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Originally Posted by Steed
Our government is tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime, crime fugues have fallen under our labour government and the streets have never been safer.
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So these 'never safer' streets are why the UK is now banning swords?
"Crime's too high, so let's ban guns." (Decades later) "
Oops, that didn't work, what else can we ban?"
Sorry, my opinion falls somewhere in the middle here, so I will be dodging volleys from both sides.
I am far from convinced that firearms in homes help
prevent crimes. If there was a law compelling everybody to be carrying a loaded weapon at all times, that might reduce crime - or at least make the criminals more polite. Anything short of that... there are more studies and stats than you can point a chromed Kalshnikov at and they all disagree.
On the other hand, there does not seem to be any verifiable correlation between gun crimes and the absence or presence of gun control laws. There are places without gun control that are very peaceful and there are places with stiff gun laws where the violent crime rate is through the roof. The crime rate would seem to ultimately be more a societal thing. Some societies seem to be inherently more violent than others. And therein lies the catch...
Too many people get wrapped around the axle over guns, thinking that they are the problem. Ultimately however, the issue is crime, not guns (or at least it should be). We need to stop treating the symptoms and go after the disease.
Here in Canada, the govt poured $2 billion (only 1,000 percent over budget) into a gun registry a decade ago. If one takes into account the international (western world at least) trend towards a lower violent crime rate (probably caused by an aging population), that boondoggle achieved the square root of Zip divided by the reciprocal of Diddly.
Passing laws that cannot (or will not) be enforced is pointless. Rather than waste big money on something with such a poor track record, it would be far better to putting it towards the root causes of crime and into support for an overworked judicial system.