Re: The FAST Approaching Gun Ban
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Prospero
Silly British? Taking into account the difference in size of of our populations the number of annual gun deaths here is tiny compared with the US....
Correct. You have less gun deaths. But, your knife crime rate has increased drastically. Hence your bizarre laws regarding knife sales, including plastic picnic knives. You even have MP's who are trying to introduce legislation to ban kitchen knives. The problem isn't the weapons. The problem is the people and your criminal justice system. Go ahead and mandate the use of plastic or rubber sporks for the public safety. It isn't going to stop criminals from using hammers and cricket bats next.
And taking into account the differences in our populations, the UK's violent crime rate is four times that of the United States, when calculated via the standard "per 100,000 population" statistics system. It is also among the highest violence rate nations in Europe.
Re: The FAST Approaching Gun Ban
Actually our laws are quite simple. It is illegal to:
- sell a knife of any kind (including cutlery and kitchen knives) to anyone under 18
- carry a knife in public without good reason - unless it’s a knife with a folding blade 3 inches long or less, eg a Swiss Army knife
- carry, buy or sell any type of banned knife (the list of banned knives is below)
- use any knife in a threatening way (even a legal knife, such as a Swiss Army knife)
Information below is from a House of Commons Note of Nov. 2012.
During the year to June 2012 there were approximately 29,613 recorded offences involving knives or other sharp instruments, accounting for 7% of selected offences, a similar proportion to previous years. The number of knife offences recorded was 9% lower than in the preceding year.
According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSES) in 2011/12 a knife was used in 6% of all incidents of violence experienced by adults, similar to the previous year’s proportion
Over the year to the end of June 2012 there were 19,382 disposals given for possession of a knife or offensive weapon. • Juveniles (aged 10-17) were the offenders in 17% of cases. The custody rate was 10% for juveniles and 28% for adults.
A Court of Appeal judgement in May 2008 said that magistrates should normally sentence those convicted of knife crime possession offences at the top end of the range. Following this custody rates and average custodial sentence lengths have risen.
• NHS data suggests there were 4,490 people admitted to English hospitals in 2011/12 due to assault by a sharp object. The lowest level since 2002/03.
Info from a Freedom of Information request to Home Office (2013)
There has been a significant reduction (-19.7%) in reported knife crime offences from the financial year 2011-12 to 2012-13. With some boroughs notably: Lambeth, Westminster, Brent, Camden, Greenwich, Islington and Merton seeing reductions of over a third. Three London boroughs saw small knife crime offence increases, Croydon, Southwark and Barnet, with Southwark having the highest volume of knife crimes in a London Borough and Croydon the second highest volume.
Oh, do wish people would check the facts and then base arguments on them. We can all have our own views but we can't have our own facts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
kittyKaiti
Correct. You have less gun deaths. But, your knife crime rate has increased drastically. Hence your bizarre laws regarding knife sales, including plastic picnic knives. You even have MP's who are trying to introduce legislation to ban kitchen knives. The problem isn't the weapons. The problem is the people and your criminal justice system. Go ahead and mandate the use of plastic or rubber sporks for the public safety. It isn't going to stop criminals from using hammers and cricket bats next.
And taking into account the differences in our populations, the UK's violent crime rate is four times that of the United States, when calculated via the standard "per 100,000 population" statistics system. It is also among the highest violence rate nations in Europe.
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Re: The FAST Approaching Gun Ban
"Get a nice job and move to the suburbs". Unfortunately, for many people, it is not that easy.
There was a spot on the TV news years ago featuring 5 black kids who grew up in a high crime area, they were all lifting their t-shirts showing off how many times they had been shot. They weren't even 18.
In their neighborhood everything that can be wrong goes on.
My Coke Dealer/Whore friend Diane lived there.
She got knifed to death. One time she set fire to the rowhouse she lived in. She was half American Indian, half White, sometimes she could be pretty, sometimes she looked sick. Whenever we sat in the carry waiting for the coke guy to get our product, the cops would drive by and say "Hi Diane"
She was famous for her temper. The first time I met her I came real close to strangling her myself.
One time when we were talking, she said she had no regrets about anything, she had her fun.
Re: The FAST Approaching Gun Ban
Quote:
Originally Posted by
kittyKaiti
Correct. You have less gun deaths. But, your knife crime rate has increased drastically. Hence your bizarre laws regarding knife sales, including plastic picnic knives. You even have MP's who are trying to introduce legislation to ban kitchen knives. The problem isn't the weapons. The problem is the people and your criminal justice system. Go ahead and mandate the use of plastic or rubber sporks for the public safety. It isn't going to stop criminals from using hammers and cricket bats next.
And taking into account the differences in our populations, the UK's violent crime rate is four times that of the United States, when calculated via the standard "per 100,000 population" statistics system. It is also among the highest violence rate nations in Europe.
The UK has one quarter the murder rate of the United States. So it's likely that not everyone who would kill with a gun ends up finding other means of committing murder. It goes without saying that a country with fewer guns will probably have fewer gun deaths. But that would not prove much if everyone who would commit murder if they possessed a gun ended up instead committing murder with a hammer or a knife when their guns are taken away.
But Britain, a country with dangerous cities, and as you mention, its fair share of violent crimes, has one fourth the murder rate of the U.S. It could be that it's more difficult to kill someone with a knife than a gun couldn't it? Or that some people who kill with guns do so impulsively and would not commit the murder if they did not have such an efficient means of killing.
Just thoughts.
Re: The FAST Approaching Gun Ban
Quote:
Originally Posted by
broncofan
I love that what he actually said was wiser and more eloquent.
Agreed...I love this quote and wish I had the ability to remember it verbatim (I don't ...too many dead brain cells). Here it is for those who didn't click on Trish's link (thanks Trish):
“When a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn't anger me.”
Re: The FAST Approaching Gun Ban
Quote:
Originally Posted by
fred41
Agreed...I love this quote and wish I had the ability to remember it verbatim (I don't ...too many dead brain cells).
I know. Me too. I've decided my consolation is to remember the word unexpurgated. I can see myself at a dinner party when the subject of censorship comes up, "you know Mark Twain had quite a profound quote about this that uses the word unexpurgated."
Re: The FAST Approaching Gun Ban
Quote:
Originally Posted by
broncofan
I know. Me too. I've decided my consolation is to remember the word unexpurgated. I can see myself at a dinner party when the subject of censorship comes up, "you know Mark Twain had quite a profound quote about this that uses the word unexpurgated."
lol...my ex-wife used to say "say it ten times then write it on your forehead"...or something like that.
Re: The FAST Approaching Gun Ban
Quote:
Originally Posted by
kittyKaiti
Correct. You have less gun deaths. But, your knife crime rate has increased drastically. Hence your bizarre laws regarding knife sales, including plastic picnic knives. You even have MP's who are trying to introduce legislation to ban kitchen knives. The problem isn't the weapons. The problem is the people and your criminal justice system. Go ahead and mandate the use of plastic or rubber sporks for the public safety. It isn't going to stop criminals from using hammers and cricket bats next.
And taking into account the differences in our populations, the UK's violent crime rate is four times that of the United States, when calculated via the standard "per 100,000 population" statistics system. It is also among the highest violence rate nations in Europe.
I don't think the comparative statistics are a useful way of discussing this. Rather, I would like to suggest that at the core of the problem with gun related incidents that are not part of crime or terrorism, is mental health. The issue then becomes whether or not the local authority has the right to remove firearms from a household because one of its members is receiving medication for a mental illness, say, depression. I wonder how often a crime is committed by someone who has stopped taking their medication? It also means that a licence to own firearms should not be given to people in a household with someone on medication -I don't know if this is a violation of 2nd Amendment rights, or if the issue is protecting citizens that is something you need to discuss. It might sound harsh, but aside from politically motivated killings and the 'day-to-day' criminal activities of gangs, the Mafia and so on, the headline killings could have been avoided if mental health issues were recognised as being important. In the UK mental health is, and has been, a 'cinderella' service compared to the money spent on cancer treatment; yet it is problems such as depression and paranoia that can account for needless deaths, in Leicester, Hungerford, Dunblane and the Lake District.
Re: The FAST Approaching Gun Ban
In the USA, its where you draw the line. Tax rates. Minimum wage. Age of Consent. Age to buy booze. This is how we do it.
But there is no law that says smart people can do one thing but dumb people can't.
You can't say the the govt OKs skeet shooting at the yacht club but not in the ghetto wink wink.
There are many small towns with low crime rates where families take care of each other, and they all have guns, and they all do not like Democrats on TV talking down to them. Laughing at them. Calling them hicks, hillbillies, backward.
The majority of people that come on this site are here to gawk.
The majority of transgenders are here to squeeze a buck out of the non-transgenders. Not to win them over to their way of thinking.
Polls say the majority of people want stricter gun controls. To keep THOSE people away from guns. In one way this is like putting a lock on your house to keep the honest people out. It is also like putting bars on the windows and doors to keep the criminals out.
Everybody makes mistakes, sometimes the mistake is you got caught.
In the USA sex for money is wrong. In England it's right.
Who is correct?
Re: The FAST Approaching Gun Ban
Maybe not who? Think of it as a legal process.
Clearly the majority of gun owners in the USA are responsible, or the death toll on a weekly basis would be unacceptably high. So the issue is not about the law per se, but the individuals who are expected to abide by the law -which is why I raised the mental health issue because it does enable you to make a distinction between people and decide if mental health issues are sufficient to suspend 2nd Amendment rights to identifiable individuals. Stricter gun controls can in fact make sense, if the argument for them is sensible.
