Your views on gun laws in the UK

Total homicide rate is not in any way irrelevant, whereas gangs in the us carry guns, gangs in the uk carry knives, the end result is the same, a dead person, the weapon doesn't cause the murder, the psychosocial factors do.

Angilion said:
Not in the UK. We have strong defence laws.
Click to expand...

You must have missed the case where a guy was tried for murder for shooting someone breaking into his house trying to kill him, a person who had been known to posess an uzi in fact.
 
Last edited:
D.P. said:
I think you need to go back to school and redo your GCSE maths.

The rate per 100k takes into about pop. size differences.
Click to expand...

I failed GCSE maths. Meh.

D.P. said:
You are barking up the complete wrong tree. The numbers are already Normalised by population size.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm just going through the gun policy website data now. Interesting read. For instance, in 2008, 18 people died of a result of gun homicide in Switzerland. But 32 in the UK. In 2006, 34 in Switzerland, 51 in the UK. The numbers bob all over the place. 2009 for instance, 55 killed in Switzerland and only 18 in the UK. 2005 both in the 40s, 2004, both in the 50s.

Taking into account how heavily armed the Swiss are I still like their gun politics. They're part of a militia and receive proper training in weapons. US type gun laws in the UK would be unthinkable in the damage it could do.

Edit: Data links.

Switzerland: http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/switzerland
UK: http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-kingdom
 
Energize said:
Total homicide rate is not in any way irrelevant, whereas gangs in the us carry guns, gangs in the uk carry knives, the end result is the same, a dead person, the weapon doesn't cause the murder, the psychosocial factors do.



You must have missed the case where a guy was tried for murder for shooting someone breaking into his house trying to kill him, a person who had been known to posess an uzi in fact.
Click to expand...

Total homicide rate is pointless. Different countries will have different homicide rates regardless of gun ownership.


You are assuming tat for very single person shot to death that hey would have definitely been killed 100% of the time using an alternative weapon. This if very definitely false or a variety of reasons.

Drive by knifings are going to be much ess effective than a drive by shooting. Trying to kill someone from 100yards with a knife is much harder than with a gun. Killing 20 people in a mascre is much less likely with a kitchen knife than a automatic hand gun. Knife wounds are generally less severe than a spray of machine gun fire or shotgun pellets. There is no defense from a gun but there are feasible and simple defenses against a knife with plenty of documentd cases of people surviving a knife attack by disarming the opponent but there is nothing you can do against a gunman 30 feet away blasting at you. Then ther is th psychological effects, a gun distances yourself from the victim both physically and mentally by employing a machine to do the work. Stabbing someone to death takes more action and control, more mental input, more time and oe as to be up close to te victim.
 
D.P. said:
Total homicide rate is pointless. Different countries will have different homicide rates regardless of gun ownership.


You are assuming tat for very single person shot to death that hey would have definitely been killed 100% of the time using an alternative weapon. This if very definitely false or a variety of reasons.

Drive by knifings are going to be much ess effective than a drive by shooting. Trying to kill someone from 100yards with a knife is much harder than with a gun. Killing 20 people in a mascre is much less likely with a kitchen knife than a automatic hand gun. Knife wounds are generally less severe than a spray of machine gun fire or shotgun pellets. There is no defense from a gun but there are feasible and simple defenses against a knife with plenty of documentd cases of people surviving a knife attack by disarming the opponent but there is nothing you can do against a gunman 30 feet away blasting at you. Then ther is th psychological effects, a gun distances yourself from the victim both physically and mentally by employing a machine to do the work. Stabbing someone to death takes more action and control, more mental input, more time and oe as to be up close to te victim.
Click to expand...

What an utterly biased load of ****.

Are you seriously trying to say that people killed with guns are a different kind of dead to people killed in other ways? really?

Overall homicide rate is the figure that matters, using gun homicides can only ever be a dishonest attempt to mislead.
 
Dolph said:
Or alternatively, in places where it has been done in this reality ;)

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#right-to-carry

Still, never let reality get in the way of random supposition.
Click to expand...

I'm struggling to see the correlation in most of those graphs between the decrease in homicides and the re-introduction of firearm possession.

Obviously I can see the weighted average between the points is higher, but why couldn't there be other factors at work?

Take the Washington DC graph, the handgun ban came into effect in 1976 : by 1986 the homicide rate was lower. Then you have a massive increase for the next 6 years, and then over the next 24 years the rate declines back to lower levels than pre 1976 before the right to carry firearms was re-introduced in 2006

So if your assertion is that having the right to carry guns lowers the homicide rate, what is the explanation of the massive decrease back to normal levels before that right was re-introduced?
 
Literally the only way I'd think of getting a gun in the UK is going to either Scotland or London and getting involved with some kind of gang...
 
i bet if you really wanted to you could get a gun in any city if u know the dodgy people, better them to be licensed and out in the open than black market imo.

like in some parts of the states u can carry a holstered weapon but need a separate licence to carry 1 concealed.
 
You are comparing apples & oranges.

Total crime rates are lower in country's the lowest poverty gaps/poverty rates (Nordic regions, Switzerland).

You have to compare culturally similar country's - USA/UK, find cities within those samples with similar poverty rates then compare the relative death rates.

But one thing is certain, allowing guns in the UK will vastly increase the amount of accidental deaths PA.

One thing the data does seem to indicate, that a combination of guns & high relative poverty is never a good idea, our society hasn't matured enough to be trusted with firearms.

Think of the kind of people who want guns in the UK, think long & hard - the kind of people with collections of samurai swords & gun magazines, masturbating over pictures of military hardware & wearing camouflage-gear to pubs - do you really want those kind of people to be armed?.
 
Having spent 35 years in the US and now the last 5 in the UK:

In the states you generally have the rebublicans whom want to give guns to everyone and the democrats whom would like greater gun control. Or it could just matter on what your individual beliefs are.

IMO (and I will say that many americans do not share mine) - the gun laws in the states are broken. They base the law on the constition which was made after we kicked the brits out so we wouldnt be subjugated again.

I find the states laws and often the people whom believe in such laws strange. I remember getting into a 'discussion' on another forum about someone going somewhere (forgot now) and going on a shooting spree; meanwhile all the pro-gun people said@
- its the persons fault
- guns dont kill people; people kill people

these were their arguments. I find the amount of killings that I see on the TV(US) appalling. IMO if people didnt have easy access to these types of weapons then there would simply be less killings.

Sometimes I just dont get people whom think having such easy access to guns is a good thing - perhaps it shouldnt be as restricted as it is in the UK but IMO I feel much safer as a individual in the uk then I do in the states.

Now there is one thing I do not feel safe about in the UK but this is a different matter; human rights rather then responsabilty.
Crime in the UK and their reprocussions is attrocious. IMO if people feared the consequences of certain actions they would do it less.

Back to the gun topic ... now dont get me wrong - I wouldnt mind owning a gun and wouldnt mind being trained to use it. But if its a choice between me/and everyone owning one and hardly anyone having one; Ill take the later.

Sad thing is I dont think it will be any time soon that the US will change their policy on gun control ... for some reason too many people want them and think that everyone should be able to have one. And then they are mad/sad when they hear about a school shooting ...

IMO the UK is closer to what I feel would be best for society (except their crime deterrece and punishment).

I think the people whom choose to rule a country should live in a foreign country to see what it is like there .... US/UK etc ... and then make laws that have the best of both worlds
 
Its not exactly rocket science to respect a firearm, i see your point about idiots owning them though, personally i just want to be able to have a full auto air rifle, semi auto isnt enough.
 
djxput said:
the gun laws in the states are broken. They base the law on the constition which was made after we kicked the brits out so we wouldnt be subjugated again.
Click to expand...

How does that make them broken? It's supposedly a defence against a future autocratic government which could happen at any point in the future.

Actually it has already been undermined in that citizens can't just bear any arms, only ones that the government allows it, so some states you can't have automatic rifles.

It seems odd that they got away with that because if the state can have Ar's but the citizens can't, then how do citizens protect themselves from a corrupt government?
 
Energize said:
You must have missed the case where a guy was tried for murder for shooting someone breaking into his house trying to kill him, a person who had been known to posess an uzi in fact.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about the case in which someone was tried for killing someone outside his house by shooting him through the window...and was acquitted on the grounds of reasonable force?

If so...where was that uzi? Also, note the grounds for the acquittal.
 
The gun laws in this country still allow pretty much any person within reason to own a firearm, and even more people a shotgun. Why anyone would want a gun for "self defence" in this country is beyond me though.
 
People who think gun ownership is a great idea should go watch a couple of the hundreds of episodes of 'The First 48'.
Dozens upon dozens of innocent people get killed every year in america by stray bullets not intended for them! Something exclusive to guns.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom