In 1996, Thomas Hamilton turned one of his four guns on himself after shooting dead 16 five and six year olds at Dunblane primary school in Scotland.
The resulting handgun ban imposed in the wake of the massacre is now being challenged by shooters with one eye on the 2012 Olympic Games.
While i have sympathy with professional sportsmen who are perfectly responsible and feel they have been penalised for the actions of one man, i would hate to see any relaxation of the ban on guns.
Hamilton learnt to shoot at a local gun club and while thousands of people pass through such clubs and act perfectly responsibly, if the wrong person has access to a gun it can be disastrous.
I expect the pressure from the gun lobby to increase and the argument that the legally held guns are not the problem is perfectly valid, but I would prefer a few sportsmen to miss out on winning medals to even the remote chance of another Dunblane.
89 comments:
America is a very violent and aggressive society, one where gun ownership is widespread. I rest my case which supports yours, Lucy! Cheers.
I think there should be way more restrictive gun laws here. Maybe not a total ban, but not what we have now.
Agree with the above. In Canada, we don't have a ban, but it's not out of hand like it is in the States.
The resulting handgun ban imposed in the wake of the massacre is now being challenged by shooters with one eye on the 2012 Olympic Games.
Sorry, but I was struck with a fit of laughter when I read that.
I guess I am, as ever, mystified by what responsible gun ownership has to do with the use of guns in illegal violence, Lucy.
It seems to elude even intelligent people that banning guns will not prevent them from being obtained and used by criminals to commit violent crime.
For the record, yes I support the Second Amendment and no I don't believe we need NO restrictions.
What is needed is enactment of laws that provide stiffer penalties for those who use them in an irresponsible manner. Consider that most US states lack Child Access Prevention laws*, and a parent cannot be prosecuted even if their negligence in gun safety led directly to the death of their child.
I'm sorry, but if you leave a loaded gun around the house and your child finds it and kills him/herself, you should be left to die in the wilderness with no clothes for food. At the same time I find it curious that because there are people this stupid in the world I should not be allowed to purchase and keep my handguns.
Go after the criminals and leave the rest of us alone.
*http://www.commondreams.org/pressreleases/Dec98/123198a.htm
"I would prefer a few sportsmen to miss out on winning medals to even the remote chance of another Dunblane."
But that's hardly a fair trade-off. Another Dunblane isn't remote at all, especially if what I read is true that gun crime is on the rise in the UK. I don't care so much about sportsmen as about basic rights of the citizenry to reasonable tools for self-defense.
Take a good look at all things banned, illegal and restricted.
Drugs
Murder
Robbery
Rape
Arson
Unsafely prepared food
Reckless & drunk driving
and so on...
Problems with them haven't gone away, have they?
The good people don't cause problem and the criminals don't give a damn...
I am in full agreement with Mark on this one.
Although I personally do not own a gun myself banning handguns/long guns make's about as much sense as the Kyoto Accord. It does nothing to actually address the "problem" and only pacifies lobby groups while punishing those who have never committed an offence.
Quite often gun crimes (at least here in Canada) are committed with stolen or even illegal guns. If the criminal element wants to use a gun in a criminal act there is no law or ban that will prevent them from obtaining the weapon of choice and using it.
And that is the key word here..."Choice"! As the old cliche goes:
Guns don't kill people. People kill people!"
A gun cannot pick itself up, load a bullet in the chamber, aim it at another human being, and fire a round into their still beating heart without the assistance of the human being.
Make the criminals responsible for their choices/actions by punishing them thru severe cosenquences. Not the millions of innocent's who would not even dare dream of aiming their guns at another human being.
Put accountability where it rightly belongs and stop offering up band aid solutions that do nothing to deter the criminal element.
A favorite moment from Happy Gilmore.
Richard Kiel ("Jaws" from the Moore-era James Bond movies) wearing a T-shirt that says:
Guns don't kill people.
I kill people.
I think this comes down to here in the UK we have no culture of gun ownership. The only armed people were these sportsmen and criminals.
It seems over in the states there is a high school shooting anually but in the UK this was stunningly shocking, hence the handgun ban.
My worry is that if this ban is lifted, then it will be the start of the chipping away of the law.
The criminals having guns is a seperate social issue, this is about relaxing a law which will allow more guns in the country and that can never be a good thing.
O'Tim - I never even saw that as i was writing it, wish i had then i could say i did it on purpose, but i never.
"and that can never be a good thing."
Again, Lucy, how so? Guns imported and purchased and handled legally have little to do with guns imported illegally and sold on the black market. Anyone with a documented history of mental illness or a criminal is forced to buy from illegal sources. And they will and do.
All the gun control laws in the world leveled against the legal market will not stop the illegal trade.
You keep going back to the illegal guns which is not my point at all. It was a legally held gun and a licensed gunman that was responsible for Dunblane. The law passed afterwards affected a tiny minority of gunmen but stopped anything like this ever happening again.
Illegaly held guns are another matter altogether, this law is aimed at gun clubs which are such a minority as not to register and is nowhere near as popular as the USA which has a gun culture which we, thankfully, do not have here.
Here, gun ownership is the exception while there it is the rule and that's the difference. We can stop ourselves reaching the proportions you have and all the problems that come with that.
I'm just saying that a blanket restriction on guns in the US is absurd, and pointing out why because others brought up the issue of US gun control in comments before I.
As I said at my site in response to your comment, maybe the ban in England needs to be lifted for those who are involved in sport shooting and have no criminal record or history of mental illness.
And there are no guarantees how guns are used, legal or otherwise, and more deaths occur with motor vehicles every year in the US so maybe we should ban those as well?
Great post Lucy. My kids don't want to visit the US because of gun laws, they think - wrongly - that everyone totes guns.
My son has had enough dealings with gangs and skinheads here to make him realise that guns are not the solution but part of the problem. Violence is never a positive solution.
Australia banned all guns and it has had a very positive effect. Mark's comment are way out as usual. How many guns do you own, Mark?
Lucy,
"You keep going back to the illegal guns which is not my point at all. It was a legally held gun and a licensed gunman that was responsible for Dunblane. "
I do see the sincerity of the point you are trying to make but the arguement you use is weak.
A baseball bat is also just as legal to obtain and does not even require a license. Applying your argument would suggest we should also have an all out ban on bats because "one" individual snapped on his wife and beat her to death with it.
Again, you continue to remove accountability from the individuals actions/choice and punish the entire "Baseball league" of responsible gun owners.
If you were too successfully remove every single gun from your country and also succeed at preventing any entry of them (contra band) as well, the individuals intent on taking another's life will simply find another way to do it.
Deal with the problem! That being the criminal element.
Daniel,
"Australia banned all guns and it has had a very positive effect."
Are suggesting your country has now successfully eliminated all gun crimes?
Just curious.
TIO:
From The Australian Gov't's Australian Institute of Criminology
Figuresw on homicides in 2004-5
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi141.html
"The weapons/methods used in the commission of homicide have remained relatively unchanged over the years."
Sounds to me like the gun ban is working splendidly to remove guns as a vehicle for the commission of a homicide. Wouldn't you agree?
There's also this, but I anticipate that everyone will pass it off as biased, gun nut propaganda:
http://www.nrawinningteam.com/auresult.html
Bottom line is, gun bans don't work. Period.
"The law passed afterwards affected a tiny minority of gunmen but stopped anything like this ever happening again."
Really? Ever? Ever is a very long time, Lucy.
I have to agree that if America banned firearms, it would only make it easier for criminals to make victims out of the honest folk. It would also increase gang activity, because there would be another black market to serve.
And no, I do not own a gun, so please keep your stereotypes away from me.
I am not saying they should be banned, i am saying that they should stay banned. The decision to ban them was taken 10 years ago. Whether you Americans or Canadians want to own a gun is your own affair, i am not concerned with your gun laws, fill your boots and own a bazooka for all the difference it makes to me. I don't have to live among you.
"I am not saying they should be banned, i am saying that they should stay banned. The decision to ban them was taken 10 years ago."
OK, that's it. I'm moving to Britan.
You are welcome Stephen, you can't bring a gun though. They have been banned so i hear.
I have to leave my M-16 behind? Damn.
You'd have to leave it behind to come to the US as well.
I guess, if you really were that attached to it, you could get into the West Bank or Gaza with no problem. Thanks to the US, the M-16 is one of the "Palestinian" Arab terrorists' favorite weapons.
Freedom fighters arn't they?
Oh yeah, excuse me - the "militants".
Insurgents possibly?
"Not quite. People with guns kill people. You need both. "
Not quite. You can do the job quite nicely with a knife. Or poison. Or rope. Or a ball-peen hammer.
Very seldom do any of these devices, especially the ball-peen hammers, kill anyone without a person helping.
"Not quite. You can do the job quite nicely with a knife. Or poison. Or rope. Or a ball-peen hammer."
Or a car. Lots of death by automobile. And like Joe, I'm not a gun guy. Don't own one, don't plan to. But like many things in this country that make me go, "Wha?" we give 16-year-old kids licenses and keys to one ton weapons and turn them loose on the streets, yet we don't want law-abiding citizens to be able to own guns.
"like many things in this country that make me go, "Wha?" we give 16-year-old kids licenses and keys to one ton weapons and turn them loose on the streets, yet we don't want law-abiding citizens to be able to own guns."
Right, makes sense to me, too. And what's really bizarre is that a good portion of those that are most vocal about the Bush Administration taking away our personal freedoms are also the ones whining that they want more gun control.
Go figure.
"Not quite. You can do the job quite nicely with a knife. Or poison. Or rope. Or a ball-peen hammer."
Yes, but were not talking about knives or ball-peen hammers. We're talking about guns. It is in that context that I made that comment.
Well, you can purposely miss my point by focusing on minutia, but I'd call that disingenuous. The real point is that PEOPLE kill people, and have a wide variety of toolds to do so with. Make guns illegal, and they will people will still be murdered with knives, clubs, phone wires, or even.... illegal guns. People..... people who kill people....... can use anything.
Here's my position: What the USA wants to do in terms of gun ownership is its own business.
As a casual observation, I do kinda suspect that the number of people who die from 'handgun homicide' in the USA is just ever so slightly connected to how many people, erm, well, own handguns!... but that's for Charlton Heston to discuss with Michael Moore i.e. that's their own business.
But what I will say is that, in this country, the United Kingdom, let's try and keep the number of people who own handguns well down, huh? I've got this sneaking suspicion we'd be saving lives.
"I've got this sneaking suspicion we'd be saving lives."
Well, then, and as Mr. Kos has already pointed out so eloquently, Cheezy, when does the ban on cars begin in the UK??
Never...
Oh f*ck! Wait a minute! You mean that cars kill people too? Oh yeah! Mate! I get it now!
Well yeah, then I'd better advocate that the UK ban cars too, right? Just so I can remain logically consistent with my last statement about how glad I am that the UK doesn't have as many handguns as the USA!
Sweet. Done it now. "Ban 'dem bad ol' cars!" :)
And ciggies. And food. And sitting in front of the telly on our fat arses. They're all fatal too. So they're gone.
Thank sweet baby jesus that we're back living in this black'n'white, easy to understand world! Gotta have that 'consistency'.
It's not about consistency, except where the inconsistency of your argument is concerned.
And I certainly don't advocate the banning of anything you mention. My question was hypothetical, but you knew that.
So it's not about, erm, consistency, it's, um, inconsis... erm...
Argh! Now you're complicating matters for me, Mark. And you were doing so well up until now! With the reductionism that we've come to know & love from you, you spelt it out very clearly that if you advocate free societal access to one group of things that can be used to kill people, then logically, you have to also extend this access to every group of things that can be used to kill people. And vice versa - if one is banned then they all must be. My mind rests much easier when things are simple like this.
So I'll try to ignore your latest comment, because it introduced an unwelcome note of ambiguity and indicated that maybe, just maybe, life is a little more complicated than that... :-(
The difference is, guns are designed and built to kill things. Cars are built and designed to get you from A to B and other uses if you are Stan Collymore.
Lucy - So you're saying that ownership of things designed to kill, namely guns, should be the express venue of the government and not the citizens who put that government in power?
I don't know, sounds like a scary proposition to me.
Sounded like a scary proposition to America's founding fathers as well, and that's why we have the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Do you think it was a coincidence that that came about when we rebelled against YOUR government, the one that does not allow you to have guns now?
Just a little food for thought, innit?
i am not concerned with your gun laws, fill your boots and own a bazooka for all the difference it makes to me. I don't have to live among you.
I'm sorry, Lucy, but for all your attempts at reason, this is moronic. I've stayed away from this argument because, well, because it's a waste of time for reasons I won't go right here. This is what my six-year-old does when he can't convince me to do things his way. Emotional hyperbole and unbecoming any sort of rational argument.
Oh, wait, there was more:
Stephen wrote:
Yes, but were not talking about knives or ball-peen hammers. We're talking about guns. It is in that context that I made that comment.
Um, quite wrong, and weasely to boot. You were talking about what kills people. You made a statement that basically said that because guns can be used to kill people, it is the guns that kill people. Joe pointed out to you that these other instruments can also be used to kill people. You're shirking the argument.
I performed a quick search on the term "uk gun ban crime rate" to find information on the effect the ban has had. There is a general belief that the gun ban has resulted in higher gun crime rates, as some of us would tend to predict. However, that assertion requires proof, and I found nothing definitive.
What I did find was that though gun crime rates have not gone down, the slight rises in said crime can also be attributed to other causes. The jury's still out, therefore. As an anti-fascist, I would state that a law that does no good does harm by default. However, Britons may feel otherwise. Given their lack of a U.S.-style gun culture, it may be natural for Britons to feel that a ban is better than not, even if it accomplishes nothing.
"it may be natural for Britons to feel that a ban is better than not, even if it accomplishes nothing."
God save the queen, Rule Britannia and all that, wot?
Toodlepip!
"So you're saying that ownership of things designed to kill, namely guns, should be the express venue of the government and not the citizens who put that government in power? I don't know, sounds like a scary proposition to me."
And Timothy McVeigh and David Koresh felt exactly the same way! :)
Don - Straight from the Home Office:
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crime-victims/reducing-crime/gun-crime/
"Contrary to public perception, the overall level of gun crime in the UK is very low – less than 0.5% of all crime recorded by the police.
Facts & figures
In the year ending 31 March 2005 provisional figures show a:
* 16% reduction in the use of handguns
* 9% reduction in robberies involving firearms
* 6% reduction in serious injuries from firearms offences
Despite these figures, the number of overall offences involving firearms has been increasing each year since 1997/98. And crime involving imitation weapons was up 55% in 2004-05 compared to the previous year. (Source: Crime in England and Wales 2004/2005)"
It's "very low" but increasing.
First, I'd wager that it was "very low" (relativity is a wonderful thing, innit?) when Hamilton went berserk.
Second, if it's increasing, the ban isn't working.
I'd love to compare stats with the deaths of children in auto accidents with those killed by firearms over the past twenty years in the UK, especially considering that children are hardly given a choice when it comes to riding in a car.
The case that one is specifically designed to kill and the other is not is irrelevant, in my opinion.
"Second, if it's increasing, the ban isn't working."
What utter nonsense!
Again, you're having problems with logic, my friend. To deduce whether the ban is working or not, you'd have to compare it to the rate of firearm offences which would have occurred had the ban not been in place. Which is unknowable, of course.
You can't simply look at a graph that shows a rising trend and conclude that one particular policy isn't working! Sheesh!
Doing that is like saying that a government retraining scheme didn't work during a time of rising unemployment... when the number of unemployed could have been mitigated by the actions of the government i.e. unemployment would have been much higher (that it was) without the policy.
Shucks, do I really have to explain that? I guess I do.
Oh, and by the way, the Home Office is a laughing stock - in every respect - over this side of the pond, mate. "Not fit for purpose" and all that. It's certainly not the body to cite unimpeachable evidence from - but I guess Google wouldn't tell you that...
Top marks for effort though! :)
mark - second amendment? When you have to resort to a law passed over 300 years ago to justify your argument, i can hear the bottom of the barrel being scraped.
Looney, don't stay away, jump in but lift the level of your debate please.
I am all for disagreements but attempting to belittle people is just, well, childish.
I would personally like to commend Lucy for getting more than 50 comments on a post! S'been a long time since I pulled that off. Looks like I gotta do an abortion topic...
What Koz said... Fifty comments when the topic isn't the scraping of womb-boogers is a fine achievement :)
"When you have to resort to a law passed over 300 years ago to justify your argument,"
Umm.... barely over 200 years, by my watch. But so what? I see people refer to the Magna Carta still. Why would only recent history count? You know what they say about people who ignore history, right?
See what you've done????? You've got me arguing on Mark's side, FFS! :-)
I bow to your watches 200 years Joe and promise to by myself a new watch.
Shamefully, i really do not know much about the Magna Carta apart from King John signed it. Maybe something interesting was happening out of the window the day we did that at school.
50 comments, wow, and i didn't even think this one was that controversial.
It wouldn't have been, had you had no Americans over here!
"mark - second amendment? When you have to resort to a law passed over (200) years ago to justify your argument, i can hear the bottom of the barrel being scraped."
I wish I still smoked reefer, Lucy, I'd ask you to send me some of yours cuz it must be some really damned good shit!
You don't still smoke it ? Bang goes my theory then. :)
Joe the troll,
Yes, there are other objects that can be used to kill people. However, guns kill more people than any other single object. If you remove guns, you will remove the means with which many people will kill someone else.
In other words, removing guns will not eliminate deaths, but they will reduce them.
Yeah, but my gun collection en toto has killed less people than Ted Kennedy's car, so let's extrapolate out THAT statistic, shall we?
OK, we can ban Ted Kennedy's car too. ;)
"You don't still smoke it ? Bang goes my theory then. :)
My own theory is crack and draino.
"so let's extrapolate out THAT statistic, shall we?"
I'm not sure you want to do that, Mark, since we found out that statistics isn't exactly your specialist subject! ;-p
"If you remove guns, you will remove the means with which many people will kill someone else.
"
Damn! I really want to kill this guy I'm pissed off at, and he's right in front of me, but I have no gun! All I have is a kitchen full of knives, a baseball bat, several blunt, heavy knickknacks, a rope, some rat poison, and my own two hands which could easily cut off his air supply!! But no gun!! I guess I'll have to let him live, then, because only GUNS work for what I want to do!
Right.
Most people drive, right? So if cars are eliminated, no one is going to go anywhere?
Most people use stoves to cook, right? So if there are no stoves, people eat raw meat?
If guns are made illegal, at least here, people will kill each other in other ways. It's the PEOPLE, dammit!
This isn't a love for guns that I'm expressing. It's REALISM about why people are killed. It happened quite a biy before guns were invented, and will always happen. Blaming the guns just makes you feel like you're doing something about it.
It all sounds like my liberal position on drugs! Anyway, I do understand Joe's philosophy on this issue (albeit tempered by a continuing desire to see the UK's gun ban go on). I also appreciate the fact that he is (a) logical and (b) doesn't try to mock anyone. We rule, people! :)
Thank you, Cheezy.
If the majority of people there want to continue the ban, you should. It's that easy.
I think you're misunderstanding me Joe the Troll (at least I hope you are).
I am not saying that if you eliminate guns will eliminate murders. Yes, in some cases, if I gun isn't handy, a person will resort to something else, but not in every case.
There are a variety of causes that can contribute to killing another person. In fact, in any one case, there can be a variety of contrbuting factors.
Guns is one of those causes. Not the only one, and not in every case, but one of them. Can we agree on that?
"I am not saying that if you eliminate guns will eliminate murders. Yes, in some cases, if I gun isn't handy, a person will resort to something else, but not in every case."
Like a car, maybe? So, as I said, we should ban cars too. Hell, fair's fair.
Agree with Joe. If a majority bla bla. There's no good reason to undo the UK ban right now. Playing in the Olympics doesn't rise to the level of "good reason."
"So, as I said, we should ban cars too."
It's like showing a card trick to a dog sometimes, isn't it?
Steven, I understand you. What I'm saying is that the difference between using a gun for murder, self defense, or target practice lies with the USER, not the gun. The choice between murder or peaceful resolution lies with the PERSON. The moral weight rests entirely with people. There was murder before guns, there will be murder without them. When you seek to blame the weapon, you not only avoid the point, but you distract others from the point as well. PEOPLE are the problem.
OK, I really wanted to let this thread go, but I have to respond.
No, I still stand by what I said originally. You need both the person, and the means that the person uses to kill the other person, whether it is a gun, a knife, a ball-peen hammer, his own strength, or whatever.
What do police look for in a murder investigation? They look for motive, means, and opportunity. The motive can be ascribed to the personality of the user. The means however, is also important. The person needs something, usually outside themselves, to commit the murder.
It seems obvious to me, and I think most people, that while banning, or at least effectively controlling guns would not eliminate murders, it would reduce them.
Why guns, and not knives, cars, etc? I haven't checked the stats, but I think it's a safe bet that deliberate killings occur far more often (on this side of the Atlantic anyway) as a result of guns than any other single device.
"but I think it's a safe bet that deliberate killings occur far more often (on this side of the Atlantic anyway)as a result of guns than any other single device. "
The DEVICES do NOT CAUSE the murders. What is it about this simple truth that makes it so difficult to absorb? Perhaps guns are used more, but if they aren't available something else will be used.
Jeez, this should be obvious. Guns don't make decisions. People DO.
"Guns don't make decisions. People DO."
I'm guessing that everyone here does appreciate this fact, Joe. What I think we're hearing though, is the contention that, in societies with fewer - way fewer - guns dispersed among the population than the USA, you'll usually find a much lower murder rate. This is because guns are incredibly efficient killing machines in a way that even kitchen knives are not.
I ain't blaming the guns though, no sirree. It's still the twat who fires it who's to blame. I think we all know this.
The question of 'to ban or not to ban' is a different issue, but I think we've heard from a fair number of people on this thread from places which have quite restrictive gun control laws, and to say that there's no groundswell to change these laws is something of an understatement, I believe. As for the US though, I express no desire either for or against gun control - because it's not really my business.
"What I think we're hearing though, is the contention that, in societies with fewer - way fewer - guns dispersed among the population than the USA, you'll usually find a much lower murder rate. "
You're right, we are hearing that contention. What we're not hearing is any data that backs it up. here in America, the opposite has been shown to be true, so we're back to what I said originally - that the difference in murder rates between America and, say, England, is due to something other than the availability of guns by itself.
Well, if it's the USA and the UK that you want data on...
United States: 0.042802 per 1,000 people
United Kingdom: 0.0140633 per 1,000 people
So the murder rate is 3x higher in a country with very liberal gun control laws than it is in a country with strict gun control laws.
Having said that, I tend to agree with your statement--
"the difference in murder rates between America and, say, England, is due to something other than the availability of guns by itself."
--because I'm absolutely not saying that gun control alone is the reason for the disparity between the two countries. Someone above mentioned the different in culture, which is a more intangible thing to try and measure but it would still have an effect.
However, I tend to suspect that the quoted statistic is affected by people in the US having readier access to a more effective way of killing people.
I'm wandering into this topic a bit late - 70-odd comments too late!
The gun ban on its own will solve nothing, as many people have already pointed out.
However, i believe that it is part of a larger scheme to reduce violent death/ murder rates. Other parts of this multi-pronged approach should include: better policing on the streets & criminal justice; tackling the illegal gun trade; bans on any other weapons (such as dangerous knives); fighting organized crime; reducing poverty through education, training, & welfare; improved moral awareness; improving community cohesion, etc etc etc.
I think the ban in the UK also helps to keep gun culture at bay. We are not used to guns, so we will always fear them and want them out of society, especially out of the hands of criminals. Rather than owning them ourselves, we want the government and police to tackle gun crime.
Wrt to gun sports, perhaps a safe compromise would be to restrict legal gun ownership to shooting ranges alone. That is, those who want to partake in some shooting fun can only do so on the range, but they would not be allowed to own guns; the guns will "live" on the range. That way the sports-people can get in their practice in a controlled environment, without having to repeal the gun ban.
So the murder rate is 3x higher in a country with very liberal gun control laws than it is in a country with strict gun control laws.
Having said that, I tend to agree with your statement--
"the difference in murder rates between America and, say, England, is due to something other than the availability of guns by itself." "
Yes. The US grew, culturally, as a group that celebrated the frontier, shift-for-yourself, defend-yourself-from-all-comers, don't-trust-the-government mentality. The UK became a very staid, conservative, rely on the establishment cultural group.
Oh sorry, I didn't realise this thread had gone from being a discussion of the original topic at hand, to a simple opportunity to bolster your own national grouping at the expense of another. Pardon me.
In that case, erm, go us! We rock baby! Woooohoooo!
Cheez, babe, you are thin skinned if that's what you got out of my response. I'm simply agreeing with a portion of your statement. Do you deny that the US has frontier-land cultural ties? Shoot 'em up, glorified old west mentality? Shoot first, ask questions later? The US culture glorifies that, and it doesn't take guns to enact it! And the UK _is_ a staid, conservative, much older culture that left it's wilder, woolier ways behind it long ago. Hundreds of years versus thousands, O Solidified Milk Product.
Over on your blog you snooted about about how lurvely and peaceful it was, no ugly comments, and here's you, without intended provocation, getting on your high polo pony ...
Got mirror?
"its" not "it's". Sheesh. I hate when I do that.
I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here, my man. My comments were intended in a light-hearted way. Sorry mate, I'll ;-) you in on the joke next time!
PS: It's or its - not to worry, mate... We're not apostrophe nazis around here!
Gekko is right. We're a lot closer to a time when NOT carrying a gun was tantamount to suicide. How long has it been since the UK was a wilderness? These attitudes don't disappear overnight. Did you stop arming yourselves as soon as the picts were no longer a threat?Besides, Cheezy, look at what you said:
" I tend to suspect "
"What I think we're hearing though"
and Stephen said:
" I think it's a safe bet "
Well, if oft-repeated opinions became facts, Bush would be a great president, wouldn't he? Your opinions do not address the fact that in America, cities or states that ban guns have no decrease in violent crimes, and often have an increase, because criminals know that people cannot defend themselves. So you Brits can pat yourselves on the back all you want for your superior enlightenment, but what works there is not an answer everywhere. If it were, you'd probably still have your damned empire.
"So you Brits can pat yourselves on the back all you want for your superior enlightenment, but what works there is not an answer everywhere."
And here we find perfect consensus, Joe my friend. All that you've heard from me is support for "what works there" (i.e. the current gun control laws here), coupled with a disinclination to prescribe any course of action for the USA with regard to gun control laws. Mainly because it's none of my business but also partly because I suspect that if I lived in the USA (or certain parts at least) then I could potentially own a handgun.
So there we go. You're right. It works here (which is the bit that's relevant to the point of the original post - sorry if you got the impression that we were patting ourselves on the back about it - I thought of it as more as an 'observation'... but hey-ho).
But it might not be the answer, as you say, "everywhere". Damn straight. I completely agree. Ah... Consensus :-)
And Gekko ain't no man, man. That lizard's one fine lady.
Oh sh*t. Sorry Gekko! Sorry... erm... everyone!! I've put my big 'British-Empire issue' Size Elevens right into once again! :-(
Apologies :-(
Sorry Gekko!
Think nothing of it, my fine curdish fellow. I chose the name for its adron ... androj ... thingie where you don't know if it's a boy name or a girl name, so I get to roll with the gender, so to speak.
That lizard's one fine lady
Hey, Kos, I ain't no lady I'm ... okay, well not that, either ... I guess I'll have to just stick with "fine" and let it go there.
Big grinnie thingie.
Wensleydale all around. My treat.
joe the troll,
I never said that guns CAUSE murders. They certainly can be a contributing factor though. That should be obvious.
I know I'm late, please forgive me.
I agree with Joe. People kill people using guns as a means, and most of those people doing the killing (at least in the U.S.) are cowards who wouldn't last 5 seconds in hand-to-hand combat- and most wouldn't even try. Take away the guns and the cowards won't have any means of killing. They'd be too busy pissing their pants to pick up that knife to stab someone. And they wouldn't be killing innocent bystanders with their stray shots.
I know for a fact I can take a 6 ft. 200 lb. man with a knife in combat- I've been trained. But if that slimy bastard decided to whip out a .36 (that he stole from a local collector, for instance) behind my back I'd be toast. So, there's a huge difference in killing someone with a knife - because that someone really does have more of a chance- and killing someone with a speeding bullet.
Ok, so let me modify my opening. It's bullets that are what's so dangerous about guns- bullets kill people. Take away the bullets and you can have your gun, because then if that slimy bastard coward robs your house and steals your guns he won't be able to shoot me in the back.
I say bring back real courage and get rid of the props.
As a resident of CA,WA,MT, and with firends around the country I find that even with a complete ban or with restrictions that criminals will still get the same guns through the black market, and such all it would do is through the advantage to the criminals side. Most criminals will not break in to a house marked as a Gun owner, and with this I would think that if everyone who didnt have a criminal background or of high risk (such has terroists or gangstas) could own a gun that the numbers would lower much. By the way guns dont kill poeple, stupid people with little sense do. Lets just up the education and see what happens!
Have to admit Jusitn, never understood the logic of there being less shootings if everyone had a gun. Wouldn't there just be more accidental shootings for one. There is some great stats on this page that says if you have a firearm in your home, you are 22 times more kill a family member or friend than to kill in self-defense.
http://www.bradycenter.org/stop2/facts/fs2.php#n9
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