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Originally Posted by SUBMAN1
That is because the statistics changed. Read how the cops changed the way things are reported. I can help you find an article on it you want. STEED posted one here at one point.
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Yes they did change the way crimes were recorded but on the contrary it has actually given crime stats the appearance that more crimes were being committed as they included crimes previously deemed too minor to be included plus alleged crimes are now taken into consideration as a measure of peoples experiance of crime.
Unless you can provide figures which refute mine, and indicate that gun crime has actually increased in the period where mine has shown a decrease then I think its case closed.
Another point is that crime statistics now include more minor violent crimes which were previously not considered significant enough to be added to statistics. This in part accounts for the percieved rise in violent crime; a minor confrontation outside a pub ends up in the violent crime figures, where previously it might have been disregarded. In fact I would argue that a major source of violent crime, that inflates the igures, is due to alcohol fuelled fights in town centres at the weekend.
http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/page94.asp
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But i must commend you. You finially found something on the subject we are talking about instead of just giving an opnion.
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Why Thankyou Subman
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Anyway, in response to that, I would like to commend the British people! Even when they had guns - no one ever shot anyone - it sounds like they are incredibly hospitable! I quote an article here:
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The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted. A government study for the years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world. A hundred years and many gun laws later, the BBC reported that England's firearms restrictions "seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld." Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. Worse, they are increasingly ready to use them.
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That is incredibly low!
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Come on Subman that hardly proves anything and is more than a little spurious. Britain has changed dramaticaly since the late 19th century to compare a study from the 1890s to today and then conclude that it shows that gun restrictions have caused a rise in violent crime is quite bit of a logic leap and pretty much ignores any other factors. There are any number of problems with this, for example what was the number of firearms in public posessition at this time? Quite possibly the low number of gun crimes was due to there being few guns around. Also the collecting of stats was most probably not as good as it is now, infact did the police amass crime figures at all? Quite often police incompetance at the time led them to pass off many murders as 'suicides'.
The two strictest series of gun control laws came after two notorious massacres. The Hungerford massacre was one of the primary factors in the banning of self loading rifles in the UK and the Dunblane massacre caused the ban of the ownership of handguns. These restrictions were both passed by conservative governments. Whether you agree with them or not they have both largely removed the threat of 'spree' style killings in the UK involving firearms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre
As a matter of fact I didn't agree with the laws passed after Dunblane. They would penalise law abiding people who liked to shoot pistols as a hobby and probably would have minimal impact on illegal arms and may even increase the numbers of illegal arms available. Thats not to say that I didn't think that stricter controls needed to be placed on the ownership of such weapons though.
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Anyway, guns have become a fasion statement for teeagers now. I quote:
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Youth workers estimate that as many as 80 per cent of youngsters from tough inner-city areas are involved in gangs. Three fifths of those have guns.
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Article here - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...on-507023.html
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In some deprived inner city areas where there is trouble with gang culture, some young people see the ownership of a gun as a mark of respect and status. But don't mistake a relatively small minority of teenagers in inner city areas as a general indicator of teenagers within the UK as a whole. Gun crime is largely concentrated in certain innercity areas and is mostly resticted to gang turf wars or involves gang members.
AK-47's are hardly a commom occurance on British streets. More common are reactivated pistols or converted blank firers. But really its not too bad when you consider that the country has been stripped bare of assault rifles since 1987.
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Anyway, I wish you and your British counterparts were armed once more. Reading this stuff makes me shiver at how vulnerable you guys are becoming.
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Oh don't worry about us in little old England, we'll muddle through as always.
But something to consider is not how many gun crimes we have now but how many we would have if there was widespread ownership of firearms like in the US.
I would hazzard a guess that its far easier for ciminals to get hold of firearms in the US than it is in the UK. Infact most illegal firearms in the US were originally from legal sources. In effect the legitimate arms trade in the US supplies the illegitimate.
So actually I'm glad that the UK isn't 'armed'.
I shiver at some of the people who would have access to guns if we had 2nd amendment style laws in the UK.
Also before you mention defending homes etc (incidently it is not true that burglars have more rights than home owners in cases of home invasion in the UK its just that there is no automatic right to the use of leathal force) have you thought that an armed public makes it more likely that criminals will carry guns, effectively escalating the situation rather than countering it?
http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnew...afficking.html