The American Police

[Rroff]

Exactly. I've never even heard a gunshot outside of a range or farm.

You can legaly own guns in the UK (bar handguns or automatics), but there isn't a national obsession with them like in the US. No one cares about owning one.

Someone waving a gun around on the street is most likely going to get shot, it's an easy decision for the police.

Can't say the same - hear people messing about with .22s or the occasional shotgun in the woods near work now and again.

When I was a kid one of my neighbours ex threatened them with a shotgun, fired at police and then was involved in a car chase with police (nearly ran me down on my way home from school).

When I lived in London was woken up one day by a drunk guy wandering down the middle of the road shooting into the air - cops seemed to know him from the way they just drove right up and just took the gun off him.

 

[deuse]

snip.

I see you still haven't responded to questions you have been asked months ago by members here.

 

[deuse]

No the UK way is that almost no one comes at you with a gun because almost no one has one. The chances of someone in the UK ever seeing a gun outside of a legal firearm is tiny.

What do you call tiny?

If someone came at me with a gun I would just do what they told me to do. Even if I had a gun on me, if someone was pointing a gun at me I wouldn't go for mine because they would find it very easy to shoot me before I got it. Americans don't seem to be able to fathom the idea that very very very very few people in the UK have any fear of guns or being shot unless they are a serious criminal.

Dead man walking.

 

[fez]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17155596/gun-ownership-polls-safety-violence

Have a read of that.

The very simple takeaway is that more guns == more homicides.

The rate of violent crime in the US in the year 2000 was actually lower than the UK and yet the homicide rate was much lower. Thats what guns do. They change a violent crime to a murder.

 

[The Running Man]

But its not. The white population has a rate thats 4x the UKs. The black community in the UK is also involved in more crime that the white and probably for some of the same reasons as the US and we aren't ignoring that are we?



So you consider a homicide rate that is multiples of our rate (even amoungst just the white people) not so bad and not a problem.

And you also consider the fact that in a country with a huge racial divide and rich/poor divivde, giving people easy access to guns isn't a bad thing.

Simple question. Do you think that the homicide rate would stay at a similar number if you took away all the guns in the US tomorrow. I think it would plummet.

Only 3.4% of the uk population is black so despite committing ostensibly more crimes like knife crimes etc if the uk had 13% Black population then our knife crime homicide rate could potentially increase significantly if the ratios remained consistent.

If it wariness then we would go from 14,500 knife crime perpetrators to 58,000 vs 9744 white European.

Obviously our homicide rate would increase as a result at that point we would see that the uk homicide rate would rise towards that of the US rate.

 

[fez]

What do you call tiny?

I call the fact that I have never seen a handgun in my life outside of police and no one I know has ever said they have seen one either. I call our number of "firearm related crimes" number where hiding my hand in my jacket to give the impression of a gun evidence of this.

Dead man walking.

So I come at you with a gun and you have one on your belt and you reckon that you are going to get that up and pointed at me before I can put a whole magazine into you... You must be real fast on the draw.

 

[deuse]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17155596/gun-ownership-polls-safety-violence

Have a read of that.

The very simple takeaway is that more guns == more homicides.

The rate of violent crime in the US in the year 2000 was actually lower than the UK and yet the homicide rate was much lower. Thats what guns do. They change a violent crime to a murder.

A more recent one https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...r-stricter-gun-laws-has-increased-since-2017/

 

[Nasher]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17155596/gun-ownership-polls-safety-violence

Have a read of that.

The very simple takeaway is that more guns == more homicides.

The rate of violent crime in the US in the year 2000 was actually lower than the UK and yet the homicide rate was much lower. Thats what guns do. They change a violent crime to a murder.

Don't forget the weekly school shootings in the US

 

[deuse]

I call the fact that I have never seen a handgun in my life outside of police and no one I know has ever said they have seen one either. I call our number of "firearm related crimes" number where hiding my hand in my jacket to give the impression of a gun evidence of this.

Thanks for answering something I didn't ask.

But once more. What do you call tiny 20-30% higher or lower?

 

[fez]

Only 3.4% of the uk population is black so despite committing ostensibly more crimes like knife crimes etc if the uk had 13% Black population then our knife crime homicide rate could potentially increase significantly if the ratios remained consistent.

If it wariness then we would go from 14,500 knife crime perpetrators to 58,000 vs 9744 white European.

Obviously our homicide rate would increase as a result at that point we would see that the uk homicide rate would rise towards that of the US rate.

It still wouldn't! Knife crime rate != homicide rate. They don't scale like guns. In the year ending April 2020 there were 46,000 offences involving knives and around 250 deaths. Knives are not as dangerous as guns. Its really as simple as that.

You also can't just scale the black population and expect the white to be the same. There is a reason the US black population is so well represented in their statistics and its not because they are black. The UK and the US have their impoverished and forgotten people. Ours are more white and the US is more black. Its not a colour thing, its a socioeconomic thing. You can't just extrapolate like that.

 

[Burnsy2023]

For every gun crime there must be a gun.
Since the cops only got 450 guns out of circulation, they need to find the rest.

Also to note, on top of CS spray, if someone shot your window with an air rifle and broke it, that would also be classified as as a firearms offence as it'll have NICL qualifier for firearms on top of being classified as a criminal damage crime. Understanding the statistics is important to being able to know what they do and don't tell you.

 

[fez]

Thanks for answering something I didn't ask.

But once more. What do you call tiny 20-30% higher or lower?

What 20-30% of people who have never seen a illegal firearm being used to commit a crime? I'm not entirely sure what you are asking.

I would wager that less than 1% of people have seen a gun thats being used in a crime in the UK. Most of the people that do see them will be other criminals. If there were 2000 actual gun related crimes in the UK last year I would suggest that far far less than 2000 different people were involved in any way in those crimes. Guns are passed around in gangs over here. One gun will be traced to multiple crimes because of the scarcity of them.

 

[TheVoice]

Now the police count CS spray as a gun.

As already said, no they do not.

In the UK you can only use a spray on nasty people which is "Self Defence Protection Spray which is UK legal, not toxic and uses NO dangerous chemicals."

In the UK we also don't tend to need AR15s or open carry permits just to feel safe going about our daily lives.

 

[2004typer]

How very stupid, its illegal to carry a knife in the UK you know, so they're essentially "banned" but many people are killed with knives each year, and what about screwdrivers and stanley blades? better ban those aswell.

Banning guns means only the criminals will have guns and not law abiding citizens.

Crikey, I'm not thick, and to be fair rather offended.

I'm fully aware of the legalities of knifes etc, but they are only predominantly lethal at close range and an offender has to be more committed to their cause and close to a victim, so the odds are very much reduced, surely this is a good thing, and no, I wouldn't advocate making screwdrivers or Stanley knives illegal.

I'd very much rather face an idiot with a knife than a gun, at least you would have a chance of legging it.

I can't believe the mindset of some of the people in this thread, there is absolutely no reason for even a law abiding person to have a gun in general circulation, and I'm bloody glad to live in the UK.

I don't dislike the USA at all, but for such a first nation world the gun laws are, to be frank, moronic.

 

[2004typer]

No the UK way is that almost no one comes at you with a gun because almost no one has one. The chances of someone in the UK ever seeing a gun outside of a legal firearm is tiny.

If someone came at me with a gun I would just do what they told me to do. Even if I had a gun on me, if someone was pointing a gun at me I wouldn't go for mine because they would find it very easy to shoot me before I got it. Americans don't seem to be able to fathom the idea that very very very very few people in the UK have any fear of guns or being shot unless they are a serious criminal.

For the truth, keep the guns out of the hands of the majority of criminals who'd actually use one.

 

[The Running Man]

It still wouldn't! Knife crime rate != homicide rate. They don't scale like guns. In the year ending April 2020 there were 46,000 offences involving knives and around 250 deaths. Knives are not as dangerous as guns. Its really as simple as that.

You also can't just scale the black population and expect the white to be the same. There is a reason the US black population is so well represented in their statistics and its not because they are black. The UK and the US have their impoverished and forgotten people. Ours are more white and the US is more black. Its not a colour thing, its a socioeconomic thing. You can't just extrapolate like that.

It's speculation either way but you asked why our crime rate is lower when we too have minorities, my answer is because the same minority is only 1/4 the % of the population here, therefore have less impact on our overall homicide rate.

I said IF the homicide rate scaled up proportionally, despite having strict gun controller our homicide rate would increase significantly.

There are lots of poor hispanic people in the US and MORE poor white people in the US but they don't exhibit the same crime.

Same here we have more Asian dense population who are often poor / jobless etc but they are under represented in homicide/knife crimes etc.

 

[ianh]

You can legaly own guns in the UK (bar handguns or automatics),

Slightly incorrect, you CAN own semi-automatic firearms and you CAN own handguns. I know it's a common misunderstanding, what with the lack of accurate info known by the "general population" but yeap, they are legal to own under a combination of some limits on calibre involved (semi-automatic) or some adjustments to the firearm (handguns can be a muzzle-loader or have a barrel longer than 30cm with an overall firearm length of no less that 60cm).

Here's just some of the many available for sale in the UK -

Semi-Auto firearms - https://www.mcavoyguns.co.uk/contents/en-uk/d106_Ruger_10_22_rimfire_rifles.html
Handguns - https://www.mcavoyguns.co.uk/contents/en-uk/d153_Long_barrel_pistols.html

A person working for a UK firearms manufacturer can even get a license to make and fire fully automatic firearms under very specific and extremely strict licenses, although they don't specifically "own" the firearm as an individual TBF.

Oddly enough you don't tend to get shot for holding a mobile phone, or even a toy gun in the UK, as our cops tend to be properly trained to a national standard that gets reviewed and updated when needed, and officers who repeatedly mess up face consequences that are more than just paid leave as seems to be the case in so many instances of US police officer messing up repeatedly (or flat out breaking the law).

Sadly even our highly trained Armed Police can and have made numerous mistakes in the past by shooting unarmed people and they'll continue to make mistakes in the future. Making those instant life/death decisions will always lead to mistakes being made, no matter the level of training, thats just human nature I'm afraid.

In the UK we also don't tend to need AR15s or open carry permits just to feel safe going about our daily lives.

True but even now you can legally buy an AR15-style rifle in the UK if you wanted to and had the correct license.

Here's a few for sale, mostly around £1500-ish -

https://www.gunstar.co.uk/bushmaster-xm15-e2s-straight-pull-223-rifles/rifles/1303942
https://www.gunstar.co.uk/schmeisser-bull-barrel-target-straight-pull-223-rifles/rifles/1287382
https://www.gunstar.co.uk/aero-prec...hard-case-2-x-30-r-magazines-m/rifles/1267836

 

[deuse]

As already said, no they do not.

People have said here that it falls under the same law.

 

[deuse]

What 20-30% of people who have never seen a illegal firearm being used to commit a crime? I'm not entirely sure what you are asking.

I would wager that less than 1% of people have seen a gun thats being used in a crime in the UK. Most of the people that do see them will be other criminals. If there were 2000 actual gun related crimes in the UK last year I would suggest that far far less than 2000 different people were involved in any way in those crimes. Guns are passed around in gangs over here. One gun will be traced to multiple crimes because of the scarcity of them.

Can't you remember what you said\posted?

"No the UK way is that almost no one comes at you with a gun because almost no one has one. The chances of someone in the UK ever seeing a gun outside of a legal firearm is tiny."

There you go.
So again(third time) what is tiny?

 

[fez]

It's speculation either way but you asked why our crime rate is lower when we too have minorities, my answer is because the same minority is only 1/4 the % of the population here, therefore have less impact on our overall homicide rate.

My point was that minorities and non whites do not equal crimes. Even scaled up we would have nowhere near the homicide rate of the US. There are no credible studies that show increased gun ownership leads to decreased crime or decreased homicides.

There are lots of poor hispanic people in the US and MORE poor white people in the US but they don't exhibit the same crime.

Same here we have more Asian dense population who are often poor / jobless etc but they are under represented in homicide/knife crimes etc.

Poor doesn't equal crime in all cases. A lot of the poor whites in the US are in the southern states which is rural and completely different to high density poverty in slums. All these figures are per 100k as well so regardless of whether america has more poor white people than us, that won't change the ratios. If you had 10m in the US vs 1m in the UK you would still work it out based on "per 100k people".

Do you genuinely believe that guns are not a significant contributing factor to Americas high homicide rate vs other similar, stable countries.