New U.K. Gun Law.

[Johnnyallstar]

There's a huge emotional issue here, but it's not quite the elephant-in-the-room obvious. Gun crimes and gun violence are horrible, yes, but the fact is most gun crimes are related to other crimes. Outside of unlicensed/underage ownership, or improper carry/concealment, there are rarely crimes involving guns that are crimes simply because of the presence of a gun.

Rape, murder, robbery, battery, etc etc etc can all be done as well with knives as well as guns. Yes, it's usually easier to get away with when using a gun, but if someone is going to commit a crime against you, there's a darn good chance that the assailant will be using a knife instead of a gun. Yet we never hear of "Knife related crimes." Partly because of the difference in lethality/morbidity differences between knife wounds to gunshot wounds.

But in my personal experience, I've seen, heard, or been the attempted victim of knife related crimes much more often than gun crimes. In fact, nobody I know closely has been involved with a gun related crime, though there were several involving knives. Would it then be logical to ban knife ownership, or incredibly crack down on knives, because the rate I experienced would suggest a greater frequency of knife related crimes than guns?

No. The issue arguing here is trying to cure a symptom without addressing the disease at all. What is the reason for all these crimes? Sometimes it's broken minds, yes. The deranged will always be among us, and we have to do our best to protect the people against them.

Any major downturn in the economy will tend to lead to a rise in crime because normally good, rational people get desperate, and that desperation leads to abnormal activity. The simple cure here, would be for the government to stray from economically destructive activity (the hows and whys of which is a whole other discussion for another time.) A government that allows the economy to supply the people with enough jobs will find a lowering in crime because there is a lack of desperate people.

Crimes of passion will also never go away, but we can try to instill a culture of self-control (God forbid), and self-discipline (also God forbid) which would help deter such crimes, at least part of the time.

And I leave the conversation with a quote to chew over from Thomas Jefferson.
Never trust a government that doesn't trust it's own citizens with guns.

 

[Treblaine]

First things first; please lets not turn this into a gun control thread...
(talks about gun control)

: /

Very well then, I'll make this a law enforcement issue.

Didn't that Cumbria gunman have a firearms license anyway? didn't he from the outside have completely clear mental health and no criminal record?

Didn't he drive RIGHT PAST a police station where not a single armed officer was around to confront him and they couldn't even follow him after he threatened them with his gun?

Clearly the issue here that our idealistic fantasy of unarmed police is anachronistic and has directly cost lives. We don't need traffic wardens with handcuffs, our police should be armed to DO THEIR JOB of protecting the public.

A few armed police over a massive area are useless.

Sorry, what I ment was lets not turn it into an argument about gun control. They get heated and are just silly. Of course the thread is about gun control, but I was suggesting that people say wether they thought the proposed legislation would have any positive/ negative effects, if it would reduce crime etc. Not that they argue about wether they support gun control or not. Does that make sense? Probably not. Sorry.

Yeah Bird did have a FAC. That's what makes the proposed law so pointless. He would have still managed to kill all those people if it had been in place or not. And yes I think he was of sound mind, but supposedly so are most of these murderers...

Agreed on the armed police thing. Maybe not to the extent of arming all officers, but I think it would certianly be a good idea for most police stations to have a couple of trained Firearms officers present, not carrying firearms, but with a small armoury at the station so they could quickly access guns if needs be rather than waiting for an armed response team to come from the nearest city.

Duno if that would work... What do you reckon?

I propose exponentially increasing the size and scope of the armed response units. Eventually to the point of COMPLETELY REPLACING the old and obsolete model of policing in the UK and take all their bad habits with them. Of course a few stragglers will remain, they can serve a superficial purpose, you know for a "police presence" of the "bobby walking the beat" ask for directions, photographs with tourists... frivolous stuff like that.

But if my home is broken into by some psycho with a weapon, if I can't use a weapon to fight back I expect the police to arrive with guns at the ready. I mean if he had just a knife... police would be fucked.

Truncheon vs knife

Knife... WINS!

I am aghast as some police officers objecting to armed officers as "ooooooh, it will end up like america!" as if the USA is somehow the exception? No! It is BRITAIN that is the exception! Almost every other country in the world sees the sense in arming their police. It is a matter of standards, unarmed police have no real power or responsibility. The way people interact with police in the UK... it's like school children misbehaving with a substitute teacher.

I half expect that the major reason for the government mandating shorter sentences (other than running out of money for prisons or some liberal pussyism) is lighter punishments mean suspects won't resist arrest as much.

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

And yeah, I know! I guess it's all the doing of the Lib Dem toadies? The conservatives are usually dead set against this sort of thing. Hell, thats one of the reasons why they won so many votes in my constituency

I'm not so certain the Lib Dems have any real say in what happens. Sure, they might be what some have called the "conscience" of the Conservative party, but if the Conservatives really wanted something to go their own way, they'd make it so, perhaps conceding something less important to them to the Lib Dems.

Perhaps an important law the Lib Dems would hate is being passed at the same time? Political machination can't be overlooked here.

Or perhaps David Cameron isn't much of a man who goes out shooting; he doesn't really look it, and it makes the Lib Dems happy. Or, in light of the Raoul Moat incident, popular opinion may have turned against shotguns, and Cameron is looking to take advantage of that; more votes for him.

Also, how difficult would these laws make it for a hunting/shooting MP to procure a shotgun? Respected members of society, are they not? Couldn't they cut corners?

 

[Kortney]

And again I cant help but laugh at the morons who come up with this shit. Im not one of those NRA nuts, but its just ridiculous to think that making it harder to get guns legally will lower crime, if anything, it will make it easier for criminals to take advantage of lawbiding citizens.

It lowers gun crime dramatically and that's the issue here.

 

[EMFCRACKSHOT]

Ah nice choice SMLE's are lovely looking guns. Never knew you could get .22 ones though, always assumed they were chambered for .303 and that was that. Hope you manage to get your mitts on one

And yeah shotguns are great gun to shoot. I'm guessing they are totally different to shoot than rifles at a long range though. It's all short distances, judging speed, and reaction shooting. Well, clays are. They are fun weapons to mess about with too, provided you stay safe. Tried shooting clays Down The Line from the hip the other day. It didnt go too well

They are quite hard to find. Most of the .22s end up with cadet squads (first gun i ever fired, some of my fondest memories) and ive heard its quite hard to fins .303 ammo. Especially since standard calibre now is .22
And that sounds like a lot of fun, i really want to try it now xD

 

[Treblaine]

In related news the 2012 London Olympics, organisers were obviously to afraid by piddly air pistols... so have replaced them with laser pistols

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/7959533/London-2012-Olympics-laser-guns-to-be-used-over-air-pistols-for-modern-pentathlon.html

yes, paranoia over guns has reduced the Olympics to shooting events like Pentathlon to little more than this:

What the hell is the freaking point in the Olympic shooting events now? If it is just simulated shooting then Quake-Con tournaments have more interest!

 

[lostzombies.com]

This knee-jerk reaction could be damaging to shooters, sportsman, collecter, and the shooting industry as a whole.

Oh noes! Why, next they might do something damaging to the stabbing and raping industry too! D= No, but really there is absolutely no need to have a gun, and one of the best things about Britain is that you can walk down the street without worrying that any nutter is hiding a firearm.

The only and I mean ONLY negative thing about the UK gun laws is that the UK used to be one of if not the best performing nations at shooting events at the Olympics and now we suck at it....and who in their right minds gives a flying fcuk about the Olympics?

Every country has a huge amount of nutcases, drunks and idiots etc. To actively arm them beggers belief. When the western world can show they are capable of being mature and responsible ie drink driving does not happen at all, then we can think about letting the plebs handle firearms.

 

[manaman]

Our government only likes to crack down on illegal weaponry if they're automatics.

No, they crack down on all illegal weaponry, but I think you where trying to express that the only firearms generally illegal are automatics and you feel most should be. Many other types of firearms are illegal as well, you can't own a artillery (well you can own cannons) but I think you get the idea.

And again I cant help but laugh at the morons who come up with this shit. Im not one of those NRA nuts, but its just ridiculous to think that making it harder to get guns legally will lower crime, if anything, it will make it easier for criminals to take advantage of lawbiding citizens.

Oh yeah, that's why America has such a great gun-crime rate.

OT: Good, as far as I'm concerned.

Right, that's why most homicides are law abiding people. Fail

I'll take it you mean the victims of the murders and not the murderers. If the guns weren't so obtainable to begin with then those without the guns wouldn't feel the need to have them, and wouldn't suffer from not having them either.

The fact that you can probably find a gun in almost every home in certain parts of America does not deter gun-violence, it encourages it.

Canada has the second highest gun ownership rates behind the US, and rivals gun ownership rates in some parts of the US. They have a nearly identical homicide rate as the UK (1.8 Canada, 1.5 UK).

Russians are only allowed to buy smoothbore pistols and shotguns that fire rubber bullets, then prove safe use for five years before they can purchase a rifle. Yet they have a homicide rate that is nearly double the world wide average, that is triple that of the US and coincidentally that of Europe because the average homicide rate in the US and the average homicide rate of Europe are the same, restrictive gun laws or lax gun laws, people that want to kill are going to figure out how to do it.

It's all fine and dandy to say "gun deaths," "gun-violence," or whatever else you want to call it, because it gets the numbers you want. I could say the US is a beacon of peace and prosperity because there was zero landmine-violence last year, unlike the rest of the world which suffered quite a bit of "landmine-violence" last year. We don't have landmines all over around the country of course we won't have people dying by them. You need to look at the overall homicide rates versus gun ownership rather then just narrowing your views to statistics you want. After all it's a person killing another person, does it really matter if they used their hands, a knife, a crossbow, a gun, a tree branch, a dog, or the family car?

Murder is one thing, but should we even get into violent crime rates, and the problems with reporting statistics, or adding in attempted homicides, or any many other statistics that are always left out of this argument? Cause I could note that the US and the UK have roughly the same definition of violent crime, and same reporting rates. Which makes the UK's 2034 per 100,000 citizens rate appalling when compared to even South Africa (one the most violent westernized countries in the world, with a murder rate of 37). South Africa has a violent crime rate of 1,609 the US has a rate of 466 which puts us even behind Canada with a rate of 933. So yeah we kill each other at about the same rate as people in Europe, but we are a lot more civilized to each other in the mean time.

And again I cant help but laugh at the morons who come up with this shit. Im not one of those NRA nuts, but its just ridiculous to think that making it harder to get guns legally will lower crime, if anything, it will make it easier for criminals to take advantage of lawbiding citizens.

It lowers gun crime dramatically and that's the issue here.

And taking cars away would lower the amount of cars stolen.

You do realize it lowers that one statistic right? Not so much overall crime rates. Those people that stole the cars are going to steal something else. Those people that used the gun in a crime are going to use another weapon.

 

[MartialArc]

According to my brief research, there were 39 gun homicides in the UK in 2009. 380 people died in car accidents involving a drunk driver.

Clearly alcohol should be banned before a gun ban is even considered, as this would save 10x the lives that banning guns would.

 

[Johnnyallstar]

the family car?

Aha! There is so much death on the roads in America, the same basic logic should apply to cars as much as guns right? How many crimes have cars been involved with as runaway vehicles? Shouldn't then, using the same logic, cars be banned?

People are trying to blame the tools for the fault, rather than the craftsmen.

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

What the hell is the freaking point in the Olympic shooting events now? If it is just simulated shooting then Quake-Con tournaments have more interest!

It's the British Olympics; we were going to fuck it up somehow.

 

[godofallu]

I'm from Wisconsin, which is kind of a less crowded farming area.

Around here everyone has a gun, but it doesn't matter because you can go into your backyard and hunt and actually use it.

Where would you shoot a gun in Britain? Isn't the entire Island pretty damn crowded?

I'm all for the freedom to bear arms, but why own a gun if you aren't going to use it to hunt or protect yourself?

 

[Kinguendo]

Good, cant stand guns. Despicable things that were invented to kill, no practical use what so ever. May as well be called art and stuffed into museums.

 

[WanderingFool]

And again I cant help but laugh at the morons who come up with this shit. Im not one of those NRA nuts, but its just ridiculous to think that making it harder to get guns legally will lower crime, if anything, it will make it easier for criminals to take advantage of lawbiding citizens.

It lowers gun crime dramatically and that's the issue here.

How? Those gun laws make it harder to get guns legally. Whats to stop a actual criminal from buying a $50 throwaway street gun from a back ally? Just because you can make legally getting a firearm hard, doesnt stop a career criminal or gang-bangers from getting there hands on shit that you cant even own legally (general automatic weapons, which I believe fall under the classification of assault weapons, which are illigal to own.) These laws are useless, what needs to done is to try and stem the flow of illegal firearms from entering a country to began with.

 

[manaman]

the family car?

Aha! There is so much death on the roads in America, the same basic logic should apply to cars as much as guns right? How many crimes have cars been involved with as runaway vehicles? Shouldn't then, using the same logic, cars be banned?

People are trying to blame the tools for the fault, rather than the craftsmen.

The traffic accident death rate in the US is 12.6. The total firearm related death rate is 11.66, unless you want to discount suicides, then it's 7.07.

I far and away don't believe that just anyone should be able to own hand guns, or carry them, but a gun that is never picked up by anyone is not going to suddenly leap off the table and go on a shooting spree. It does make killing a slight bit easier, but so does making 100lbs of explosives out of fertilizer.

Edit: I wanted to note that the only real solid statistics I could find on firearm deaths comes from the late 90s. Crime rates overall in the US where much higher then, which leads to the gun death rate higher then the current homicide rate in the US. Based on gun violence trends you would see that rate being closer to 4 now. While the traffic related deaths statistic is more current, but follows a more linear increase based on the number of people on the road.

And again I cant help but laugh at the morons who come up with this shit. Im not one of those NRA nuts, but its just ridiculous to think that making it harder to get guns legally will lower crime, if anything, it will make it easier for criminals to take advantage of lawbiding citizens.

It lowers gun crime dramatically and that's the issue here.

How? Those gun laws make it harder to get guns legally. Whats to stop a actual criminal from buying a $50 throwaway street gun from a back ally? Just because you can make legally getting a firearm hard, doesnt stop a career criminal or gang-bangers from getting there hands on shit that you cant even own legally (general automatic weapons, which I believe fall under the classification of assault weapons, which are illigal to own.) These laws are useless, what needs to done is to try and stem the flow of illegal firearms from entering a country to began with.

Actually faced with much higher sentences for using a gun and the lack of anyone else carrying a weapon for defense means criminals will turn to other weapons. Especially when just carrying the gun can lead to their arrest and a stiff punishment. It does lower gun crime rates, but everyone should realize that gun crime rates are not the end all of crime rates. As I said those criminals will remain criminals and continue to commit crimes, just without using guns.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

It is; you can use force to defend yourself, but not excessive force. And excessive is a gray area.

Personally I think anyone who steps into your property with the intention of murder, theft or assault should not be allowed to leave. Except in a body bag. You put your hand in my pocket and you'll drag back a bloody stump.

In the US, this is generally the case with one key exception. Normally, one is expected to use the minimum amount of force required in order to get out of the situation safely and this is obviously quite variable and open to interpretation. That said, the US has a basic principle that a person should never have to retreat in their own home. The impact of this principle varies from state to state but in places like Texas, this essentially means once someone breaches your property with the intention of commiting a crime, you can use lethal force to stop them. This generally only applies to one's house itself though it can be extended across the property so long as adequate, highly visible warnings are posted. Without such a warning, you are once again relegated to the "minimum force required to safely escape".

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Personally I thought the pre hungerford and dunblane laws were ok for the most part. Thorough background checks for mental health and criminal activity, belong to a shooters club or have the land to shoot on and have secure wall or floor mounted safe to carry the weapon and a seperate safe for ammo, to be checked every couple of years. All firearms & ammo purchases to be recorded. I think that is all that's necessary.

EDIT: On the home defence thing, it's never really been an issue, gun ownership is and always has been very low, even before the ban on handguns and semi auto rifles coming up against an armed householder has never been much of a worry. While you are allowed to use a firearm if you have one to hand it isn't like the US where you can blow away any intruder(as far as I can tell), shooting an unarmed burglar or one that is fleeing, or using excessive force (shooting several times) will probably get you in a lot of trouble.

Did you know we also have flying monkeys armed with assault rifles all over the country as well? That should be as believable as saying people in the US can use whatever force they feel like for whatever reason on their property. You can't actually believe that is true. What we are allowed to invite people into our homes then shot them if we don't like the comments they made about our table arrangements? Excessive force still exists over here.

And holy crap I am glad I don't live where you live if all those restrictions are perfectly acceptable to you.

Well, aren't you a charmer?

You seem to having difficulty with the meaning of the word 'intruder'.

You find a thorough background check, joining a shooters club and having to have a secure safes for guns and ammo to be unacceptable restrictions? Holy crap, I'm glad I don't live anywhere near you, although that has just as much to do with your manner.

As far as i know, it is only legal in Minnesota to shoot someone if they are posing a danger to your family: i.e. the intruder is armed. You absolutely CAN NOT shoot someone that is fleeing. That will cause the local police to do everything they can to lock you away for a good long time.
About the excessive force: pretty much every self defence training course that i've heard about tells you to keep putting rounds on target until they drop. I'll be honest, if someone were coming at me with a knife, firearm, baseball bat, or anything else that would hurt if I were hit with it, I'd put every round I needed to into them.

Thank you, that was very informative, I have also read posts on here that in some states you are advised to shoot to kill rather that wound as if you shoot to wound the victim can't have been enough of a threat. Any truth in that?