Gun Banning - Why would gun control measures that didn't work in the UK, work in the U.S.? (Hungerf

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin


Yes it is a one off. Our population is waaay more than most other "free" countries with guns. 99.99 percent of kids never see anything like this. They go to school for 12 or so years every day and never have anything like this at their school. These things aren't as common as they are made out to be.

Originally posted by OtherSideOfTheCoin
reply to post by TheDarkTurnip

 

Again I have to give you credit, Oslo is another good point.

I would counter it by pointing out that these things are “one ofs”, sadly the shooting in CT is not a one of, these types of shootings are a common occurrence in America and they are not in the uk.

I watched your video, I do recognise that guns are still a problem in the uk but when we have 58 deaths a year and America has over 8500, I would say that America has a far bigger problem that has to be addressed.

The US has and always will have a huge number of gun owners. If you magically dropped UK gun laws ontop of them, people such as Adam Lanza's mother would still have legally purchased and aquired a certificate to own and shoot a firearm which would have been just as deadly.

Had the handgun ban in the UK not been implemented, I genuinely believe massacres would have stayed the same. If Derek Bird had a legally registered pistol, I do not believe he would have killed any more people than he managed to kill with a rifle and a shotgun. I also think it's clear that criminal access to handguns would not have changed. They have always used illegal handguns outside the licencing system and this has never been a resource for them.

The Czech Republic is another country with very relaxed gun laws. A standard permit for a firearm allows you to carry it concealed anywhere in public. The UK is very much the odd one out in Europe when it comes to firearm laws.

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow


So what your saying is, there's no point in trying to reduce crime because crime will always happen?
So we shouldn't try to prevent bank robberies because those robbers will just rob stores or mug people instead?

That seems like backwards logic to me

reply to post by Kr0nZ


No, what I am saying is we shouldn't sacrifice our rights or punish everyone because a few people do bad things. Again, banning assault rifles (which is what is being discussed) won't do anything to alter these PARTICULAR types of crimes, they just alter how they are achieved. Since when has anyone ever really tried to come up with a scheme to stop bank robberies? No one tries to prevent them, you just enact laws that punish the person. Those are crimes with money as a motive though. We are talking about mental illness here and that is the real problem.

This is not about reducing average gun crimes or it wouldn't be sparked by a singular event and it wouldn't target only a specific type of weapon.

Originally posted by Kr0nZ
[
So we shouldn't try to prevent bank robberies because those robbers will just rob stores or mug people instead?

We cant and we dont really. Sure teh money is in a safe but safes only work to keep honest people out.

Crime cannot be prevented. That's an absolute fact.

What you can do is give people the tools to stop it ASAP when it occurs. Failing that you just teach "duck and cover" to make the dullards feel safe in an unsafe world.

reply to post by TheDarkTurnip


Agreed, the amount would have stayed the same for a few reasons (and where the US and UK really differ). The population is much smaller, AND you guys can get mental health care if you need it. Both of those things are where the two countries really should be compared.

Originally posted by woogleuk
Because there was a 14 year gap between Dunblane and the Cumbria incident, and the latter one was committed by a half decent guy who legally owned his guns.

Despite what you may thing, gun control worked over here. Criminals are too afraid (for the most part) to face the jail term for getting caught with them, and on the occasion where there is the random shooting, it is usually criminal vs criminal (obviously the very rare massacre is the exception to that).

Murder rate in the UK in 1960 was 0.62 per 100K. Today it is 1.2 per 100K.
en.wikipedia.org... entional_homicide_rate_by_decade#1950s
So, inspite of all of your gun laws, you still are twice as likely to get murdered than before all of these gun laws. How did they make you safer? The UK is a pretty safe place now (where murder is concerned at least) but it was even safer in 1960 before all of the gun bans. I don't see any sort of cause and effect to come to the conclusion that gun bans make citizens safer.

Originally posted by NavyDoc

Originally posted by woogleuk
Because there was a 14 year gap between Dunblane and the Cumbria incident, and the latter one was committed by a half decent guy who legally owned his guns.

Despite what you may thing, gun control worked over here. Criminals are too afraid (for the most part) to face the jail term for getting caught with them, and on the occasion where there is the random shooting, it is usually criminal vs criminal (obviously the very rare massacre is the exception to that).

Murder rate in the UK in 1960 was 0.62 per 100K. Today it is 1.2 per 100K.
en.wikipedia.org... entional_homicide_rate_by_decade#1950s
So, inspite of all of your gun laws, you still are twice as likely to get murdered than before all of these gun laws. How did they make you safer? The UK is a pretty safe place now (where murder is concerned at least) but it was even safer in 1960 before all of the gun bans. I don't see any sort of cause and effect to come to the conclusion that gun bans make citizens safer.

You need to take this into account:-

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Some murders are carried out by people who shouldn't be in our country in the first place.

Originally posted by woogleuk
reply to post by GogoVicMorrow

 

One massacre in 14 years, tragic, yes, even personal for me, but you can hardly use that as an argument when there has been so many massacres in the USA in the same time frame.

Yet your massacres were just as rare before the gun bans as they have been after. I don't see that one can logically point out a cause and effect relationship to gun bans in the UK and lack of massacres.

Originally posted by alldaylong

Originally posted by NavyDoc

Originally posted by woogleuk
Because there was a 14 year gap between Dunblane and the Cumbria incident, and the latter one was committed by a half decent guy who legally owned his guns.

Despite what you may thing, gun control worked over here. Criminals are too afraid (for the most part) to face the jail term for getting caught with them, and on the occasion where there is the random shooting, it is usually criminal vs criminal (obviously the very rare massacre is the exception to that).

Murder rate in the UK in 1960 was 0.62 per 100K. Today it is 1.2 per 100K.
en.wikipedia.org... entional_homicide_rate_by_decade#1950s
So, inspite of all of your gun laws, you still are twice as likely to get murdered than before all of these gun laws. How did they make you safer? The UK is a pretty safe place now (where murder is concerned at least) but it was even safer in 1960 before all of the gun bans. I don't see any sort of cause and effect to come to the conclusion that gun bans make citizens safer.

You need to take this into account:-

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Some murders are carried out by people who shouldn't be in our country in the first place.

But they still occure in spite of the laws regardless. The point being, the UK has had roughly the same murder rate (0.6 to 1.2) for the last hundred years gun ban or no gun ban. I don't see the gun ban as being a help to you guys at all. The increase from 0.6 in 1960 to the present 1.2 (still low, but a doubling nonetheless) from, as you put it, a massive influx of people without the UK's traditional values.

Originally posted by woogleuk
reply to post by GogoVicMorrow

 

ok, sorry, you are talking about the USA here, and I could maybe agree. But in the UK, gun control is working for the most part, if it wasn't, then these massacres would be more than 14 years apart, they would be more on par, if not greater than the USA.

Actually, just the opposite, We have more massacres now, with massive gun control (comparatively) than we did in the past. Before 1968, you could order a semi-automatic rifle through the mail from the SEARS catalogue and teenagers commonly took their rifles to school and kept them on their lockers to hunt on the walk home or if they were part of the rifle team. How many school shooting massacres were there in the 1950's in the US? Zero. 1960's? Zero. 1940's? Zero. 1930's? Zero. More gun control has not made us safer one bit.

Who says the U.K. didnt achive exactly what it set out to do.. Think about that, obviously not what the people want, that was not the goal, if you think that the U.S. government is out to protect you or do what is best for you then you are sadly mistaken..

Its a sad world that we find ourselves in today, I for one wish something would happen, a changing of our world for the good. This probably wont happen in my lifetime and to get there many innocent lives will likely have to be given.

You can only take so much from a person, when they have nothing to lose is when you have a real problem on your hands.

As far as I know pistols and revolvers are still able to be certified in the UK, and rifles, and shotguns. But they are specified.
It seems also that gun crimes are coming down, they were only ever in the lowest % point anyway. As far as the population now being defenseless, that's misleading, hardly anyone in the UK has a gun..of any sort. Hardly anyone in Northern Ireland has a gun, where there are no gun restrictions. This sounds like an echo from that daft video done in the UK by an American reporter, (at a foxhunting ban and a gun protest, as if it were about all of the UK, and not an elite tiny minority) and for consumption in the US.

"In the United Kingdom firearms are tightly controlled by law, and while there is opposition to existing legislation from shooting organisations, there is little wider political debate, and public opinion favours stronger control. The British Shooting Sports Council now believes that the law needs to be consolidated but it does not call for a review. The United Kingdom has one of the lowest rates of gun homicides in the world with 0.07 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants in 2009 compared to the United States' 3.0 (over 40 times higher) and to Germany's 0.21 3 times higher).
With the exception of Northern Ireland, it has been public policy that police officers in the United Kingdom should not generally be armed with firearms. Despite police being unarmed, shooting fatalities of members of the police are extremely rare; there were three in England and Wales in the eleven-year period from 2000/01 to 2010/11. About 7,000 police officers have received firearms training. Standard police firearms include semi-automatic carbines, and pistols, such as the Heckler & Koch MP5SF, and Glock 17.

Originally posted by Kr0nZ
reply to post by GogoVicMorrow

 

So what your saying is, there's no point in trying to reduce crime because crime will always happen?
So we shouldn't try to prevent bank robberies because those robbers will just rob stores or mug people instead?

That seems like backwards logic to me

What's so hard to understand? Criminals breaking laws by default aren't going to follow the laws of the land. They're lawbreakers. The only people who will be affected are law-abiding citizens. The Columbine murderers broke 20 plus state and federal laws before and during their massacre.

Laws don't stop people intending to break laws.

Here's the problem with any gun control / ban scenario....

Lets say a guy goes out and buys a brand new shiny AR-15 for say $1600.00 American....

Then upon receiving that weapon invests more money into a holo sight, rail system, tactical flashlight etc etc etc.. Raising the monetary worth of this weapon to well over $2000.00.

Later on a measure is passed to ban "assault weapons" (which really is a misnomer)

Now our hypothetical gun owner must make a choice..

He either complies with the government ban, turns in his weapon and takes a loss...

Or

He can sell his weapon to whomever can pay for it and get his decently large investment back with the possibility to make a profit...

If even half of the people in the US that own these types of weapons (and boy are there a lot of them) choose option 2 then you would have an unimaginable number of unregulated, unaccounted for illegal semi-automatic tactical rifles in the hands of people who would have the need to buy an illegal weapon..

That's right the criminals... the very individuals the law was to hinder in the first place now have weapons that technically no longer exist because they would be off the grid.. This is the very thing we absolutely do not want to happen.

-------------------

The UK is much different than the US in this aspect as in the UK there is a limited land area as well as a smaller population. In these conditions it would be far easier to monitor and control the transition...

In the US some states do not even require that you register your weapon. Not to mention the extremely large surface area of the USA and the massive disconnected population. It would be unfeasible to change gun laws at this point and the only people that would benefit from it would be the criminals who now have a brand new supply of guns from a formerly untapped source.

I'd rather just let teachers pack heat... Cowards generally do not like it when people shoot back.

reply to post by DaMod


Great point, and something I didn't think about. Now we have the option (if we want) to pay 20 bucks and have the gun taken out of our name and put into the name of the person we are selling too. Obviously if the guns illegal we can do that, but people who are down on there leck and have 2 grand sitting in front of them (well who knows 3 or 4 grand?) will do what they can. People say that others won't take the risk and illegal gun sales are unlikely, but when you have someone desparate for money and someone else who knows they can just say they had bought the gun years ago (the law doesn't affect retroactive purchases).

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow


Yes that and plus firearms are quite expensive.. I threw out $1600.00 American but that's for an AR that is more on the lower end of the spectrum. I high end piston gas AR would sell for double with no attachments or modifications.

In the current state of the world economy where even people who make a decent living are struggling... It would be too far fetched to think that gun owners would be comfortable with taking a considerable loss on some very expensive hardware.

Even someone that is not down on their luck.. Something that expensive would not be something you would be willing to give up for nothing so easily.

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow


Well..then how about my country..Canada. Show us the stats that our country is embroiled in gun violence and our country is under siege by criminals. Show me the stats where our country lives in fear daily like Americans.

Show us where the stories where multiple gun massacres happened in hmmm...let's say five year period..show us these stories..not just one but at the minimum three in under a five year period.

Originally posted by NavyDoc

Originally posted by woogleuk
reply to post by GogoVicMorrow

 

ok, sorry, you are talking about the USA here, and I could maybe agree. But in the UK, gun control is working for the most part, if it wasn't, then these massacres would be more than 14 years apart, they would be more on par, if not greater than the USA.

Actually, just the opposite, We have more massacres now, with massive gun control (comparatively) than we did in the past. Before 1968, you could order a semi-automatic rifle through the mail from the SEARS catalogue and teenagers commonly took their rifles to school and kept them on their lockers to hunt on the walk home or if they were part of the rifle team. How many school shooting massacres were there in the 1950's in the US? Zero. 1960's? Zero. 1940's? Zero. 1930's? Zero. More gun control has not made us safer one bit.

Are you kidding, the list is longer than your arm, going back much longer than that.

reply to post by kerazeesicko


I haven't looked up the stats, when I am not on the phone I will.

But I can share with you an amusing anecdote. I've only been to Canada once (visited Toronto and I loved the city), anyway, the first day I was there the front page of the newspaper had an image of a big fat dead man stuffed into the back of a car (this was probably around 05) and there had been a mass killing and body dumping.