Originally posted by beet1e
I am still waiting to hear of the great British gun confiscation. What form did it take? Who owned all these guns? Maybe the police made door to door calls? You tell me, because I know of no such event in British history.
I don't know how many firearms have been involuntarily confiscated by your police. Perhaps Nashwan can find some stats. I'm sure it's rather large.
At the end of 2000, 296,849 firearms and 1,320,883 shotguns were held on certificates in England and Wales. This is after your handgun ban. In 1995, there were 413,600 firearms covered by Firearms Certificates.
England has had seven national gun "amnesty" periods (that I could find data on) during which illegal firearm could be turne in without prosecution. This in in England proper; Scotland had some too.
In the four amnesties between 1946 and 1968, weapons handed
into the Police exceeded 20,000.
Three months after the Dunblane massacre in March 1996, there was a national firearms amnesty that saw nearly 23,000 firearms and 700,000 rounds of ammunition surrendered.
This was considerably less than the 48,000 weapons surrendered after the Hungerford killings nine years before.
In January 2003 the killing of teenagers Charlene Ellis and Letisha Shakespeare in Birmingham provoked another gun amnesty:
March 31 – April 30 2003
6,529 prohibited firearms (including 5,734 handguns), 10,513 shot guns, 13,974 air weapons, 9,480 imitations and 3,412 assorted rifles and other guns. In addition, a total of 7,093 other weapons, including knives, swords and crossbows, were handed in.
There is evidence that a lot if not most of the guns turned in are of the same nature as what gets "turned in" in gun buyback programs here. Junk. In the words of one commentator:
Naturally the first thing they did was to call an amnesty. No surprise there then. This is where a group of generally law abiding people hand in a bunch of old crap they’ve had lying around for ages. The media showed loads of pictures of old guns in buckets and the police and the Home Office cried success.
You have not answered my question concerning the elected government:... If said measures were so far reaching and bore such impact on the lives of ordinary working people, then please advise me of the civil uprising that took place in response to the "Great British Disarmament".
One of the problems of discussing anything with you is that you simply ignore what's posted in response.
Show me where I said a "civil uprising that took place ".
What I said was that your Firearms Act of 1920 was due to concerns (fears is probably more accurate) of your offcials with respect to Bolshevism.
YOU are the one stating this just wasn't so; it was some crystal ball act by your government, wisely preventing firearms homicide then and far into the future.
As you say: bollocks.
The discussions on firearms restrictions by the people that formulated the law are part of the record. It's clear that Bolshevism and "worker unrest" were key elements of the discussion. I gave you the footnotes that will lead to the documentation of those statements already posted in this thread.
According to you, we were "disarmed" as of c1920.
That was the
beginning of the long slide into "disarmament" which was manifested in the draconian, pointless laws after Hungerford and Dunblane. I believe even Nashwan has said he feels the post-Hungerford/Dunblane laws were unnecessary.
WW1 was the first armed conflict after which significant numbers of guns found their way back home. Legislation was needed to deal with this situation where none had been needed before. This was in no way connected with the discontent of the workers of those days,
You're simply wrong for the same reasons posted above. The legislation was directly related to "armed workers" by the fears of your officials. It wasn't the workers; it was the people in power and their fear of armed workers that led to your Firearms Act of 1920.
Perception becomes reality; people like
The Minister of Transport, Sir Eric Geddes, and Sir Ernley Blackwell, Under Secretary of State for the Home Department.
You might want to do some research on the "Blackwell Committee". It should help you realize you're bailing a boat with no bottom at all.
We may here quote the following observations from the Report of the Sub-Committee on Arms Traffic:-
"3. We regard the whole position as one of considerable gravity. There are two distinct categories of person from whom danger is to be apprehended, viz., (1) the savage or semi-civilised tribesmen in outlying parts of the British Empire, whose main demand is for rifles and ammunition, and (2) the anarchist or 'intellectual' malcontent of the great cities, whose weapons are the bomb and the automatic pistol.
There is some force in the view .... that the latter will in future prove the more dangerous of the two. At any rate, his activities will call for unceasing vigilance, and very special precautions will be necessary to control the trade in automatic pistols, [/u]which, apart from their extreme deadliness, are, by reason of their size and shape, more easily smuggled than any other type of weapon.
As regards the tribesman, he already possesses rifles in abundance, and, desirable as it is to prevent him from adding to their number, it is, in our opinion, of still greater importance to check his supplies of ammunition, without which his weapons are useless to him ....
"4. Our conclusion is that the regulation of the arms traffic after the war is a matter of vital importance to the future of the British Empire, and one on which His Majesty's Government would be well advised to frame a definite and considered policy with the least possible delay. We submit below a series of recommendations indicating the lines on which such a policy should, in our opinion proceed ....
It's hardly creditable that the committee was concerned about the firearms homicide rate amongst "the savage or semi-civilised tribesmen in outlying parts of the British Empire".
It's also quite clear that the committee saw "the anarchist or 'intellectual' malcontent of the great cities" who would "prove the more dangerous of the two."
Nor is there any way to misinterpret "regulation of the arms traffic after the war is a matter of vital importance to the future of the British Empire,". There's no way the criminal firearms homicide rate would rate as a key to the future of The British Empire.
No, Beet.. you're just wrong as usual. The Firearms Act of 1920 had it's origins in the Blackwell Committee and it's clear where their concerns were.
But go ahead an persist in the idea that your government officials weren't worried primarily about Bolsheviks at that time. I have many more direct links to their statements to make you look even more Beetle-ish.
Director of Intelligence Thomson's January 9, 1920 report also warns of the growth of the National Union of Ex-Service Men.
The National Union was a radical faction of discontented veterans that was developing ties to more mainstream veterans' organizations, as well as to officials of the Police Union.[67]
The goal of the National Union, in the words of its national secretary, was to form "Sailors', Soldiers' and Workers' Councils with a view to taking over the means of production, distribution and exchange and thereby freeing the workers from wage slavery and exploitation."
or
In early January 1920, Sir Eric Geddes, Chairman of the Cabinet's Supply and Transport Committee gave an even more frightened description of the ability of police and army to protect the Government:
The Minister of Labour has reported that there is a possibility of a revolutionary outbreak in Glasgow, Liverpool, or London in the early spring, when a definite attempt may be made to seize the reins of Government.
In normal circumstances the chances of success of such an attempt would probably be small, but the danger would, in my opinion, be serious if the attempt were made when the country's resources had already been taxed by the strain of a great industrial crisis, such as a strike of coal miners.
It is not inconceivable that a dramatic and successful coup d'etat in some large center of population might win the support of the unthinking mass of labour, exasperated as the latter is by the increasing cost and difficulty of living
you don't know Jack.
Physician, heal thyself. And your Mum, I guess.
I may not know much about living and working in English cities as a day to day experience, but I'm quite confident I know more about firearms, their use and their owners in the English countryside than you ever will.
Without doubt I know more about the true origins of the 1920 Firearms Act than you and your Mum as well.
