@bungle
Do you have the same population?
Do you have the same racial tension?
Do you have the same poverty rate?
What do you make of this link?
Doesn't sound like the UK's weapon ban had much effect.
The racial tensions, poverty and population are all the responsibilty of your government to manage, if they are managed so poorly as to give rise to high crime then blame your government.
1) the reports you (raphael & snoop) refer to are 2 years old & I did say very little, not none.
2) the collapse of eastern bloc countries has put an enormous amount of weaponry onto the black market that was not there a decade ago
3) with the formation of the EU and the inclusion of eastern european countries, former restrictions on the movement of weapons have been lifted largely through the freedom of unrestricted travel
4) immigrant gang & organised crime rings have entered the UK using legitimate methods of immigration and having seen the UK as a soft touch after the US and Jamaica or war-torn eastern europe, encourage the proliferation of weapons both as a source of income and for control of newly acquired criminal territories within the UK. Territories left open for take-over by the Organised Crime Branch of the Metropolitan Police removing the "old-school" of British gangland. In addition, the police had no intelligentce from within these organisations, nor any experience of dealing with this new immigrant breed of criminal, therefore found it very difficult to combat them.
5) trying to solve society's problems through good social policy is surely a better option than simply letting everyone have a gun and sending the populace out on an each-man-for-themselves mission. We are all part of a greater entity than the indiviual, that is society.
I just don't think throwing more guns at a violent society is the answer. It was that kind of thinking that brought us the delightful concept of M.A.D. during the cold war.
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