And morals, for that matter. Way to reveal your latent racism (or at least xenophobia).
And morals, for that matter. Way to reveal your latent racism (or at least xenophobia).
I missed the bizarre bit about moral decline. My sister's got a little brown boy, I suppose she must be morally corrupt. 
Racer Y. I cant speak for the rest of Europe, but the 'Spike' in gun crime in the UK is just that, a small spike, and as pointed out by Kev it's almost 100% gang related.
The amount of gun crime in this country is tiny. Almost completely insignificant.
Anyone who's walked the streets of Britain on a Friday/Saturday night will know that if we legalised guns the murder rate would go through the roof.
The amount of gun crime in this country is tiny. Almost completely insignificant.
Anyone who's walked the streets of Britain on a Friday/Saturday night will know that if we legalised guns the murder rate would go through the roof.
And I thought you were smarter than that....
With increased immigration, you're going to have an increase in crime.
When a person goes abroad to make a better life for themselves - they don't always make it. Factor in mistrust and suspicion of authorities that some immigrants tend to have, add in the ignorance and hostilities that come from the native population and you got yourself M-13
Morality decline If y'all can't figure that one out I can't help you. Hmmm... the things we consider as being taboo and not done are becoming less and less as time goes on it seems. And no I'm not talking about inter racial dating and Homosexuality. I'm talking about how things like burglary was a serious offense 40 years ago, yet now getting probation for it if you get caught. No wait... let's get back to interacial dating and homosexuality... sort of.
Even though it is a highly hypocritical idea, Sex outside of marriage was considered a bad thing. Now you have whole segments of the population going at it with out any regards for the consequences, only to fill their own selfish needs. Do you see the decline there? a thing that was once generally held for an expression of love and affection and as a way to procreate, now it's done for about the same reasons and with the same self centered logic as smoking crack.
What else have we slid on and what else are we going to slide on?
Maybe human life?
With all this and more going on, you don't think crime will continue to get worse? do you really think the do-nut eaters are going to be able to do much about it? They've pretty much given up here.
No dude there ain't any "latent racism" or Xenophobia here. I just think that that's how it is and that it's going to get worse.
You're approaching that from a very specific cultural viewpoint. I don't believe that sex was ever "generally held (as) an expression of love and affection" - I think it was always more generally considered a fun thing to do with your genitals. There are lots of people I love who I wouldn't shag, and I would hope you can say the same. Equally there are lots of people I'd probably shag that I don't love, but I don't think that makes me morally bereft either. And I don't think these attitudes were any different fifty years or even a hundred years ago - in my country anyway.
No.
Or... a thing that was once over-legislated due to centuries-long obsession with allegorical religious codes has been returned to a more natural state. Most of the time it's still done with love and/or affection. It's not like people didn't have affairs or sex out of wedlock before the sexual revolution, they just had to hide it because of the mores that were in fashion.
edit: and semi-unrelated, but in my opinion the War on Drugs is (by only the narrowest of margins) the second most idiotic war being conducted by our country at the moment.
The crime rate in Great Britain is about as "insignificant" as the crime rate in the U.S. And, as in England, crime in the US is largely due to gang activity and drug prohibition. While many Europeans like to think of the U.S. as the wild west, it's simply not true, and crime rates are comparable between the US and many European countries, despite the gun bans that are so widespread in there.
That is the same thing that anti-gun people constantly say over and over and it simply is not true. This is the same thing that people said about Florida. This is the same thing that people said when right-to-carry was granted in many US states. Right-to-carry states in the U.S. have lower crime across the board (according to the FBI's own crime statistics). The cities that have the most restrictive gun ownership (New York, Washington D.C., Chicago) have the highest crime rates without exception. More guns = less crime. It's really that simple. It may not be what you want to hear, but it's the truth.
Guns were outlawed in Great Britain in 1997. Violent crime in England has risen 69% between then and now. Robbery has risen 45%. Murder has risen over 50%. Violent crime and gun crime (wait, aren't they banned?) both have gone up every single year since the ban was put in place. Guns are still widely available in Great Britain, despite the gun ban. Violent criminals still have access to weapons while law abiding citizens are left defenseless. The criminals that can't get their hands on a gun commit crimes with whatever other weapon they have handy. Now, not only are guns illegal but swords are too. I'm sure kitchen knives, stones, and sharp sticks are next up on the list. When those are all gone, the thugs will simply attack the feeble and elderly with their bare hands.
Getting rid of the tool doesn't get rid of the behavior. It only removes the opportunity for law abiding citizens to defend their own lives.
I think that there is no correlation between legality of gun ownership and crimes. How is a gun going to stop a crime from occurring? If someone's pointing a gun at your head, it's not like you'll be able to pull out your gun and shoot them first. I am neither a proponent nor an opponent of gun control, since I don't own a gun.
You may think there is no correlation, but scientific study and statistical analysis shows otherwise.
all your xenophobia asside what youre really saying is the reason guns are legal in the us is because at the time kant et al were revolutionizing europe the americans just figured out that slaves are a jolly good idea
did i get that correct ?
I get tetchy when americans start talking about UK crime rates, so let's start throwing some statistics back at you...
You're still about three times more likely to be murdered in the USA than you are in the UK. Statistics for generic "violent crime" won't be very reliable, given the usual fiddling of the figures by governments to make for happier reading, so shall we ignore those?
Does the UK have as many random nutcases opening fire on crowds in shopping malls and university campuses and high schools as the US does? Well we can answer that one. It's perhaps a cultural issue as much as it's a gun proliferation issue, because that particular kind of outrage rarely happens outside of the USA at all - even in countries where guns are commonly owned.
Handguns were outlawed in 1997. Prior to 1997 there were still very strict laws on gun ownership, they were just tightened a bit in 1997 to include handguns as a reaction to a particularly nasty incident involving an angry former scoutmaster / nutjob who legally owned the guns he slaughtered those people with.
And yet I'm still much less likely to be murdered here than you are in the USA. Keep your gun - you need it more than I do.
Incidentally: Crimes involving the use of replica guns are recorded as firearms offenses in the UK (and punished as such). Approximately half of all recorded firearms offenses in the UK in recent years involved replica firearms - not real ones. Nearly 75% of firearms siezed in the UK were found to be replicas.
The USA still leads the world for gun deaths per-capita. You are - statistically - 35 times more likely to be killed by a gunshot in the USA than I am in the UK. So much for your argument about guns being just as useful if you don't fire them - maybe you should concentrate on telling your fellow americans that, because they're clearly not aware of it.
Mostly replica guns, it seems, which aren't really weapons at all but simply an intimidating-looking object. And guns aren't "widely available" in the UK at all. They are quite prevalent within the gang culture in, particularly, London, Manchester and Birmingham, and shooting victims are almost always gang members or the police. Illegal guns owned nationwide (judging by recent amnesties and police task force raids) are believed to number in the hundreds. In a nation of 60 million people, that is not an abundance of firearms by any means. Please stop exaggerating.
Your solution is to give guns to grannies. Ours isn't. We prefer ours.
You're still about three times more likely to be murdered in the USA than you are in the UK. Statistics for generic "violent crime" won't be very reliable, given the usual fiddling of the figures by governments to make for happier reading, so shall we ignore those?
Does the UK have as many random nutcases opening fire on crowds in shopping malls and university campuses and high schools as the US does? Well we can answer that one. It's perhaps a cultural issue as much as it's a gun proliferation issue, because that particular kind of outrage rarely happens outside of the USA at all - even in countries where guns are commonly owned.
Handguns were outlawed in 1997. Prior to 1997 there were still very strict laws on gun ownership, they were just tightened a bit in 1997 to include handguns as a reaction to a particularly nasty incident involving an angry former scoutmaster / nutjob who legally owned the guns he slaughtered those people with.
And yet I'm still much less likely to be murdered here than you are in the USA. Keep your gun - you need it more than I do.
Incidentally: Crimes involving the use of replica guns are recorded as firearms offenses in the UK (and punished as such). Approximately half of all recorded firearms offenses in the UK in recent years involved replica firearms - not real ones. Nearly 75% of firearms siezed in the UK were found to be replicas.
The USA still leads the world for gun deaths per-capita. You are - statistically - 35 times more likely to be killed by a gunshot in the USA than I am in the UK. So much for your argument about guns being just as useful if you don't fire them - maybe you should concentrate on telling your fellow americans that, because they're clearly not aware of it.
Mostly replica guns, it seems, which aren't really weapons at all but simply an intimidating-looking object. And guns aren't "widely available" in the UK at all. They are quite prevalent within the gang culture in, particularly, London, Manchester and Birmingham, and shooting victims are almost always gang members or the police. Illegal guns owned nationwide (judging by recent amnesties and police task force raids) are believed to number in the hundreds. In a nation of 60 million people, that is not an abundance of firearms by any means. Please stop exaggerating.
Your solution is to give guns to grannies. Ours isn't. We prefer ours.
It seems a lot like a chicken/egg argument when talking about US gun culture. Are the armed criminals the problem which requires citizens to protect themselves, or is it the fact that they can get guns as easily as anyone, legally or not? Is that huge black market for guns the problem or is it just an extension of the enormous legitimate market which could be, if not solved then seriously curtailed by serious punishment for gun trafficking and strict gun ownership laws? Gun control is like a dirty word in the US, especially in some areas of the country. Even relatively relaxed ideas like criminal background/mental history checks before selling guns to people are treated like heresy. Certainly, the black market will always be there if you're denied a legal weapon but if gun manufacturers were held to much stricter standards about where their guns go, how many are sold, who owns them and if gun sellers were held accountable for every gun they sell, perhaps the black market wouldn't be so huge.
In any event and for whatever reason, the gun-related problems the US experiences seem unique in the developed world (the spree-shootings, in particular, are almost chillingly common). The UK (which doesn't even arm its regular cops), Australia, New Zealand to name just three countries I'm familiar with, basically prohibit carrying handguns of any type and have tight restrictions on other weapons like shotguns and rifles. Semi-auto assault rifles were outright banned here after the Port Arthur massacre in the late 90s, where one man killed 35 people (add to that a high school colleague of mine who suicided a year after he survived the assault, due to the mental trauma). I don't believe there's been anything like it here since then. Of course we still have armed robberies and shootings, they're unavoidable, but we don't have people walking up to total strangers semi-regularly and blowing them away, or camping in the back of car a mile away and sniping the innocent.
But to blame spree-killings on guns alone is missing half the point. What social phenomena are happening to make this brutal way of expression "ok" with some disturbed people? Is it really stuff like violent media? Then why don't these spree shootings happen in Stockholm or Sydney where it's just as easy to buy GTA & watch The Matrix as it is in New York? Obviously these people are damaged to begin with and keeping them from watching Rambo or playing a PSX isn't going to make them "better", but what if they couldn't just go and buy a couple of guns and make the world pay? Guns don't make people crazy but they make it a lot easier for people who are to go and destroy a dozen lives before anyone knows what's going on.
Discussions about this issue always make me think of the general US image that a large percentage of the world has: big, strong, well-armed & able to pretty much do what it wants to other countries. Killing people is fine if you're defending the Homeland. With us or against us. It's certainly not new either, the US has practising gunboat diplomacy since the end of WW2 on every continent on Earth but, just recently, it's become a lot louder & more blatant than it's ever been in my lifetime. Just how much of this macho nationalist supremacy trickles down to everyday people, do you think? Plenty of people grow up damaged and insane for whatever reason, but what if they're constantly exposed to a political/media system that constantly, at every turn and on every channel, pushes the line that America is the greatest nation on earth and uniquely qualified to police the world and tell everyone else what to do, and anyone who gets in the way will be crushed? How about if you add the ability to legally - not just legally, but easily & quickly - acquire any weapon you want to your insanity & delusions of grandeur?
In any event and for whatever reason, the gun-related problems the US experiences seem unique in the developed world (the spree-shootings, in particular, are almost chillingly common). The UK (which doesn't even arm its regular cops), Australia, New Zealand to name just three countries I'm familiar with, basically prohibit carrying handguns of any type and have tight restrictions on other weapons like shotguns and rifles. Semi-auto assault rifles were outright banned here after the Port Arthur massacre in the late 90s, where one man killed 35 people (add to that a high school colleague of mine who suicided a year after he survived the assault, due to the mental trauma). I don't believe there's been anything like it here since then. Of course we still have armed robberies and shootings, they're unavoidable, but we don't have people walking up to total strangers semi-regularly and blowing them away, or camping in the back of car a mile away and sniping the innocent.
But to blame spree-killings on guns alone is missing half the point. What social phenomena are happening to make this brutal way of expression "ok" with some disturbed people? Is it really stuff like violent media? Then why don't these spree shootings happen in Stockholm or Sydney where it's just as easy to buy GTA & watch The Matrix as it is in New York? Obviously these people are damaged to begin with and keeping them from watching Rambo or playing a PSX isn't going to make them "better", but what if they couldn't just go and buy a couple of guns and make the world pay? Guns don't make people crazy but they make it a lot easier for people who are to go and destroy a dozen lives before anyone knows what's going on.
Discussions about this issue always make me think of the general US image that a large percentage of the world has: big, strong, well-armed & able to pretty much do what it wants to other countries. Killing people is fine if you're defending the Homeland. With us or against us. It's certainly not new either, the US has practising gunboat diplomacy since the end of WW2 on every continent on Earth but, just recently, it's become a lot louder & more blatant than it's ever been in my lifetime. Just how much of this macho nationalist supremacy trickles down to everyday people, do you think? Plenty of people grow up damaged and insane for whatever reason, but what if they're constantly exposed to a political/media system that constantly, at every turn and on every channel, pushes the line that America is the greatest nation on earth and uniquely qualified to police the world and tell everyone else what to do, and anyone who gets in the way will be crushed? How about if you add the ability to legally - not just legally, but easily & quickly - acquire any weapon you want to your insanity & delusions of grandeur?
Refresh my memory...what was it that lead to the 1997 gun ban in Great Britain? How about the similar nationwide gun ban in Australia? And let us not forget how serene and peaceful Northern Ireland was for the past 30 years. There are crazy, pissed off people all over the world. If they can't get a gun and shoot you, they're more than happy to blow you up instead.
Tightened a bit? A total handgun ban was passed. Long guns are virtually outlawed as well. Even Great Britain's Olympic athletes have to practice elsewhere because their weapons aren't allowed in the country. That's more than "tightened a bit". Did the gun cause the scoutmaster to become a nutjob? Is that how it's to blame?
England and Wales topped the U.N. list of first world countries with violent crime (beaten only by Australia, which also has very strict gun control). The United States doesn't even break into the Top 10. "Contact crime" in Great Britain is almost double what it is in the U.S. Burglary, auto theft, assault, etc are all higher in England than in the U.S. Often, by very large margins. Murder rates are higher in the U.S., but as I said earlier, you are very unlikely to be murdered unless you are a gang member or drug dealer. Other contact crimes happen to "normal" people. Were I a gang member, my chances of being murdered would be higher in the U.S. But as a regular citizen, my chances of being a victim of a violent crime are greater in Great Britain.
But, since you don't like being compared to the U.S., how about we compare apples to apples. Violent crime, deaths, and gun deaths have all gone UP in Great Britain following very strict gun control. The number of people injured by gunfire more than doubled from 1997 until now. Prior to the anti-gun legislation, violent crime and murders were both on the decline. Australia's crime rate was in steady decline until a massacre by a crazed gunman. They enacted sweeping anti-gun legislation and the crime rate climbed. Several U.S. cities had declining crime rates. Those cities passed anti-gun legislation in the 70's and the crime rate rose to record levels (and has remained there ever since).
Gun control laws do not work. Period. Taking away guns doesn't make bad people suddenly become good. It always goes the same way...certain guns are outlawed with the promise that crime will drop - but it doesn't. So more guns are outlawed. Instead of dropping, violent crime rises. So all guns are outlawed, yet crime remains the same or goes up. Then other weapons are outlawed, and so it goes. It's always more, more, more. We must have more restriction. We must have harsher penalties. But it doesn't work.
People have an unexplainable fear of firearms. Rather than being viewed as tools and inanimate objects they are vilified and viewed as evil. Until people learn to treat the problem (violent people) rather than blaming the tool, we'll always get what we've always gotten.
Luckily, I don't have to give guns to my grannies. They already have them.
You keep your system, we'll keep ours. I'm perfectly fine with that. Besides, my work day is over so I need to finish up this post and head home.
Sure, but guns are designed to kill people, bicycles and buckets are not. If you replaced all of your guns with buckets you'd be heading in the right direction.
Gun control certainly does work, it is proven.
Guns are not banned in Australia. Certain types of guns have been destroyed and it remains difficult or illegal to buy, sell or become licensed for those types of weapons. This has proven very effective.
All this ballet of numbers without sources is giving me a bit of headache.
Anyway I can talk only about my experience and all things considered I can say that I don't feel insecure when I don't have my gun by my side. Oh, and of course I don't have a gun.
Anyway I can talk only about my experience and all things considered I can say that I don't feel insecure when I don't have my gun by my side. Oh, and of course I don't have a gun.
I saw this in the morning news
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDUQW8LUMs8
and I'm still laughing.
That's what I think of the 2008 candidates.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDUQW8LUMs8
and I'm still laughing.
That's what I think of the 2008 candidates.
And how many similar incidents have there been in the UK and Australia since the gun bans? None. So they were 100% successful.
And let's not forget how that particular terrorist group was largely funded by americans.
How many people do you think he would've killed if he didn't have any guns? Do you honestly think he would've ventured into the criminal underworld to seek out guns with which to go on a killing spree? This is an important point which you seem to prefer to ignore - if people don't have access to firearms on the day they totally lose the plot, innocent people don't die.
I can imagine. We have quite a "yob" culture over here. People go out, drink too much and go looking for a fight. Getting punched in the face on a Friday night is probably not that unlikely if you go to the right (well, wrong) sort of establishments.
So can I presume your proposed solution would be to allow (indeed, recommend) all club-goers to carry concealed hanguns? A phrase involving sledgehammers and walnuts springs to mind.
Let's see some statistics then. If you insist that the UK is such a dangerous place to live, show me the figures. Incidentally, domestic burglaries have dropped by 60% since 1995, according to the home office.
The temperature of the earth has increased as the number of pirates sailing the seas has decreased, which suggests there is an inversely proportional relationship between pirates and global warming.
Perhaps other factors are at work in the UK. In 1997 - after eighteen years of Conservative rule - the UK elected a Labour party Prime Minister, and the Labour party are still in government. The Tories have always criticised Labour for being soft on crime - so perhaps that might be a reason behind a rise in crime statistics.
Policing has changed rather a lot. For the worse, in my opinion. Police officers are being replaced by less-useful and cheaper "Community Support Officers", and also by CCTV surveillance systems in most towns.
We also have a major prison overcrowding problem, which has resulted in reduced sentences and usually no custodial sentences at all for first-time offenders.
There have also been two reviews of the way crime statistics are recorded, in 1999 and 2002, both of which included more types of crime which will have inflated the statistics over previous years.
According to their estimates, due to these changes in recording: "Burglary in a dwelling was inflated by an estimated 3%, whereas violence against the person was inflated by an estimated 23% in 2002/03" - source.
You can look at more statistics here if you like. Good luck relating them to the 1997 handgun ban.
But it does mean that when good people turn bad they don't have a gun or three in their closet to play with.
Yeah I've never been able to explain why people are afraid of something that was designed specifically for the purpose of killing them.
Nice post, Kev.
Btw, latest numbers from the New Hampshire primaries:
CLINTON 39; OBAMA 37; EDWARDS 17
MCCAIN 37; ROMNEY 32; HUCKABEE 11
Btw, latest numbers from the New Hampshire primaries:
CLINTON 39; OBAMA 37; EDWARDS 17
MCCAIN 37; ROMNEY 32; HUCKABEE 11
Sigged :up:
Oh that's not mine, it's a well-known statistic.
Kind of like how since drugs(narcotics, marijuana, etc) are illegal regular people don't have access to them?
You have misread the quote entirely and your example makes no sense.
There's a much, much larger market for recreational drugs, and it's much easier to smuggle drugs into a country than guns. I'm sure I could go out to buy a bag of heroin tomorrow and not have to travel more than a couple of streets to get it, but my chances of finding someone to sell me a gun would be practically zero.
Even proper criminals in the UK have problems sourcing guns - in the majority of crimes involving firearms they are using replicas, and there are now restrictions being placed on those, too.
Speechless.
What's the point of developing pepper spray, tear gas and taser guns than. Waste of tax payer's money.
Come, my fellow Pastafarian!
2008 candadints!
(273 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG