Online Poll Shows 85% of Brits Want to Repeal the Ban on Hand Guns

Originally posted by seabag

Originally posted by DISRAELI
reply to post by intrepid

 

Seabag is mistaken, here.
The readers of the newspaper suggested possible changes, but the journalists then admit that they themselves selected six "which caught our eye".
So the inclusion of hand-guns on the short-list was a journalistic decision.

I'm not mistaken...misunderstood maybe...but that's not my fault.

Hopefully my post below yours cleared it up.

Clearly the idea to repeal the gun ban came from a British citizen and not the Telegraph.

Nope. Actually makes the opposite point:

Originally posted by seabag
reply to post by intrepid

 

The citizens submitted the ideas for bills to introduce. I quoted this in the OP.

The readers of telegraph.co.uk/politics did not disappoint, and provided us with a raft of ideas. These are the six that caught our eye.

Yes, anyone can vote on the Telegraph’s poll but the ideas didn’t come from the Telegraph, they came from citizens. That means there are obviously some in the UK who want this.

See the BOLD. The ones that caught "THEIR" eye? Sounds like the paper set it up as they wanted.

reply to post by intrepid

See the BOLD. The ones that caught "THEIR" eye? Sounds like the paper set it up as they wanted.

I know…that was my quote…TWICE!

Look, if you think it BS that’s fine. Everyone has an opinion. They made a poll out of 6 issues submitted by the public; how that somehow shows bias is beyond me. Is it because the gun repeal issue is on there? If they removed the gun issue would it still be a biased poll in your opinion?

reply to post by intrepid


It is the London Telegraph is it not ?
It is equivalent to the New York Times status wise, so a good paper.
It all depends how the survey was measured and maybe only people with a UK ip could participate.
I don't know - just saying.

Originally posted by seabag
reply to post by intrepid

 

See the BOLD. The ones that caught "THEIR" eye? Sounds like the paper set it up as they wanted.

I know…that was my quote…TWICE!

Look, if you think it BS that’s fine. Everyone has an opinion. They made a poll out of 6 issues submitted by the public; how that somehow shows bias is beyond me. Is it because the gun repeal issue is on there? If they removed the gun issue would it still be a biased poll in your opinion?

When a paper sets up the parameters for a poll THEY are the ones that put forth their agenda. I'm Canadian as everyone knows but I follow world politics. When I saw this poll I thought, "What did they not choose to put on this poll to put that non-issue on?" Then I thought, "Immigration reform." Why wasn't that on the list? Ask any Brit here, THAT is a topic they want addressed. Not guns.

Originally posted by luciddream
reply to post by stirling

 

You think you need gun for protection, while 90% of the world doesn't think so.

Correction. 90% of the world's governments.

I can think for myself, and elements within the U.S. government are steadily trying to reduce my RIGHTs because of the scewed emotional opinions.

Even though I am a Sheepdog, I am starting to dislike the sheep.

reply to post by intrepid

Then I thought, "Immigration reform." Why wasn't that on the list? Ask any Brit here, THAT is a topic they want addressed. Not guns.

I understand what you mean but…it sounds like some here simply don’t like the results of the poll and are looking for reasons to dismiss it. Just saying!

Regardless, I’d like to see the poll redone with ALL of the issues and see what happens. I bet that issue would still get a bunch of play especially after the recent incident in London.

reply to post by seabag

Originally posted by Cabin
Debunked in this webpage: blog.skepticallibertarian.com...

The British Home Office, by contrast, has a substantially different definition of violent crime. The British definition includes all “crimes against the person,” including simple assaults, all robberies, and all “sexual offenses,” as opposed to the FBI, which only counts aggravated assaults and “forcible rapes.”

When you look at how this changes the meaning of “violent crime,” it becomes clear how misleading it is to compare rates of violent crime in the US and the UK. You’re simply comparing two different sets of crimes. In 2009/10, for instance (annual data is from September to September), British police recorded 871,712 crimes against persons, 54,509 sexual offenses, and 75,101 robberies in England and Wales. Based on the 2010 population of 55.6 million, this gives a staggeringly high violent crime rate of 1,797 offenses per 100,00 people.

But of the 871,000 crimes against the person, less than half (401,000) involved any actual injury. The remainder were mostly crimes like simple assault without injury, harassment, “possession of an article with a blade or point,” and causing “public fear, alarm, or distress.” And of the 54,000 sexual offenses, only a quarter (15,000) were rapes. This makes it abundantly clear that the naive comparison of crime rates either wildly overstates the amount of violence in the UK or wildly understates it in the US.

Read my post first. The definitions of violent crime are different, so it is a pointless comparison.

Most readers of the telegraph are Brits intrepid. However, 85% is probably still way too high.Polls taken right and directly after incidents such as the one in Woolwich will skew the average stats. Without out the incident, it would probably be more like 65%. And if you'd do the poll in a non-conservative rag, it would probably be 35%. So all in all we might be looking at a 50-50 situation.

reply to post by Cabin

The definitions of violent crime are different, so it is a pointless comparison.

Even if we eliminated half the UK's criteria it would still be lopsided I’m afraid. UK’s 3,100 violent crimes per 100,000 vs US’s 380 violent crimes per 100,000 will be hard to overcome.

Face it! Your defenseless population is being gunned down at an alarming rate!

The UK Home Office figures for that period showed the total number of firearm offenses in England and Wales had increased from 5,209 in 1999 to 9,865 in 2009… An alarming rise in gun violence for a whopping 89 per cent.

granitegrok.com...
If you’re cool with that then so be it.

reply to post by seabag


Imagine it like that:

US considers only accident as traffic violence.

UK considers every accident, every speeding ticket, every parking ticket etc etc.

There are far more speeding tickets and parking tickets than actual accidents in traffic, just as there is far more of the small crimes than the big ones. 75% of sexual offenses would not have counted in in US, what about the other violence.

It is uncomparable.


People in UK are being gunned down???

3.6 gun murders per 100k people in US.
0.04 gun murders per 100k people in UK.

90 times more people are murdered with firearms in US than in UK,'
7.5 times more people are accidentally killed with a firearm in US, than people killed intentionally with firearms in UK...

en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by Cabin


Like I said, if you're happy being disarmed then that's your prerogative.

But don't assume that every Brit thinks like you and your buddies. I'm sure there are many who don't want the government telling them what they can't do to defend their own lives.

What a nanny state!

reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens


So by following what you have said you don't see the need for citizens to carry firearms to defend themselves against armed criminals, because while armed criminals do exist you have never personally come across one and secondly you believe that gun violence would increase if law abiding citizens carried firearms to protect themselves from criminals with illegal firearms who openly commit acts of violence. And lastly you stated that if the Woolwich killers had possessed guns they may have moved on to the army base and continued their assault -lol I dont think thy would have gotten that far. Don’t u think if that had been their intent they could have easily acquired illegal firearms or made a zip gun. Since by your statement criminals can and do acquire firearms regardless of your laws - with all due respect I have a hard time following your logic

hey SB starandflag

to the gun stat quoter above
yes there are more gun deaths in the US than in the UK
know why?
No, sorry thats incorrect..

please, allow me

Fact Sheet: Guns Save Lives

Guns save more lives than they take; prevent more injuries than they inflict
* Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day.
This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.
* Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.
* As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.
* Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of "Guns in America" -- a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.
* Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).6 And readers of Newsweek learned that "only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high."
* Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year.
"

www.gunowners.org...

I guess the sexual offenders mentioned above ( * 3 above) which will offend no more in the US are running serial rampant in your lower death stat UK...and some of them may not be strictly hetero

enjoy

reply to post by PRwood

Since by your statement criminals can and do acquire firearms regardless of your laws - with all due respect I have a hard time following your logic.

I'm glad you brought that up. That's the part I never understood about the anti-gun crowd. We all know the criminal element has guns. These restrictive laws only negatively affect potential victims not criminals. Nobody is advocating allowing criminals to legally possess guns. Why would people handcuff themselves in the face of violent criminals? I just don't get it.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens

 

I dare say, handguns may not be a solution to societies problems but they sure would have solved a problem for a Soldier last week, who lost his head over being chosen for a random murder in the street. Folks don't carry guns because it's cool or nifty. Anyone who carries can tell you, the amount of work and hassle involved, that they DON'T mention in any class, would fill a small book. It's so living people don't become dead statistics. It would seem Britain isn't immune from horrible acts of random violence after all. What is lacking is an even playing field for defense against homicidal maniacs, IMO.

The guy was run over before being beheaded. He was taken by suprised a mini gun would not have saved him.

reply to post by crazyewok

The guy was run over before being beheaded. He was taken by suprised a mini gun would not have saved him.

We'll never know because of UK's stupid laws.

Don't you think innocent people deserve every means available to defend their life? Don't you value all life, especially your family, friends, neighbors and fellow countrymen?? Give them the CHOICE on their own best defense rather than allowing the government to tell you ALL what you can't do.

Nobody cares more about YOU than YOU! We're all built that way! It's called self-preservation!

Originally posted by seabag
reply to post by gortex

 

There may be a very small minority who would like it to but the vast majority feel we are American enough without having the right to bare arms .

I hate to point out the obvious but based on the poll I provided I beg to differ.

Do you have poll results or another survey to back that up?

To be honnest I would have voted yes. I dont think people are particaly against registered lienced guns here in the UK. I dont see the harm in a legal gun thats registered and stored properly.

If the poll had said zero gun control American style or concealed carrying Im sure it would not have had the support.

There is a in between from American no control to 100% absolute ban.

Originally posted by seabag
We'll never know because of UK's stupid laws.

No im pretty sure driveing a car into the back of someone makes a gun pointless in that situation.


Anyway dont drag him into this debate I find it very offensive you use a murdered person so you can be little the UK in your pro gun agenda.

reply to post by crazyewok

If the poll had said zero gun control American style or concealed carrying Im sure it would not have had the support.

There is a in between from American no control to 100% absolute ban.

I'm glad you're open to it...disregard my previous post.

By the way, I'll bet America has more gun laws on the books than UK. If we have no gun control as you suggest then I'd like to know why I need a Concealed Carry License and why ATF won't let me buy that M249SAW (that's a machine gun ) I've always wanted.

Originally posted by seabag
reply to post by HomoSapiensSapiens

 

The Woolwich Two come along and suddenly we're all shivering in our boots - when in fact, they're just random crazies and this has been the first Islamic extremist attack on British soil since 2005? Wow, we really need them guns don't we?

Muslim extremists aren't the problem entirely. It's funny that so many act as though violent crime simply doesn't exist in UK.

Laughable!

edit on 31-5-2013 by seabag because: (no reason given)

Bollocks abolsute bollocks.


You need to break down crime rates into diffrent crimes.

Britains murder rate is actually a quater of the USA did you know?

Not saying gun controls the reason but you cant throw statistics around without breaking them down.

You also need to factor in local issues too.