Question for anti-gun:

[ElPatron]

You have a twisted version of what makes a killer, and it's clouding your judgement.

I don't have a twisted vision. I am thinking exactly like a person in panic would. Fake a break in and report the gun as stolen, buy another barrel/damage the original one, etc. are not too complicated.

Simply put, there is a very low statistical probability of finding the culprit because there are a ton of polygonal rifling weapons. Glocks are very popular handguns and they come from factory with polygonal rifling barrels.

Polygonal rifling may leave striations that are difficult to match to a particular barrel.

Some localities, particularly Maryland, have attempted to build up a large database of "fingerprints"; in the case of the Maryland law, all new firearms sales must provide a fired case from the firearm in question to the Maryland State Police, who photograph it and log the information in a database. The Maryland State Police wrote a report critical of the program and asking the Maryland General Assembly to disband it, since it was expensive and had not contributed to solving a single crime.[3] Subsequently however, the database did provide evidence used to obtain one murder conviction at an estimated cost of 2.6 million dollars per conviction.[4]

A California Department of Justice survey, using 742 guns used by the California Highway Patrol as a test bed, showed very poor results; even with such a limited database, less than 70% of cases of the same make as the "fingerprint" case yielded the correct gun in the top 15 matches; when a different make of ammunition was used, the success rate dropped to less than 40%.

Read them and weep.

Plus, shotguns do not even have rifling marks, making the shot fired from a shell impossible to trace back to a weapon.

 

[Darkmantle]

You have a twisted version of what makes a killer, and it's clouding your judgement.

I don't have a twisted vision. I am thinking exactly like a person in panic would. Fake a break in and report the gun as stolen, buy another barrel/damage the original one, etc. are not too complicated.

Simply put, there is a very low statistical probability of finding the culprit because there are a ton of polygonal rifling weapons. Glocks are very popular handguns and they come from factory with polygonal rifling barrels.

Polygonal rifling may leave striations that are difficult to match to a particular barrel.

Some localities, particularly Maryland, have attempted to build up a large database of "fingerprints"; in the case of the Maryland law, all new firearms sales must provide a fired case from the firearm in question to the Maryland State Police, who photograph it and log the information in a database. The Maryland State Police wrote a report critical of the program and asking the Maryland General Assembly to disband it, since it was expensive and had not contributed to solving a single crime.[3] Subsequently however, the database did provide evidence used to obtain one murder conviction at an estimated cost of 2.6 million dollars per conviction.[4]

A California Department of Justice survey, using 742 guns used by the California Highway Patrol as a test bed, showed very poor results; even with such a limited database, less than 70% of cases of the same make as the "fingerprint" case yielded the correct gun in the top 15 matches; when a different make of ammunition was used, the success rate dropped to less than 40%.

Read them and weep.

Plus, shotguns do not even have rifling marks, making the shot fired from a shell impossible to trace back to a weapon.

Yes, a person in a panic will have the presence of mind and the time to leave faulty evidence, craft an alibi with physical evidence, and take the necessary steps to make his gun harder to identify.

Are you even listening to yourself?

Gun registries are not used in a vacuum. it can easily narrow down suspects. And I see no reason not to have them. You need to register your car, why not your gun?

oh and here

In a Canada Firearms Centre (CAFC) survey, 74% of general duty police officers stated that the registry "query results have proven beneficial during major operations.".[10]

 

[ElPatron]

Yes, a person in a panic will have the presence of mind and the time to leave faulty evidence, craft an alibi with physical evidence, and take the necessary steps to make his gun harder to identify.

I am *just* giving examples. Tracing a firearm is already hard, criminals *can* make it harder. Heck, a lot of people must have started wearing gloves and cleaning their prints because of CSI.

Also, most of the things I mentioned aren't even instinctive. It's hard to remember to pick up casings unless you trained yourself to it or if the casing got your attention.

But damaging a gun is something a person does after going back home and taking a shower.

Are you even listening to yourself?

Are you listening to me?

>polygonal rifling marks are harder to use as evidence, glock pistols are very popular
>shotguns do not leave marks
>requires the existence of a recoverable bullet
>even the same barrel can have different marks if it's dirty or clean

Gun registries are not used in a vacuum. it can easily narrow down suspects.

Sorry, I didn't get that part you said you studied criminology. Because you can't really claim it can "easily" narrow down suspects, specially in a country with millions of firearms of the same model.

Yes, you can't just assume the gun was registered in the same city.

And I see no reason not to have them. You need to register your car, why not your gun?

Do car registries prevent road deaths?

Anyway, the registry exists to prove that you are paying your taxes. If there was no registry everyone would be driving around public roads without contributing for their maintenance.

In a Canada Firearms Centre (CAFC) survey, 74% of general duty police officers stated that the registry "query results have proven beneficial during major operations.".[10]

First: do their registries include casings and rifling marks?

Second: Canada, as a democracy, repealed their long gun registry.

 

[DugMachine]

the point of guns isnt to defend they are designed to kill others, they have no purpose other than to kill.
snip

I hear this argument a lot, and it makes no sense at all. You could say the same thing of a bow, but nobody's clamoring to ban bows. That aside, the overwhelming evidence proves you wrong. 1.5 million times each year(conservatively), in the US alone, a gun is used for self defense, the vast majority of the time not killing anyone. On the other hand, including suicides and accidents, only around 30 thousand people die because of firearms. This overwhelmingly shows that guns are used more often to defend people than they are to kill them, so of the two, self-defense is the more common "point" of firearms. Also, there are between 70 and 80 million American's that own firearms, and each of them uses it for something.

Exactly. While they are designed to kill they can be used to defense just the same. I was mugged down town once and when I brought my handgun out the guy shit a brick and ran off.

 

[DugMachine]

The one that gets me is "It's to stop the government taking over!" That would've made sense when the constitution was written, when people had muskets and there was an even chance that if they wanted to, the people could've overthrown the Government. It is now 2012, your handgun isn't going to amount to shit if the government (for some insane reason) decides it's going to become 1984, the government has Predator Drones, Tanks, Airstrikes, an Airforce, a Navy, Nukes and whatever other Heavy Artillery it has available, if they wanted to take over, they could do it and no amount of NRA members is going to be able to stop them.

Yeah and the Taliban has crappy AK47's and some inaccurate as shit RPGs and we still can't stop them fully. I know our government wouldn't go all 1984 on us but you seem underestimate the power a few million Americans with guns have.

 

[DancePuppets]

There's also a lot of immigrants in the US. Immigration doesn't prove anything.

The UK is almost reaching Orwellian stage so let's not get hasty.
http://news.sky.com/story/2731/teen-charged-over-dead-soldiers-facebook-post

When I was in London, something serious must have happened because the cops were sporting MP5 submachine guns and eotech sights. Cops are not armed but they have to bring the big guns whenever something serious happens, which honestly doesn't make any difference.

And guns are not even illegal. Even children as young as 11 have been granted Shotgun Certificates, and the police actually requires a reason to prevent British citizens from owning a shotgun.

1) Immigration disproves the original statement which was that no-one wants to live in the UK, if people are choosing to move here then that statement is clearly fallacious. A more directed insult may have been more difficult to refute.

2) UK is nowhere near an Orwellian state, hence why I pointed out the indexes used for measuring freedom place it at a similar level to the USA. Different freedoms are valued over those in the US; however. An exampleis the freedom to not be insulted for a race or ethnicity while just going about your business is valued above free speech, hence the racial hatred laws. Again disproving the original point. In the specific case you posted, it won't hold up in court as British law is determined by precedent, so it will be thrown out (especially after the recent Twitter case about the airport). Lets not be too hasty about using reactionary right wing news sources for our information perhaps?

3) Except something serious almost never happen so it's rare to see armed police, especially outside of London,

4) Most guns are illegal within Great Britain, shotguns are not, primarily for sporting purposes as far as I know, in Northern Ireland; however the gun laws are more lax (not entirely sure on how lax); however my only statement on gun laws was that I, personally, feel more comfortable knowing that there are very few about and that most of our police officers are not armed. That is a purely subjective statement, having lived in the UK for most of my life I am uncomfortable seeing armed police and they make me feel less safe.

Anyway that's basically all the stuff I needed to cover, I just take exception to people insulting each other's country's over things like this. Yes I find the USA's approach to many things a bit odd, especially as the UK and USA have a fair few things in common, doesn't mean I think it's a worse place to live, just not somewhere I'd ever choose to live. A good example are the gun laws, another the type of health service and another the strength of the religious pressure groups, none of those things necessarily make a place a worse place to live, just not somewhere someone like me would choose to live.

 

[Royas]

ElPatron - you have NO idea what you're talking about.

I legally purchased my very own AK47 for $300 from a co-worker with absolutely no paper work involved at all. (and before anybody wets their pants, I bought it as a collectors item.)

You did no such thing, or if you did, you now are the proud owner of an illegal firearm that will get you put in jail for a long goddamned time. What you probably have is an AK style semi-automatic rifle, but it is certainly not an AK-47, any more than an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle is an M-16 assault rifle. It may look similar, and may even be mistaken for one in a quick glance, but it isn't one.

Oh look, this again. By all technical means, no it is not an original, fully automatic AK-47. But it's still a fucking AK-47. "WASR10" -whatever. It's a fucking AK-47. It's nearly identical to the real AK-47. And when talking to most people, you don't say "AKM" or "WASR10" because they don't have any idea what those words are - you say "AK-47" and everyone immediately knows what it is.

The only reason ElPatron even brought up the niggling differences between a REAL original AK and the modern day AK variant known as the WASR10 is because he wanted to show everybody just how much he knows about guns, when the person he was arguing with originally was almost certainly talking about the modern day variant of the AK and not the "rare" original AK-47's.

A Corvette is still a Corvette despite being a completely different animal today, is it not?

Now that we're done arguing semantics, let's get back to the topic, eh?

Whoa, sorry to twist your knickers, friend. I was just pointing out that it wasn't an assault rifle by any accurate definition is all. I don't care if the phrase AK-47 or AKM was used, it just wasn't an assault rifle, which blew the actual point of your argument out of the water. You were disputing the ease of purchasing an AK-47 (an assault rifle) by comparing it to the purchase of a non-assault rifle. They are two different critters, and can not be compared.

Actually, I happen to believe that most people shouldn't have an actual assault rifle. They really are unnecessary. The idea of most people being able to just spray fire around gives me chills, if only because I know just how inaccurate automatic fire is. It's one of the few things I wouldn't want my neighbor having, in other words. AR-15, fine. .50 pistol, fine. .50 BMG sniper rifle, fine. Fully automatic assault rifle, not so much.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

The one that gets me is "It's to stop the government taking over!" That would've made sense when the constitution was written, when people had muskets and there was an even chance that if they wanted to, the people could've overthrown the Government. It is now 2012, your handgun isn't going to amount to shit if the government (for some insane reason) decides it's going to become 1984, the government has Predator Drones, Tanks, Airstrikes, an Airforce, a Navy, Nukes and whatever other Heavy Artillery it has available, if they wanted to take over, they could do it and no amount of NRA members is going to be able to stop them.

Yeah and the Taliban has crappy AK47's and some inaccurate as shit RPGs and we still can't stop them fully. I know our government wouldn't go all 1984 on us but you seem underestimate the power a few million Americans with guns have.

I tend to stay away from these threads, as being a 2nd Amendment-supporting American seems to be on par with being a baby-eating puppy kicker, but I feel a point must be made.

You're right. We're not to be underestimated.

This relates to the point I hope to make. One of the big things here against the "defense against government" argument is that the government has access to fantastical stuff and they'd kick our ass regardless of what legal weaponry we had.

They have trouble with rag-tag terrorist organizations with nowhere near the highest quality equipment. And these are people they're trying to kill.

Guns are a threat to them because the government can't afford a rebellion. You can only kill so many protective gun owners in the US before you realize that your population's been dramatically reduced and those left aren't feeling very inspired to obey their newly viciously oppressive government.

 

[elvor0]

-snip-

Yeah and the Taliban has crappy AK47's and some inaccurate as shit RPGs and we still can't stop them fully. I know our government wouldn't go all 1984 on us but you seem underestimate the power a few million Americans with guns have.

-snip-.

I tend to stay away from these threads, as being a 2nd Amendment-supporting American seems to be on par with being a baby-eating puppy kicker, but I feel a point must be made.

You're right. We're not to be underestimated.

This relates to the point I hope to make. One of the big things here against the "defense against government" argument is that the government has access to fantastical stuff and they'd kick our ass regardless of what legal weaponry we had.

They have trouble with rag-tag terrorist organizations with nowhere near the highest quality equipment. And these are people they're trying to kill.

Guns are a threat to them because the government can't afford a rebellion. You can only kill so many protective gun owners in the US before you realize that your population's been dramatically reduced and those left aren't feeling very inspired to obey their newly viciously oppressive government.

I suppose, but then, it's a different kind of military doctrine when you're fighting the Taliban, as they use suicide bombers and rely heavily on guerilla warfare, as well as hiding in plain site, it worked pretty well for the Viet Kong as well, until the US Government decided they were just going to Napalm suspected hold outs, which cost a LOT of innocent lives, these days they're not allowed to do that(for good reason), and are trying to avoid all out war. An army vs a guerilla group has very different combat dynamics and military strategy to say... WW2, which was armies fighting each other all over the shop.

They have to be careful not to kill civilians and innocents, because the Taliban use them as cover and to hide themselves, as well as hiding out in ratholes and underground, so it's very difficult to find them in the first place, alongside minimizing civil unrest and trying to keep some sort of peace in the area. I have no doubt the CIA tortures Taliban captives for information, but the problem arises in not only do they have to make sure they don't get caught by the media, the sort of people that fight for the Taliban are insane religious zealots, they genuinely believe that what they are doing is right, making it very difficult to crack them, and they can't just interrogate every civilian to discover Taliban hide outs.

In my hypothetical 1984 scenario, geneva convention would go out the window, employing a shock and awe doctrine, followed by a fear doctrine, where they would employ weapons so fearsome, that people would be too scared to fight back, as a tyrannical government would likely just glass areas of extreme civil unrest, to showcase what they're capable of, and to show people they're not fucking about. You will obey, or you will be crushed.

On Lord Beautifuls comment about the 2nd amendment: I'll assume that encompases the right to bear arms and the bit about it being to make sure the government doesn't clamp down on the people. I don't think it's that bad, just having a gun doesn't make you a bad person and you're obviously not some gun wielding nutter, as I can see just from your post, and I said somewhere else that unfortunetly America is so saturated with guns, that it becomes a requirement to have guns just to be able to defend yourself from an ever increasing localized arms race. So no, I don't berate you for you that, as far as I can see, you're a victim of circumstance, and it's really the governments fault for letting it get to this point, from allowing civilians to buy automatic weaponry, pistols sure, I don't like it, but your society is just different from mine, but there was no reason to allow civilians easy access to that sort of hardware in the first place. If a situation arises that heavy hardware is required, that should be what the police and military are for.

 

[DugMachine]

I suppose, but then, it's a different kind of military doctrine when you're fighting the Taliban, as they use suicide bombers and rely heavily on guerilla warfare, as well as hiding in plain site, it worked pretty well for the Viet Kong as well, until the US Government decided they were just going to Napalm suspected hold outs, which cost a LOT of innocent lives, these days they're not allowed to do that(for good reason), and are trying to avoid all out war. An army vs a guerilla group has very different combat dynamics and military strategy to say... WW2, which was armies fighting each other all over the shop.

They have to be careful not to kill civilians and innocents, because the Taliban use them as cover and to hide themselves, as well as hiding out in ratholes and underground, so it's very difficult to find them in the first place, alongside minimizing civil unrest and trying to keep some sort of peace in the area. I have no doubt the CIA tortures Taliban captives for information, but the problem arises in not only do they have to make sure they don't get caught by the media, the sort of people that fight for the Taliban are insane religious zealots, they genuinely believe that what they are doing is right, making it very difficult to crack them, and they can't just interrogate every civilian to discover Taliban hide outs.

In my hypothetical 1984 scenario, geneva convention would go out the window, employing a shock and awe doctrine, followed by a fear doctrine, where they would employ weapons so fearsome, that people would be too scared to fight back, as a tyrannical government would likely just glass areas of extreme civil unrest, to showcase what they're capable of, and to show people they're not fucking about. You will obey, or you will be crushed.

On Lord Beautifuls comment about the 2nd amendment: I'll assume that encompases the right to bear arms and the bit about it being to make sure the government doesn't clamp down on the people. I don't think it's that bad, just having a gun doesn't make you a bad person and you're obviously not some gun wielding nutter, as I can see just from your post, and I said somewhere else that unfortunetly America is so saturated with guns, that it becomes a requirement to have guns just to be able to defend yourself from an ever increasing localized arms race. So no, I don't berate you for you that, as far as I can see, you're a victim of circumstance, and it's really the governments fault for letting it get to this point, from allowing civilians to buy automatic weaponry, pistols sure, I don't like it, but your society is just different from mine, but there was no reason to allow civilians easy access to that sort of hardware in the first place. If a situation arises that heavy hardware is required, that should be what the police and military are for.

You're completely right. Just meant in sheer numbers, we are so much larger than the US military. Heck, i'm sure some of the military would rebel and side with the civilians if this happened. But it won't

 

[Treblaine]

[on statistics of gun laws and rising crime rates]

The problem with looking for correlation is it is not immediately obvious which is causing which or if one factor is causing both. Like do ice cream sales cause hot days or do hot days cause ice cream sales? They both go together.

The thing is these countries and districts that enact these restrictive firearms laws do so explicitly while saying "this is in response to rising gun crime". The gun crime CAUSES the gun bans, not the other way around.

These gun bans of course are not the cure to the crime using guns, it's just treating the symptoms, it just makes things a little easier for the police and a lot harder for legitimate firearms users. The thing is criminals generally arm themselves so well for fighting other criminals, guns are only in demand if they are regularly used against other criminals and worryingly that seems to be the current trend. The UK press talk a lot of concerns of an "arms race" with criminals but curiously they use this as a reason to oppose police being armed, rather that more attention is needed where rival gangs are arming themselves with increasingly deadly weaponry.

I've always said that it is NOT so much that UK has a lower rate of gun crime as proof that UK's gun policies work, RATHER that the UK overall has a lower crime rate than the US which is not a factor of gun-laws but education both in school and prison that keeps many from crime and reduces recidivism. Most of America's violent higher violent crime and gun crime can be linked to street gangs (of all races) and how they use guns against each other with escalating levels of violence. And that stems from schools and a "prison culture" that within these street gangs institutionalise recidivism and a society unaccepting of criminals acting as if they could just be incarcerated for the rest of their lives.

It makes things very easy for the police with a blanket ban on most firearms, keep catching more guns and destroying them and eventually there will be no more left... assuming you can control the ports of entry so no more enter your jurisdiction...

But this doesn't work with drugs, Cocaine cannot be made in UK yet because there is a demand for it tonnes of the stuff are smuggled in totally illegally every year and used up. Similar kilograms of guns and ammunition would be "consumed" at a lower rate than drugs are. If there is a demand for guns by street gangs then the problem will get worse. Al Qaeda has several times tried to smuggle automatic weapons into the UK or procure them inside the UK only stopped due to excellent police investigations.

Yes, criminals and crazy people with guns are a problem, a BIG problem, but in the sense that building fires are a problem you can't just say "there will be no more fires" as that doesn't work. Really you have to be prepared for such things and accept you can never eliminate them, no matter how hard you try you cannot make any building so unlikely to have a fire that you don't need fire exits.

Same with guns, you cannot try to make a society where shootings are so unlikely you need no precaution against shootings.

What disturbed me most was here in the UK, Derrick Bird went on a shooting spree in a nice English village just 2 years ago with 100% legal weapons, murdered 12 people - as many as died in the Aurora Theatre shooting - and his rampage went right past the district police station but they couldn't do a thing to stop him, there was not a single armed officer.

I think out police need to accept some responsibility, that they more than anyone have a responsibility to be armed and not just in inner-city London but everywhere where their stated role is to protect the public. As those with evil intent will strike find a way to arm themselves and strike where we are most vulnerable. We accept all the fire precautions that exist, why not the same for security precautions from murderous gunmen.

 

[Treblaine]

t worked pretty well for the Viet Kong as well, until the US Government decided they were just going to Napalm suspected hold outs, which cost a LOT of innocent lives, these days they're not allowed to do that(for good reason), and are trying to avoid all out war. An army vs a guerilla group has very different combat dynamics and military strategy to say... WW2, which was armies fighting each other all over the shop.

Actually that's not how the Americans dealt with the Viet Cong (though they sure tried that at first) in the end they did get them well and truly stuffed.

The first major progress was fortuitous. The Viet Cong's role in S.Vietnam was harassing and weakening Southern forces (US, South Vietnamese Government and others like Australia, New Zealand) for an invasion by Northern regulars. The fortuitous blunder for the Americans was the North's demand that the Viet Cong take part in the full on assault on all US And South Governmental positions in the infamous Tet Offensive.

Contrary to what hysterical American reporters might have insinuated, the Tet Offensive was a massive failure for the Northern forces they lost HUGE numbers of men and materiel, the Viet Cong who had spent years setting up networks were destroyed when they were ordered to attack well entrenched positions. A few areas were taken temporarily only to be re-taken with overwhelming force and near 100% losses KIA or Captured for Viet Cong.

But what really scuppered the Viet Cong in South Vietnam (forcing them to mostly reside in Laos and Cambodia till 1975) was the Phoenix Program which was absolutely nothing like the "napalm suspected hold outs". The Phoenix Program was a personal operation directly killing or capturing anyone suspected of involvement. It wasn't random and indiscriminate, it was very deliberate, very personal and very brutal. It was less the air-dropped bomb and more the knife in the middle of the night, though the main focus was on capturing alive.

Not that the US air-force were sitting on their thumbs this whole time, but they were focusing on disrupting the Ho Chi Minh trail which was unpopular as it meant dropping vast tonnage of bombs on countries that were neither North nor South Vietnam. It was hard as materiel was spread thin and well camouflaged along the trail and how do you bomb a trail out? It's the earth. There was also large scale area bombardment of Hanoi and other Northern cities involved in preparing an army to invade the south but it wasn't very effective, they had to fly so high to avoid air-defences that they couldn't destroy the war materiel they wanted to. In the end it was used effectively as terror bombing to get the North Vietnamese to cooperate at the negotiating table, the US were definitely leaving but NOT without their POWs!

This is all remarkably similar to Afghanistan today: a focus very late in the game of targeted assassination of guerilla commanders, cross border incursions into a country that isn't supposed to be involved but whom the guerilla force is exploiting it's status (Cambodia/Pakistan).

And it's telling that even today, Osama Bin Laden was not killed by a guided bomb but much like the Phoenix program, by special forces in a night-time raid.

 

[spartan231490]

[on statistics of gun laws and rising crime rates]

The problem with looking for correlation is it is not immediately obvious which is causing which or if one factor is causing both. Like do ice cream sales cause hot days or do hot days cause ice cream sales? They both go together.

The thing is these countries and districts that enact these restrictive firearms laws do so explicitly while saying "this is in response to rising gun crime". The gun crime CAUSES the gun bans, not the other way around.

These gun bans of course are not the cure to the crime using guns, it's just treating the symptoms, it just makes things a little easier for the police and a lot harder for legitimate firearms users. The thing is criminals generally arm themselves so well for fighting other criminals, guns are only in demand if they are regularly used against other criminals and worryingly that seems to be the current trend. The UK press talk a lot of concerns of an "arms race" with criminals but curiously they use this as a reason to oppose police being armed, rather that more attention is needed where rival gangs are arming themselves with increasingly deadly weaponry.

I've always said that it is NOT so much that UK has a lower rate of gun crime as proof that UK's gun policies work, RATHER that the UK overall has a lower crime rate than the US which is not a factor of gun-laws but education both in school and prison that keeps many from crime and reduces recidivism. Most of America's violent higher violent crime and gun crime can be linked to street gangs (of all races) and how they use guns against each other with escalating levels of violence. And that stems from schools and a "prison culture" that within these street gangs institutionalise recidivism and a society unaccepting of criminals acting as if they could just be incarcerated for the rest of their lives.

It makes things very easy for the police with a blanket ban on most firearms, keep catching more guns and destroying them and eventually there will be no more left... assuming you can control the ports of entry so no more enter your jurisdiction...

But this doesn't work with drugs, Cocaine cannot be made in UK yet because there is a demand for it tonnes of the stuff are smuggled in totally illegally every year and used up. Similar kilograms of guns and ammunition would be "consumed" at a lower rate than drugs are. If there is a demand for guns by street gangs then the problem will get worse. Al Qaeda has several times tried to smuggle automatic weapons into the UK or procure them inside the UK only stopped due to excellent police investigations.

Yes, criminals and crazy people with guns are a problem, a BIG problem, but in the sense that building fires are a problem you can't just say "there will be no more fires" as that doesn't work. Really you have to be prepared for such things and accept you can never eliminate them, no matter how hard you try you cannot make any building so unlikely to have a fire that you don't need fire exits.

Same with guns, you cannot try to make a society where shootings are so unlikely you need no precaution against shootings.

What disturbed me most was here in the UK, Derrick Bird went on a shooting spree in a nice English village just 2 years ago with 100% legal weapons, murdered 12 people - as many as died in the Aurora Theatre shooting - and his rampage went right past the district police station but they couldn't do a thing to stop him, there was not a single armed officer.

I think out police need to accept some responsibility, that they more than anyone have a responsibility to be armed and not just in inner-city London but everywhere where their stated role is to protect the public. As those with evil intent will strike find a way to arm themselves and strike where we are most vulnerable. We accept all the fire precautions that exist, why not the same for security precautions from murderous gunmen.

You do realize that the UK has a higher violent crime rate than the US right? And I was never trying to say that gun bans cause increased murder rates, I was just pointing out that they sure as hell don't decrease murder rates.

 

[Nash]

Everyone, let me know when the Escapist has moved on to the next pointless thread they're going to spam.

Anti-feminists with guns, perhaps?

 

[Treblaine]

You do realize that the UK has a higher violent crime rate than the US right? And I was never trying to say that gun bans cause increased murder rates, I was just pointing out that they sure as hell don't decrease murder rates.

I hate to cite Daily Mail (which doesn't give decent sources) but these are corroborated:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html

I suppose I was wrong as it seems you are more likely to get raped, beaten or physically threatened in the UK than USA (over 4x as likely) but it seems that murder is a bit less likely in the UK:

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/hosb0212/hosb0212?view=Binary

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl01.xls

Though interesting, the murder rate in USA is steadily falling, half the rate of 1991. Whatever America is doing (in general) keep doing it.

Murder is a point of concern here as it is murder which is what people most fear guns will be used for, not pistol whipping or threatening which you can do with a replica gun or a knife. I think that it takes a very different state of mind to decide to kill rather than be violent, MY POINT was that we should thank not the lack of guns but the institutions and society of the UK that don't create so many defective individuals. I think too much is ascribed to gun control rather than gang intervention.

I can't comment much on America but while each individual is responsible for their crimes, I think certain factors influenced them to make the choice to murder. You hang around with murderous gang members who say it's OK to murder rivals in crime then you are more likely to make such decisions, the trick is never hanging out and listening to such people but the problem is a failed society that lets so many young people end up on the streets hanging out with these groups and worse in prison and out of prison murder for profit is the ideology espoused. And I think worse than murder being promoted, it is the system of gang-mentality protection, that one can murder and they will be protected not just from investigation but from any sort of societal judgement.

 

[Griffolion]

TLDR
while i get a good chunk of the country wants gun control america has a gun culture, and until thats adressed its impossible to properly solve the issue of gun crime there. if you want more guns on the street and in houses then be prepared to deal with the consequences

I agree with this bit. No amount of politicking against guns will make any difference until you get to the root "heart & mind" attitudes of those living in the gun culture.

Captcha: "Pearly Gates" - It's as if it knows...

 

[Ogargd]

I know this is about America and I'd just like to say whilst most murders in America are caused by blunt weapons America still has the highest gun related crime rate, they also have the worlds highest percentage of their own people in prison, I'm not saying that it is all to do with guns but I am implying a lot will improve if guns are taken out of the equation.

 

[Sizzle Montyjing]

snip

OP, just to help you out, since all these people from foreign countries like to post about the UK and lack of gun violence... all you need to do is look at the England riots and how the police did nothing (since they had no firearms) and had to wait for backup to confront looters, who by that time where done and ran away to coordinate another attack via social media.

EDIT: it's a very interesting read and look into a country that has to handle modern situations with lack of firearms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_England_riots

OH THAT IS PURE GOLD.
You claim that the UK couldn't solve the riots because they didn't have guns?
UK Police have armed response units. However, in this case since what sparked these riots was supposedly a shootout with the police (armed police mind you) I'm not sure that open-firing on a crowd full of citizens would be a very good idea.

Jesus Chirst... I'm glad their are stricter gun laws here in the UK... Imagine how much worse the riots would be if the angry mobbed had firearms.