Dunblane School Massacre....ended handgun rights in UK

Originally posted by woogleuk
reply to post by bl4ke360

 

That's because guns aren't as accessible as knives here, as someone already said, if someone wants to kill, they will find a way of doing it.

Making guns more accessible means more people could be killed far quicker.

But you have more murders now, than before all of your gun bans.

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow


But you can carry a knife, as long as the blade is under a certain length.

As for the article you linked, every country has its thugs, and those thugs generally carry weapons.

Imagine if those 20 thugs had been carrying guns, not only would the son be dead, but chances are so would the son, in fact, I would imagine a few more folk would have been caught in the crossfire.

Even if handguns were legal, what could one man and his son do against 20 thugs who were also carrying?

Britons find comfort in gun bans. Well and good, for the society had spoken, regardless if violence had been stopped or not.

Since Britons chosed to talk about President's Executive Action ban on assault weapons ban, then perhaps some light need to be shed on it.

The 2nd amendment HAD NEVER be meant for hunting, hell no!

It is there to protect and defend americans, their loved ones and nation from tyranny, either domestic or foreign.

In the 17th century, the musket was the most powerful weapon on Earth, created empires and subjugated those who have only spears and swords. Mankind had advance, so too enemies and evil doers such as criminals and the insane. Today, the most powerful weapon in the literal hands of men are AK-47s, from terrorists to criminals to the insane, easily and cheaply avaliable.

Will americans with their loved ones depend on their spears and arrows - the pistol - to defend against the likes of them?

Hardly possible.

Best to stick to the legislation of the Founding fathers - to protect americans, their loved ones and nation with a law cast in stone - the 2nd amendment.

Britons had given up that right. Hope Britons enjoys being bullied by the chavs, the criminals and the insane with guns in UK. We seek for Utopia and will reach there one day, with much effort by all in society, but today, we are still far with a long way to go. Best we all be pragmatic. Daydreaming will get us nowhere.

reply to post by NavyDoc


We also have a lot more immigrants who carry out a lot of these murders, such as honour killings.

Originally posted by woogleuk


As for the article you linked, every country has its thugs, and those thugs generally carry weapons.

Imagine if those 20 thugs had been carrying guns, not only would the son be dead, but chances are so would the son, in fact, I would imagine a few more folk would have been caught in the crossfire.

How about you consider this possibility. The thugs that use knives to kill people are less likely to be caught, since knives don't produce a loud sound when used, thus nobody is aware they killed somebody until long after the fact in some cases. As a result, the thug is on the streets for a much longer period of time, giving him many more chances to kill people without being caught until much later on.

reply to post by woogleuk

Your knife will do nothing to help you if you face 20 thugs.

However, if you have a gun and faced 20 thugs, rest assured through psycological studies and plain logic - thugs have no deathwish, and you will survive.

Simply because while they carry guns, you too carry a gun. However, they are thugs, who fear death and prefer to live to enjoy their gains. So which one of them will want to be the one to get the bullet before you die yourself?

Chances are, they are not stupid, and will back off, and you survive such an encounter, so long as you are trained on the gun and prepared to pull the trigger, calmly.

Criminals obey no laws, but sadly, they exists. If it is money, give it to them as money lost can always be earned back the next day. But once a life is lost, it is forever.

But if they want more than money, then you better be ready to give them what they deserve rather than to cower like a dog begging for mercy before them - through the use of a gun, to protect yourself and your loved ones.

Originally posted by GogoVicMorrow
reply to post by woogleuk

 

See.. what's the point in talking to you if you are incapable of understanding?

Or maybe you just don't understand the overall feelings towards certain firearms that us Brits have, as I am sure we don't understand your need for them.

I asked how many there were in the twenty years preceding your gun bans. Even if you have less massacres, I want to know if the gun bans made them less frequent.

I can't find any info prior to the Hungerford massacre, I am confident however that the tight gun laws have prevented more from occurring, especially during the financial hardship a lot of people have been facing.

You are trying to get around my point and making ridiculous arguments.

Ridiculous to you perhaps, but you are on the other side of the debate after all.

I am not saying we don't have more massacres, but I am showing that guns are not the cause.

Yeah, you are right, mental health issues play a bigger part, but it is easy access to these weapons which are making them the tool of choice.

Oh, and gun ownership has stopped several massacres, so I would stick to talking about what you really know. The massacres also tend to be in places that are the least likely to have armed resistence. Movie theatre = sitting ducks, malls = preoccupied shoppers (though the clackamas shooting was arguably stopped by a concealed carry holder), schools = you get where I am going with this.

Still far too many, far too often in my opinion.

Why deny reality? Just to argue?

Because I am giving you my opinion pal, an opinion shared by most Brits on and off this site.

We come from two very different cultures, and there are certain issues like this one where we will never agree.

One curious thing I have discovered in my research.......you can legally own semi-automatics in the UK with a class 1 firearms license, there is a shop in Wales for example that sells the Ruger SR-22 semi-auto........I didn't know that.

Originally posted by OtherSideOfTheCoin
I remember singing this petition, it was popular in the media but the media at the time was responding to a public outcry, we the British public went to our politicians after these deaths and told them “get rid of the hand guns”. It worked and since then it hasn’t happened again, America could learn quite a lot form us Brits.

We still have gun crime, but the fact is that we were strong enough as a nation to make a change the sad fact is that the American public and the American government is at the mercy of the Gun lobbies and not strong enough to stand up and put an end to their dominance and stop mass shootings like this caused by legal own guns.

So with the Handgun ban there were still 3090 handgun related offences that took place during the 2010/11. Thats a big chunk of the 7006 firearm related crimes that took place during the same reporting time.
(according to The Home Office Statistical Bulletin 2011 edition). Thats alot of handgun crime for a place thats so restrictive on Handgun.

Just a an FYI:
During the same period of time the US only had 8583 (According to FBI statistics). If we were to prorate the UK to match population rates (The USA has 4.99 times more people then the UK during this time period) we would get
UK = 34959 vs the US = 8583
If these numbers are wrong, please show me a better source of info then the Home Office in England and the FBI in the US for this data.

reply to post by Guyfriday


Because handguns are illegal, some of those numbers will include threats with a handgun, I'm sure there will be more reports made in the UK about firearms than in the USA.

The death toll is still significantly lower (per 100,000 people) than the USA.




Here are the figures from the home office, they show gun total firearms offences to be down by over 50% from 2002/3

There is an obvious dishonesty around this issue for Americans which they don't seem to comprehend appears bizarre to Europeans who are perfectly happy to live without this gun curse on their streets. Attempts to liken knives and cars to guns are frankly deranged.

And as for the UK and so called "violent crime" you have to be kidding me. The vast majority of so called violent crime is a couple off assholes fired up on beer on a Friday night trading a few punches in the street with the worst outcome being a black eye for one or the other and generally not even that. THAT'S the vast majority of violent crime.

It just comes down to what I can only see as a primitive obsession with these weapons which exists nowhere else in the Western world and which appears to be evolving a paranoia all of it's own to support the obsession. We hear rants about protection from tyrannical government and such inanity. Tyrannical government? The civilised nations deal with unpopular government with a vote not a gun yet Americans think it's rational to contemplate shooting people?

And who decides what's tyrannical? Some freak show with a gun decides anything he disagrees with is tyrannical regardless of the fact the majority who elected the government in question do not? The whole thing is insanity and what these gun wackos are preaching is anarchy not democracy.

Americans will tell you that having more guns makes the streets safer, this is the kind of thinking that led to the massive escalation of proliferation of nuclear weapons during the cold war. The Soviet Union went broke trying to keep up with the weapons development pace of the United States.

This will basically lead to the same thing in the USA - they will keep making bigger guns capable of firing more ammunition more quickly with the ability to do more damage, because you have to protect yourself from your neighbor who just bought the latest piece of military hardware.

Weapons manufacturers know that there is really no reason for the USA to be making weapons like this anymore, the US military really isn't a big enough market for them to keep their bottom line healthy. There is not much of a market outside of the United States for this sort of weapon, as many countries are cutting back their military budgets.

There is no big bad Soviet empire enemy anymore. See the movie "Canadian Bacon". Weapons manufacturers are terrified of peace.

If there is no major war on (except for Afghanistan, which isn't really a major war) who are you going to sell to?

You sell to Americans themselves, by keeping them in such a state of fear that they go running to their nearest gun store to buy weapons that should never be in the civilian marketplace in the first place, for the sole purpose of protecting themselves from their neighbor who just ran to the nearest gun store to buy a weapon that they never should have had in the first place. It's a vicious cycle, purpotrated by the gun industry.

reply to post by NavyDoc


Not gun murders.

And the british people are actually quite happy with their gun ban.

Originally posted by babybunnies
Americans will tell you that having more guns makes the streets safer, this is the kind of thinking that led to the massive escalation of proliferation of nuclear weapons during the cold war. The Soviet Union went broke trying to keep up with the weapons development pace of the United States.

And yet we didn't have a nuclear war, did we?

Originally posted by woogleuk
reply to post by Guyfriday

 

Because handguns are illegal, some of those numbers will include threats with a handgun, I'm sure there will be more reports made in the UK about firearms than in the USA.

The death toll is still significantly lower (per 100,000 people) than the USA.

Here are the figures from the home office, they show gun total firearms offences to be down by over 50% from 2002/3

Thank you for posting that page of the report. The stats I used from the FBI weren't about deaths, but rather any reported crime where a gun was used. It has the same recording info as the stats from the Home Office.

Originally posted by woogleuk
reply to post by NavyDoc

 

We also have a lot more immigrants who carry out a lot of these murders, such as honour killings.

And that gets back to supporting my point: that gun ownership does not cause crime and that murder and violence have societal causal factors and that disarming the law abiding will do nothing to reduce either.

Originally posted by babybunnies
reply to post by NavyDoc

 

Not gun murders.

And the british people are actually quite happy with their gun ban.

Shrug. Actually my British friends are very unhappy with them and think they are stupid, but they are outnumbered by the people who do not understand the issue, are afraid of inanimate objects, or are politically correct politicians.

Originally posted by woogleuk
reply to post by Guyfriday

 

Because handguns are illegal, some of those numbers will include threats with a handgun, I'm sure there will be more reports made in the UK about firearms than in the USA.

The death toll is still significantly lower (per 100,000 people) than the USA.

Here are the figures from the home office, they show gun total firearms offences to be down by over 50% from 2002/3

And notice that rifle offenses, the very AR-15 that people are all in a tizzy about, is a tiny, tiny, tiny minority of all offenses.

Originally posted by woogleuk

One curious thing I have discovered in my research.......you can legally own semi-automatics in the UK with a class 1 firearms license, there is a shop in Wales for example that sells the Ruger SR-22 semi-auto........I didn't know that.

Most Brits don't know that. I've a few British friends who have semi-auto AR-15s--just in .22LR. There are 1.8 million legally owned guns in England and Wales and many of those are semi-auto rifles that could be used in a Sandy-Hook style massacre but are not.

www.guardian.co.uk... /23/gun-ownership-uk-map

reply to post by NavyDoc


That's (probably) because very few people who would likely commit offences with them own said rifles. Probably due to handguns being easily hidden compared with rifles. No-one wants a minimum 5 year stretch for owning illegal weapons.

Originally posted by woogleuk
reply to post by NavyDoc

 

That's (probably) because very few people who would likely commit offences with them own said rifles. Probably due to handguns being easily hidden compared with rifles. No-one wants a minimum 5 year stretch for owning illegal weapons.

ANd that's the point: that "assault weapons" are not the problem in spite of the hysteria to ban them.