Sadly Ducimus, neither foreigners nor the anti-second amendment crowd seem swayed by cold, hard facts. Let's look at our friends across the pond in Great Britain.

England basically "banned" the ownership of handguns in 1997. They made it excessively difficult to own one legally.

In 2001 - the BBC reported that in the following 2 years (all the data that was had at the time), the use of handguns during crimes INCREASED by 40%.

The largest increases - were in the areas where there were less legally owned guns. Those areas with the (still) highest legal gun ownership showed much less increase. In other words - criminals committed a lot more crimes where they knew that the victim was more likely to me unarmed...

Documented, cold, hard facts that gun control does not stop gun crime....
But that doesn't stop the anti-gun lobby.

Sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...-Dunblane.html
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1440764.stm

Why bother explaining?

Same as them trying to explain Why Kate Middleton is a duchess, and us not laughing halfway through the sentence. While we love guns, while they fear them. I am sure you mock the Kardashians,

Culture.

We agree to find each other silly.

We are, different, despite the age of the internet.

No hatred intended, just understand culture when you make your gun judgements.

I'm not from the US and therefore my brain hurts looking at numbers.

Guess I'll go back to communism and enforced homosexuality.

:roll:

Well do bear in mind that unlike the States, the hand-gun isn't a national symbol, or deeply imbedded in our culture, so naturally there's not much of an emphasis on repealing a ban. Shotguns would probably cause an uproar because of their use in the countryside area and on grouse shooting and such, so they'll never be banned. But a hand-gun has no real history or meaning for us, so after a primary school full of young kids got shot up there was little objection to banning them, and although it's done sod all to gun crime figures, we have so far not had another Dunblane. Whether that's to do with better mental health care than the US or the handgun ban, I couldn't say, but you're probably more likely to be stabbed than shot here. Guns for show, knives for a pro as the saying goes. :-?
But there's a big old thing in the US, at least from this perspective there is, about the gun, I mean you could say that the nation was pretty much founded on the gun, so it has a much bigger meaning than it does in the UK or much of Western Europe, or indeed much of the world for that matter.
It's a part of American social history, perhaps not so much on the coastal regions, but certainly in the central and central south.
So, yeah, it does confuse us Europeans a bit when this intense fear and terror of your own government radiates across the Atlantic, we might not trust our governments but we've found them so incompetent that there's little to fear from them, particularly when our armed forces have one tank per Corps, so there's not so much of that panic and fear, except perhaps in Germany. So, that confuses us, well, it confuses me anyway, and I find it a little sad that so many people seem to live their lives in fear of something that they have very little control over. :hmmm:

Uhh, you are more american than ya think if you like those things..:O:

Gun permits for Blind People!?! You got to be kidding me!!

What next, give them drivers license too! I'm not trying to pick on them because of their disability, just that this doesn't seem to have been thought through. I would not want to be around if someone who is blind starts shooting because they feel threatened!

http://news.msn.com/us/gun-permits-f...divide-in-iowa

Sounds to me like that's exactly what you're trying to do. You advocate denying people their constitutional rights solely because of a physical impairment. Pure discrimination.

I wouldn't say any handgun is a national symbol on our part. We do however have at least a couple iconic handguns that the argument could be made are cultural items. The colt single action army (aka "Colt Peacemaker" your classic cowboy gun), and the Colt 1911 (used in some form in every major conflict of the 20th century ) immediately come to mind.


I agree with you, but as you say, not everyone here does. One thing to keep in mind is our country is nowhere near as old as yours, and it's commonly accepted beginning or birth is with the American Revolutionary War. We have plenty of iconic imagery of the common man, rifled musket in hand, off to defend his farm, family, and his freedom. I think because our nation is still a young nation comparatively, the iconic imagery invoked from this period is still deeply etched into our culture. Some places more then others.

I also think (and this is just my opinion mind you) its because our national roots start with a revolutionary war against a government thought tyrannical; , that Americans, generally speaking, have to some degree, an intrinsic distrust have government.

In 'merika, we call this "kali-fornia."

I understand this, I just find it strange that it hasn't really happened elsewhere to the same extent.

My own country fought a similar violent war fro independence. Less than a hundred years ago.

The M1911 also comes to mind to me...I believe it was made the national symbol of Utah last year, if I remember correctly. Nothing wrong with that at all, only earlier myself and my mother were talking about firearms and the old Colts, they were very good weapons. :yep: I'd say though, out of all the firearms in American history, when people think of America, they think of the SAA because of the classic Western films. So it's a national identity I suppose, even if it's not seen that way internally.


In a way, in Europe, we have that imagery with the sword, I think if you were to put a new shiny long sword and a new SAA down together on a table and ask people to come in and take a look, I think many Europeans would probably examine the sword first. In fact, if you listen to the lyrics of this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Na0SyJScrQo
(Lyrics - http://mainlynorfolk.info/martin.car...fthesword.html)
Then you notice that if you replace sword with gun then you have a lot of similarities with modern life, and this was a song first written in Europe in the 17th century during the English Civil War. Even now there's medieval and renaissance fairs, so I guess whilst America was founded on the gun, Europe was founded on the sword and arrow.
Obviously, being only a fragmentary part of Europe (the UKs status as a part of Europe varies on who you ask in Europe and the UK :haha:) I could very well be wrong, but certainly here in the UK it seems that way.

I would agree with you, from what I have seen at least, and you have to bear in mind that my understanding of America comes primarily from this site and the occasional BBC article. I haven't interacted with that many Americans since most of them left this area in the early 1990s.
It's a healthy thing to distrust a government, but the fear and in some cases almost a paranoia that can be seen, it is a tad worrying. I guess the internet probably hasn't helped things in that regard, for example, before the internet the conspiracy theories around 9/11 would most likely have been limited to books, the odd magazine and maybe a VHS, the audience level would have been quite small...but now on the internet thousands if not millions are exposed to every theory under the sun, backed up by videos, interactive graphics, pages and pages of text, and it's so readily available to us through search engines.
Either way, the tone of the world, it has changed so much since 2001, not just in America but the whole globe has gone from a sort of cheerfulness and hope for the new millenium, into bitterness, fear and despair. No longer are Utopian fiction popular but Dystopian, rather then good news, we are drip-fed bad news because that's what sells media. Is it little wonder that so many people who have time to think about the current world become depressed?


I'm sorry, that kind of fell off the topic a little there...just something I've had on my mind since re-watching footage of 9/11 today and reading the various threads in GT, and remembering life before the whole world knew the name Al'Qaeda.

Nothing like cold hard facts eh:haha: can you explain what the figures are for the following years?
Do they INCREASE or decrease?
If the CAPSLOCK delivers a fail then your point is invalid for what it is trying to claim.

An explaination might be helpful.
But Soopa the reason you can't actually explain anything is because you don't understand your own or any other culture, you repeat the very same mistake in topic after topic.
You get very basic fundamentals completely wrong then build all your arguments on that flawed foundation.

@Razark No, because that isn't one of the firearms Ducimus said wasn't used by criminals.
Should be easy enough, after all it was a very big story with some big pictures of her robbing a bank with a gun that isn't used in crimes:03:

Oh but tribesman I explained very well, I can't explain? lols, no I did a fine job of explaining.

You failed in understanding.

You do not understand American reasoning, nor do I expect you to.

Reading the second amendment does not let you understand it, unless you lived it,.

I do not pretend to understand your take on royalty. Culturally we are different.

I do not understand my own culture? Maybe you are ignorant to ours to insult me so. I understand why Euros are turned off, as they have been banned since ww2 in most countries, but America lived by the gun, we got our independance from the gun.

I tried to be open minded, and nice....

You get the jerk from here on out on the gun topic. Take my guns if you can....

DON'T TREAD ON ME!

It was a sawn down M1 carbine with a 30 round magazine a favored weapon of the SLA and many street gangs at one time.