What do you brits think of this book and author?

[lazs2]

It appears that homicides fall in britan even durring times o lax gun control but that when gun control is strict, crime rises.   beetle blames one adminestration for burglars and pickpockets.

Early england had no police force and relied... no, insisted... that ever citizen be armed and resist crime.   It was a justifiable homicide to kill someone who was commiting a felony.   Not attempting to stop crime was punishable by death in some cases.

In england... the reasons for gun control were never to stop rampant gun homicides but were to stop poaching (believe it or not) and because the current monarch feared his subjects.   Latter laws were passed in spite of dropping crime and homicide rates.

When the peoples rights were taken away and they were told that criminals were not to be bothered.... crime went up  

A forty car pileup with dozens of deaths doesn't bring on draconian laws because the monarch son't fear automobiles (much) ...   they look at the stats and decide if it is an unavoidable anomally.... not so with guns..... one crazy person goes on a rampage and they don't look at anything but the incident and then... not even that.... they look at the gun.... they claim the gun killed those people and that the only way to prevent insanity in the future is to ......

disarm the ehtire populace.

seems the monarchs of england haven't changed much over the years.   They still piss on their subjects and tell em it's warm rain.
lazs

[lazs2]

firearms manufactures and ammo manufacturers have been successfuly sued many times for defective products.

Gun manufaturers are not that powerful...  they do have one of the most dillegent recall programs of all U.S. history... about on a par with auto makers.   But.... they produce time tested products, some of which have been in contiuous production upward to 200 years... pretty hard to sue em if they use good manufacturing practice and materials.

plus... there is a pride in gun manufacturing that is sadly lacking in so many other products.  
lazs

[Dowding]

That's right Lazs. Old Elizabeth Queenie is just like Henry VIII - I went to the burning of a Catholic heretic the other week, and the week before that I watched the public maiming of some evil miscreants who had happened to poach a rabbit from Her Majesty's divine acreage.

Anyway, this book is written by a women, ergo it's not worth reading. She probably votes and everything. Disgusting.

[lazs2]

Hmm... I thought that your royalty was just for show these days... something for the tourists...  Perhaps you should look toward your government and ask them what exactly was the reason for all the gun control and who they were afraid of.   certainly the occassional loony wasn't the reason?

And what have they accomplished?   higher crime rates?   Maybe you don't even notice anymore and that signs to watch out for pickpockets and theives seem normal to you?   You took a nothing homicide rate and kept it the same but you increased crime overall.   What was the point?   For this you took away peoples right to defend themselves?

lazs

[Dago]

You were the one who portrayed Britain as a nation of drunks

Maybe you missed this one important fact in our little pissing match.

I only posted anti-English nonsense in response to your anti-American nonsense posts.
 
When you originated stupid crap about the USA, I responded. When you posted about drunk driving in the US, I responded about drunks crawling out of Pubs.  etc etc.

You start this nonsense, you start these type of threads for no reason, just to be an asz, and some of us respond.  

Britain as a nation of drunks

Not really wrong anyway.  hahahahahah  now, off to your pub for breakfast.  

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Shuckins
Beetle,

With all due respect, how can you contend that the only thing that is certain is that there would be a big increase in gun homicides if the gun ban were lifted in Britain?  What do you base that on?  According to previous statements that you have made, gun homicide was almost non-existent in the U.K. before the ban went into effect.  The mere presence of guns does not automatically lead to increased violence and mayhem.  There quite a number of nations across the world that allow widespread gun ownership which do not suffer from high gun homicide rates, such as Sweden and Switzerland.  Despite your protestations to the contrary, there is no verifiable corelation between the presence of of guns and gun homicide.

As I said in my previous post, the law-abiding do not feel an inclination to slaughter their fellow-men because of the mere presence of a weapon.

Regards, Shuckins

Sorry, Shuck - I've only just see your post.

Gun homicides were indeed almost nonexistent for many years. By "almost nonexistent", I mean fewer than 100 and closer to 50. That's bad enough, although a tally of many thousands has been described as a "pittance", a small price to pay for the freedom to keep guns. So "almost nonexistent" is a relative term.

The reason that Britain would have increased gun homicides if guns were made freely available here is because like America, Britain has a problem with racial tensions, and ethnic gangs and drug related feuds. It has been said many times on this board that the vast majority of US gun homicides involve criminals, particularly drug dealers, many of whom belong to ethnic minorities.

I have never been to either Sweden or Switzerland, but I doubt whether either is a melting pot of different races in the way that Britain and America are. How many people/immigrants of ethnic minorities live in Switzerland? Very, very few would be my guess.

Now you could say that a gun is an inanimate object/guns don't kill people blah blah blah... but the fact is that a gun has to be present for a gun crime to occur. We try to keep the lid on it by eliminating the presence of guns, but it's not a perfect system.

I hold my beliefs because there are parallels between crime in Britain and crime in the US - racial crimes, drug dealing, territorial disputes etc. - but which are far less prevalent in countries like Sweden and Switzerland.

[Dowding]

You said the monarchy hasn't changed much. Apart from losing absolute power and ceding control of the country to the elected parliament you're probably right. They are still inbred.

This 'explosion' in crime is due to the banning of guns? Not only have I not noticed more crime, I'm incredulous at the suggestion that the presence or lack of guns makes any difference at all in Britain. Very nearly no one had them before, and now no-one does. I don't think I can convey the rarity of firearms before the ban to a Yank - I don't think you can imagine it. I was more likely to see a flying saucer than a firearm and would be equally surprised by either sight.

[Dead Man Flying]

It seems to me that the author poses a testable question of fact.  In other words, rather than engage in some hocus pocus historical analysis of gun control in Britain, it's entirely possible to gather up enough information to run a statistical time-series analysis of violent crime rates to determine any relationship to gun control or other British trends.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[lazs2]

Not real sure what you said DMF but I think the author does attempt to look at the statistics and draw conclusions... perhaps dowding and a few others might read the book?
lazs

[Dead Man Flying]

Originally posted by lazs2
Not real sure what you said DMF but I think the author does attempt to look at the statistics and draw conclusions... perhaps dowding and a few others might read the book?
lazs

Sorry to be obscure.  There are statistical techniques for measuring relationships between variables recorded over time -- namely violent crime and gun control laws.

The problem with simply looking at data over time centers around drawing eroneous conclusions due to spurious relationships.  It's the classic case where one can link violent crime to ice cream sales.  Naturally, ice cream sales don't actually cause violent crime, but rather an unmeasured third variable -- say the temperature -- increases both.  Cold weather tends to put a damper on all sorts of criminal behavior as law-abiding citizens and hoodlums alike stay in their heated homes.

Along those same lines, the author requires more than simply looking at one set of anothers and comparing it in a similar timeline to another set of variables.  Time-series analysis allows scholars to remove the trending and random elements from variables to measure the actual relationships between them over time.  And I suspect that the author of this book has not performed such analyses despite the resources available to do so.  So while her historical research might appear interesting, without actual quantitative data analysis to back up her claims, I'm dubious.  Who's to say a third, unmeasured variable -- say urbanization or population density -- isn't driving violent crime?  Or that gun control has actually mitigated the level of such crime given predicted levels based on population density?

-- Todd/Leviathn

[beet1e]

I've ordered my copy from http://www.amazon.co.uk

Lazs - I've sent you an email with my home address on it so you can send the John Lott book.

[Momus--]

Your logic astounds me Lazs; crime is up since the handgun ban therefore the handgun ban is the direct cause.

Your inference is that prior to the ban the relatively small number of pistol owners (approx 60,000?) were somehow singlehandedly holding back a major crimewave. Some points you might like to consider:

i) Prior to the latest ban concealed carry was already illegal.

ii) Prior to the ban, a large proportion of pistol owners were obliged to keep their weapons on gun-club premises.

Given the demonstrably non-existent effect legally held weapons were having on the crime rate prior to the ban, the hypothesis you're suggesting, namely that in the UK model less guns=more crime, makes about as much sense as claiming that less guns=more teenage pregnancies, given that the stats for teenage pregancies have also increased over the same time-frame.

A major  for the rise in gun related crime in the UK is a significant drop in the price of illegal weapons; fuelled mainly by an increase in supplies from increasingly redundant paramilitary stocks in Northern Ireland (where they are often exchanged for drugs thus reinforcing the firearm/drug gang connection). Supplies are also coming in on the back of increased trade from the former eastern bloc countries.

However, I have to concurr with Cpxxx; if I lived in the US I would feel obliged to own a weapon for the protection of myself and my property. It's nevertheless a mistake to think that arguments that are valid on the US model will fit that of the UK.

[Leslie]

The last thing a criminal wants is to get shot.  Most won't take the risk if they think you might have a gun.

There are some ways to avoid attack also.  Probably the most important one is to make it look like you are aware and doing what you do, or going where you're going with purpose.

They're not looking to get in a fight or confrontation.  They'll move on to easier pickings.

If you do find yourself in a situation, it's probably best to not resist if they have the drop on you.  Nothing you can do about that, unless you're willing to kill someone with the pistol you're carrying in your pocket.

Thing there is, no one knows what they would do in that situation.  Carjackers would do it.  Better to let them have the car if you're the only one there, and hope they don't take you along.

It would be hard to do something like that.  In Alabama, carjacking carries the death penalty.  That means it's considered self defense to kill someone carjacking your car, even if you shoot 'em in the back.



Les

[lazs2]

DMF.. not obscure... just over my head.. If I understand your explanation tho... I think that the reason she took one country was to weed out things like weather and borders and culture... she even takes into consideration war and peace and the effect that young people off to war or returning soldiers may have... She uses London mostly for population centers and the stats are in per 100,000....the variables seem endless to me but I certainly would welcome your opinion on the book if you could find the time to read it.

I have said here many times that each country is a set of conditions unto itself... that is why I like this book which concentrates on one country... just as I like Lotts book "more guns less crime" which also concentrates on one country.    Even at that... It is interesting to note that things like white middle class homicides with guns are about the same in both Canada and the U.S.  Those segments of the repective populations are very similar.

In any case... we got our laws and our culture from england and so the book is interesting to me... I like the path we chose more than the one they did and I like a big ol country better than a tiny one but.... I wanted to hear from the people who live there... I really wanted to hear opinions on the book more than opinions on my opinions and....

I welcome the learned types of analysis like DMF.   I allways figured you can't learn anything listening only to people you agree with.

momus... read the book... it is about british history and not just the most recent ban.   I understand that media can whip stupid, womenly and emotional people into a frenzy of witch hunting.... that is not news to me.... what is interesting is how england let itself get that way with such a proud tradition of individual rights.

Can't wait for a book on australia...
lazs

[lazs2]

yes momus... you wouldn't understand because you have never had the freedom but... in the U.S. criminals know that homeowners are likely to be armed and the criminals think (rightly or wrongly) that the homeowners will gleefully fill them full of holes and that the police will give their blessing.    better to just try to rob when no one is home...  

If a burglar does go into a "hot" home... he is probly rabid..  like a skunk in the daylight...  he needs to be shot.   He is up to more than simple burglary.

Soo.... jsut like putting the "club" on your steering wheel won't stop a determined criminal from stealing your car... it will make him change his habits or move on to easier prey.   even maybe make him get a job if crime becomes too risky, dangerous and unprofitable.
lazs