too bad the government hasn't focused on tracking these statistics as it might give us another data point to conduct a decent cost benefit analysis. Those that have been done, based on sampling, demonstrate self-defense gun use ranging from a low of 108,000 from the NCVS to a mid-range of 1.5 million (the Department of Justice) and 2 million (Dr. Kleck) and 2.5 million (other unnamed studies): http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html. Wikipedia has a small article which cast light on the variation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use

On a final point, I think it amusing that the convicted rapist has the nerve to protest homeowners having access to so called assault weapons: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/gun-control-activist-protesting-how-easy-it-is-to-buy-guns-is-a-rapist/ Perhaps he should consider re-locating to more civilized England?

[Mike E]

We fight back with fists or whatever we can get hold of. If we're lucky enough to be thought of as responsible enough to hold a gun, we can use it. The problem I have with the pistol and the handguns is that they are killing machines used by those who may have to kill as part of their job.

An airgun will stun/stop any criminal, although aiming at the head has been known to kill. A shotgun (will probably severely injure or kill) can only be owned by members of a gun club (or those with good reason, such as shooting vermin on their land) and kept in a very specific place in a locked cabinet. I still think that system is preferable to being legally allowed to own a succession of military weapons.

My issue is the fact that you yanks can legally have an AK47 at home. That is nuts and completely uncalled for.

[Steve Moss]

We fight back with fists or whatever we can get hold of. If we're lucky enough to be thought of as responsible enough to hold a gun, we can use it. The problem I have with the pistol and the handguns is that they are killing machines used by those who may have to kill as part of their job.

. . .

My issue is the fact that you yanks can legally have an AK47 at home. That is nuts and completely uncalled for.

You might think it uncalled for, but we aren't you. And not being you, we don't need the government telling us whether we are "responsible enough" to hold a gun.

What's saddest is that the liberties we enjoy we got from you. Somewhere along the line you gave them up, though it didn't impact your homicide rate, it just changed the murderer's method.

For the most part, it is governments are the irresponsible actors, not the citizenry. For example, President Obama thinks an American citizen can't be trusted with an AR-15 or AK-47, but has no problem shipping F-16s to the Muslim Brotherhood.

And while deploring gun violence and calling for bans, under President Obama's administration gun crime prosecutions have dropped. Now either we've all suddenly become angels or President Obama has made a political calculation that gun crime prosecutions are not in his interests (as a disproportionate of them occur in the inner cities). You decide.

[Mike E]

A change of method is surely good? No-one can escape the bullet of a gun. Everyone can dodge a knife or vase or fist.

Look at it this way:

If you had the same gun laws as us, you'd be far more civilised than us and have every right to tell us we're morons (not saying you do that, btw. You're doing very well considering you're one vs quite a few on here haha).

[Steve Moss]

A change of method is surely good? No-one can escape the bullet of a gun. Everyone can dodge a knife or vase or fist.

Look at it this way:

If you had the same gun laws as us, you'd be far more civilised than us and have every right to tell us we're morons (not saying you do that, btw. You're doing very well considering you're one vs quite a few on here haha).

I think the point's being missed. You're homicide rate pre-gun ban is the same as the post-gun ban. There are still roughly the same number of murders.

If the gun ban made you safer, you'd have fewer actual murders. You don't.

Your point would be more valid if there were fewer murders, with the difference being unsuccessful attempted murders.

So the criminals are just as effective at killing as they've always been, guns or no guns. Both before and after you tend to hover around 1.0 to 1.5 per 100,000, depending on the year, over the last several decades.

Here's a humorous take on it: http://mygunculture.com/2011/01/12/uk-gun-ban-creates-more-interesting-graphs/

Here's a comparison of Australia and USA data: http://www.captainsjournal.com/2012/07/23/do-gun-bans-reduce-violent-crime-ask-the-aussies-and-brits/

[Mike E]

Just because it didn't change us, doesn't mean it won't change you.

I realise it's a case of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it', but mass-shootings ought at least bring an attempt to TRY and change things, surely?

[ABBEY]

i will say it again ,anyone who has a gun at home apart from police ,hunters etc should go to the hospital and get a bigger penis implant.

[ABBEY]

@SkyNewsBreak: Reports: Two people have been shot at a middle school in Atlanta, Georgia

[Amo]

Really worth a look:

[thenodrog]

i will say it again ,anyone who has a gun at home apart from police ,hunters etc should go to the hospital and get a bigger penis implant.

Not everyone is a Jean Claude Van Damme / Bruce Willis clone Abbey. How about 50% of the population that don't have penis's? How about pensioners?

My parents got burgled when they were in their mid 70's, the phone lines had been cut and although the burglars left they did not dare leave the house to go to the neighbours and call for the police until the morning*. They were scared stiff of that happening again right until they died. I'm not saying lots of people owning pistols would stop every robbery but I'm sure it would massively reduce them.

* complete waste of time anyway.