In light of Rips Gun post...some real facts

[Kats]

Gotto love cut and paste  

Repost:

I'd like to point out a few FYI's about this issue and would hope that the readers realize that this is not an "us vs. them" issue. We are all on the same team here as citizens of our respective countries.

Don't be a sucker!

The issue of gun control is a tool used by government to show the populace that they are taking measures to fight crime. This is fantasy, and only shows their frustration. It costs money to increase police forces and build more jails. OTOH, gun control makes you look like a hero and you get to charge taxes in the form of registration fees.

Do your homework

The British gun crime statistics are a scam. Gun related crimes in Britain that are pleaded down are not included in the gun crime statistics whereas in  the US they are. This is a huge discrepancy. Furthermore, unsolved crimes in Britain within a certain vicinity are categorized as a single crime by a single person. This further pads the statistics and IMO borders on fraud. The reality is (and I can back this up  with independent research) that gun crimes in  Britain are actually rising with the tighter controls. As a matter of fact, most studies show that armed crimes rise proportionally with the introduction of gun controls.

Think for yourself

Do you really want to let your local government off the hook on the issue of crime control by allowing them to brag about the false security of tighter gun controls? Who are we making the streets safer for by taking guns out of the hands of the law abiding majority?

I applaud the average guy for wanting gun control because he/she feels the world would be safer - I'm on your side for safer streets. I'm only suggesting that your reasoning might be flawed. Again I have to ask, Who are we making the streets safer for by taking guns out of the hands of the law abiding majority?

I think gun laws should be geared towards saftey and storage. This is sorely lacking IMO, yet no one ever talks about this in the media  


Ok, more stuff to chew on suckers  

January 16, 2000  London Times:

 

Killings Rise as 3 Million Illegal Guns Flood Britain

Heheheh, that's more guns in 1 year that used to be sold legally in Britain    On a side note armed crimes rose 10% in 1997 and even worse now. Keep in mind (as I mentioned in the first post) that the British government obscures their data by using conviction data instead of arrest data for their stats. This hid about 150,000 weapon assaults.

So here's the new idea by the British home office. Preventive Detention IE, detention of individuals based on the risks they present, rather than whether they have ever been convicted of an offense. Brilliant   . I never liked the presumption of innocence thingie anyhow hehehehehe (sarcasm btw).

This is what happens when government disarms the populace. Now you have to look for the government to protect you......at any cost.

Last thing to chew on.  Dr. Phillip Cook, an anti gun researcher, reluctantly and independantly confirmed a study by Drs. Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz that showed:

 

2.5 million or more crimes each year are not completed in the United States because of the possession of a firearm by the intended victim.

April 1, 1996 edition of London's Daily Telegraph:

   

An unnamed retired senior officer at Scotland Yard revealed that "there are a series of tricks that render the [crime] figures a sham." As an example he noted that "where a series of homes in a block of flats were burgled they were regularily recorded as one crime"

Guns & Violence: The debate before Lord Cullen. By Richard Munday & Jan Stevenson.

   

The true British homocide rate has been camouflaged. The figures have been pruned by using the final disposition of cases rather than the arrest data.....reducing recorded homocides by as much as 25%

My other quote about the 3 million guns illegally entering Britain is from the January 16th edition of the London Times

My points regarding preventive detention come from a consultation paper issued by the Home Office in July of 1999 entitled Managing Dangerous People with Severe Personality Disorder: Proposals for Policy Development

The October 20, 1999 edition of the British Medical Journal denounced these proposals by saying it would create:

   

a system of locking up men and women who frighten officials. The governments proposals masquerade as extentions to mental health services. They are in fact proposals for preventive detention...They aim to make judges more amendable to imposing discretionary life sentences. They are intended...to circumvent the European Convention on Human Rights.

[Nash]

Folks, they are *only* guns. If I spent an inordinate amount of my life getting worked up about an issue that, in all probability (and statistically) would have zero actual bearing on my life... well, I'd feel the need to discuss the issue with someone... professionally.

Er.. unless this is some kinda intellectual debate..that's ok. But if you actually think yer gonna need to plant lead into some crack head fer stealing yer TV... well...

[StSanta]

My TV they can take. Touch my puter and I'll touch them with a 12 gauge shotgun.

 .



------------------
StSanta
9./JG 54 "Grünherz"

[Dowding]

First Kats, gun ownership has never been widespread in the UK as it is in the States. When handguns were outlawed, it only affected a very small minority of people. The statement 'Disarming the Populace' is misleading, and assumes a routine arming of the populace. This has never been the case.

Secondly, gun crime statistics include crimes committed by air weapons, which account for 59%. This figure and the following is from a report detaliling gun crime in Scotland (which won't be that different from the statistics for the rest of the UK). Leonid dug this out.

• 1999 figure is up by 5% from 1998, but 47% lower than peak 1992 figure.  Incidently, the 1999 figure was 1,033.
• Firearms were used in 5% of homicides, 3% of attempted murders, and in less than 3% of robberies.
• 59% of firearms used were air weapons.

Here's a quote from an American report comparing crime in the UK to the US, it confirms the similarity of the findings in Soctland with those in England and Wales:

Firearms were involved in crime far more
often in the United States than in England and Wales:

--homicides, 68 percent in the United States
and 7 percent in England and Wales.

--robberies, 41 percent in the United States
and 5 percent in England and Wales.

And another one:

Police statistics for 1996 showed that compared to England and Wales the murder rate here [USA] was 5.7 times higher and the rape rate was about 3 times higher.  

These differences had narrowed after 1981, when the murder rate here was 8.7 times higher and the rape rate 17 times higher.

In 1999 the number crimes involving firearms in England was 3,142, compared to 3,325 in 1998. The murder rate is also less than a thousand, compared to a population of 60 million people. A 25% variance on the murder rate is still pretty insignificant compared to the overall population.

Perhaps there is padding out of statistics in the UK, but to claim this as true whilst denying that the same doesn't happen in the States is a little subjective.

Personally, I don't think we'll know for decades whether out-lawing guns reduced crime or increased it. Look at it again in 20 years perhaps.  

     

[This message has been edited by Dowding (edited 12-12-2000).]

[TheWobble]

The stats above result from the fact that most europien countries pretty much come a baby's breath form totally lieing about theri crime rates, they totally manuplate the numbers and when totalling up crimes they often "bundle" them so that 5 crimes are listed as only one.  I think it would really suck to live in a country where it is against the law to protect yourself.

[Ripsnort]

Good post Kats.  As many know, the biggest Gun-control advocates were:
Stalin
Hitler
Sadam Hussan

[-lynx-]

 

My TV they can take. Touch my puter and I'll touch them with a 12 gauge shotgun.

Yeahright... Last year a remote farm was broken into by two burglars. A farmer happened to be at home. He used his 12 gauge to defend his house and possibly life. One of the burglars was shot dead another went to prison. So did the farmer.

If he hadn't used the gun he'd have to use something else - the result would have been somewhat different: farmer might have ended up dead, the crime's added to doctored stats and forgotten.

Alternatively, if he was able ot fight off the burglars by other means, he would ended up in prison anyway cuz he'd have been jailed for GBH...

[Dowding]

Ripsnort - you do know why those people banned guns don't you?

Are you comparing the UK to a communist, Nazi or otherwise totalitarian state?

[Ripsnort]

Not comparing anything, simply stating the facts.  You can make the comparison if you'd like, but I will repeat this analysis once again:An armed man is a citizen. An unarmed man is a subject.  The more 'rights' you lose as a citizen, the closer your country 'has potential' to coming closer to the type of Gov't that those 'Big 3' had or  have.

Side note: They always go for the guns first, once those are disposed of, then relieving any other civil rights, raising taxes to an obscene level, etc..is relatively easy.



[This message has been edited by Ripsnort (edited 12-12-2000).]

[-lynx-]

 

Are you comparing the UK to a communist, Nazi or otherwise totalitarian state?

...and you still insist that the UK is a full blown democracy? We saw the democracy in action when the fuel price protests paralized the country for a week. How's the "democratic government" responded to the "will of the people"? It has done nothing. Stupid Dome is another exapmple of "democracy" in action...

Wake up - there's no such thing as a democratic state... "Democratic state" is an oxymoron to begin with...

[Dowding]

Ripsnort - so you agree that your statement regarding the 'big 3' is meaningless? From your statement, you are saying that the UK is closer to being a communist state than America?

 

They always go for the guns first, once those are disposed of, then relieving any other civil rights, raising taxes to an obscene level, etc..is relatively easy.

That's verging on paranoia - I heard a similar argument from some anti-federal commune. They reckon they needed their guns in case the UN ever came to take over America.

Why would anyone want to live in a country which required you to be armed, if you wanted to be a citizen?

Lynx - oh, come on the issue isn't just about taxation. It's about transport in general. Have you ever travelled in France? Sure they have a lower tax on fuel, but they also have toll booths on the motorways. It actually makes it more expensive to travel the same distance on French motorways, compared to those in Britain.

 

...and you still insist that the UK is a full blown democracy?

Ok, mate, compared to what? You give me the definition of a 'full blown democracy'. It certainly isn't a country run based on the opinions purported in the Daily Mail.

If the government listended to the protests of everyone in the country, it would be a recipe for anarchy. Is that what you want?

How is the Dome related to Democracy, I don't quite see the link there...

[This message has been edited by Dowding (edited 12-13-2000).]

[-lynx-]

Main Entry: de.moc.ra.cy
Pronunciation: di-'mä-kr&-sE
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French democratie, from Late Latin democratia, from Greek dEmokratia, from dEmos + -kratia -cracy
Date: 1576
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2 : a political unit that has a democratic government
3 capitalized : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the U.S.
4 : the common people especially when constituting the source of political authority
5 : the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions or privileges

That's democracy. It has nothing to do with anarchy or mob rule (Daily Mail in you example). People rule. Not MPs totting the party line. An MP by his/her very nature must not do that - he/she represents people and their wishes. Not the crap that is happening at Westminster.

Dome? As I remember people wanted hospital. Instead over 600 million pounds were wasted on the Dome. It's not the finall tally btw - more to be spent...

What had fuel protests to do with transport policies? France tolls motorways? Who cares? The protests were about UK government taxing the living daylights out of people. Mind you all those taxes were supposed to build a public transport infrastructure to enable those nurses to get to hospital without the need of a car. Where's the public transport system? Not here. Where's the money in this case dare I ask?

Any modern goverment is a form of tyrany - you must be very naive to think otherwise...

[Dowding]

Lynx - read your own definition of Democracy, especially the part that reads,

"...a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections."

Sums up a modern Democracy very well, I should think.

 

Dome? As I remember people wanted hospital.

So now you want money from the Lottery to pay for things the government should be funding? Sounds like another tax... you've already made it clear your feelings on those.

 

Any modern goverment is a form of tyrany - you must be very naive to think otherwise...

By implication, you are saying that governments in the past (i.e. not modern) were more democratic and not at all tyranical. How about slavery, racism, class discrimination, sexism - they are all things that have been reduced or eliminated in your 'tyranical' modern government, yet were all present in 'democracies' of the past.

You are saying you would prefer any of that to the modern democracy?



[This message has been edited by Dowding (edited 12-13-2000).]

[TheWobble]

I know democracy is far from perfect, but ist about the best thing ya can get....Its kinda nice to believe you have control of your tyrant.  I hate big GOV, the gove should be 1/10th the size it is now, because then it would produce 1/10th of the roadkill we have to deal with.    

[-lynx-]

Jesus Dowding - you're one of those <polite term eludes me right this moment> roadkillters, aren't ya? You know precisely what I mean and yet you grab every thread available to turn things up side down .

Directly or inderictly is irrelevant cuz the definition calls for the supreme power to be vested in the people and to be exercised by them. Which part of that you find confusing again?

Let's not say "lottery money" as you would say about a quid you decided to spend this Saturday. I'm talking about 600+ million pounds wasted on a one-off attraction (and not even that attractive as it turned out to be) instead of building 4 hospitals that could have been built on that princely sum. And in case you've forgotten - lottery fund is not tax, it does not even "belong" to the government - it's people's money and they had no say in spending it. Democracy? My a***!.

 

By implication, you are saying that governments in the past (i.e. not modern) were more democratic and not at all tyranical. How about slavery, racism, class discrimination, sexism - they are all things that have been reduced or eliminated in your 'tyranical' modern government, yet were all present in 'democracies' of the past.

You are saying you would prefer any of that to the modern democracy?

You obviously haven't studied logic, have you? Or was it included with that broadly defined subject called "Science"? All I was saying was that modern "democratic" governments/states have very little to do with "true" democracy and are quite oppressive.