UK: Gun crime on the rise

[Superfly]

Link

From the horse's mouth...

<snip>

GUN crime in Ealing has rocketed this year despite London-wide attempts to crackdown on offences involving firearms.

<snip>

The day before, a 60 year-old man was threatened by a man wielding a silver handgun at the junction of Ferrymeade Avenue and Ruislip Road, Northolt.

<snip>

read...60 year-old disarmed citizen

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Superfly]

3. Lie?

This is from an English paper. I thought they were supposed to have solved the gun-crime problem by banning them.

Guess not.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[iverglas]

13. why would anyone "think" that?

"I thought they were supposed to have solved the gun-crime problem by banning them."

I'm still trying to figure out where some people get their "thoughts" from.

Do you also "think" that my digging up weeds in my garden is "supposed to solve" my "garden-weed problem"?

How come I have to do it so often and so repeatedly if doing it "solves" my problem, I wonder.

How much worse might my "garden-weed problem" be if I didn't dig up any at all, I wonder.

Who knows ... maybe the weeds would just wander off somewhere else if I paid no attention to them and never dug up another single one ...

.

(spelling typo fixed)

[BullDozer]

7. True or not?

Geeze, how often is the RKBA crowd going to lie about this?"
Posted by MrBenchley
61 gun crimes....in six months...in a borough about the size of Anaheim, Califronia.



Is the crime rate rising or not? Are there more crimes than before? How often are YOU going to respond to articles citing a rise in crime by complaining that it's not as high as a city in an entirely different country as if that somehow makes it irrelevant?

Here I'll help you out;

The borough has seen a steady increase in gun crime over the last year .....

The number of crimes committed involving the use of firearms has gone up by a third over the same period compared to last year.

Yeap it IS going up. Where's the lie?

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MrBenchley]

9. How often is the RKBA crowd going to peddle this lie?

"How often are YOU going to respond to articles citing a rise in crime by complaining that it's not as high as a city in an entirely different country as if that somehow makes it irrelevant?"
As often as the RKBA crowd is going to pretend that 61 gun crimes over six months in a city the size of Arlington, Texas is a bloodbath, solvable only by armed neurotics.

[BullDozer]

10. No lie

As often as the RKBA crowd is going to pretend that 61 gun crimes over six months in a city the size of Arlington, Texas is a bloodbath,

Who said that? I didn't see anyone claim a bloodbath. There are references to increases in crime.

What I do see is you peddling bullshit by saying that because the crime didn't rise all the way to a rate you find appropriate than it just didn't happen at all.
That's what I see

Too bad, the crime rate has gone up and you can't dispute that and still try to appear lucid.

Is the crime rate rising or not? Are there more crimes than before?

Here I'll help you out;

The borough has seen a steady increase in gun crime over the last year .....

The number of crimes committed involving the use of firearms has gone up by a third over the same period compared to last year.

Yeap it IS going up. Where's the lie?

[MrBenchley]

12. The hell there isn't....

The RKBA crowd is trying to pretend that 61 gun crimes over six months in a city the size of Arlington, Texas is a bloodbath. That's why this rubbish is posted here.

[BullDozer]

15. More invisible posts?

The RKBA crowd is trying to pretend that 61 gun crimes over six months in a city the size of Arlington, Texas is a bloodbath. That's why this rubbish is posted here.

What I see is a post that links to an article that indicates crime is going up in a part of Great Britain, you're the only one mentioning bloodbaths and screaming that their crime increase is irrelevant because there isn't enough crime to meet whatever fantasy threshold you've invented.

Is the crime rate rising or not? Are there more crimes than before?

Here I'll help you out;

The borough has seen a steady increase in gun crime over the last year .....

The number of crimes committed involving the use of firearms has gone up by a third over the same period compared to last year.

Yeap it IS going up. Where's the lie?

[Name removed]

16. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[slackmaster]

2. One problem is they can't tell toy guns from real ones

"The day before, a 60 year-old man was threatened by a man wielding a silver handgun..."

Or a silver cigarette lighter that resembled a handgun.

Because there are and always will be SOME real handguns in circulation among criminals in the UK, anyone who is threatened by someone wielding an object that MIGHT be a gun has to assume that it is a real gun. Even if there is only a 1% chance an assailant's gun is the real thing, victims are unlikely to take a chance on getting shot.

The only certainty is that no potential victim of a rape or robbery or carjacking has any kind of effective weapon for self-defense. No guns, no knives, no tasers, no pepper spray.

I think I'll pass on implementing that kind of system in the USA until the government can guarantee my safety.

[iverglas]

14. wot funny ... logic

"One problem is they can't tell toy guns from real ones"

Me, if I were asserting the premise that something perceived as a real gun might actually have been a toy gun, as you have done, and that this happens not infrequently ... well, I'd be questioning the number of "gun crimes" committed in the location in question as being actually indicative of the number of crimes committed using firearms, which really seems to be what we're being told has "skyrocketed".

For pity's sake, what earthly sense does it make to claim that firearms control legislation has "caused" crimes committing using fake firearms to skyrocket?

And even if that made sense -- i.e. if the crimes would have been committed using REAL firearms had it not been for the legislation, the only way it could make sense -- how could anyone think/say that this was not a GOOD effect from firearms control legislation??

Oh, well, I suppose that it would make sense to say that had it not been for the legislation, the crimes would not have been committed, or would have been committed using no firearm, fake or real, at all. In some parallel universe, that is.

"Because there are and always will be SOME real handguns in circulation among criminals in the UK, anyone who is threatened by someone wielding an object that MIGHT be a gun has to assume that it is a real gun. Even if there is only a 1% chance an assailant's gun is the real thing, victims are unlikely to take a chance on getting shot."

Hey, c'mon, do let's keep our issues straight.

Is the issue the "skyrocketing", or not, of firearms crime in the UK, and how that might be related, or not, to firearms control legislation?

Or is the issue that private individuals should, or should not, be permitted to arm themselves against the possibility of being victimized by someone wielding a firearm, real or not?

Do please make up your mind.

"The only certainty is that no potential victim of a rape or robbery or carjacking has any kind of effective weapon for self-defense. No guns, no knives, no tasers, no pepper spray."

It's also a fact that the vast, overwhelming majority of crimes in the locale in question are NOT committed with firearms, fake or real. And it's also a fact that huge numbers of people avoid being victimized every minute of every day even though they have no weapon at all.

We are bloody ALL "potential victims" of crimes, every minute of every day. We are also all "potential victims" of mosquitos carrying West Nile disease. In both cases, given the remoteness of the risk and the availability of other means of averting harm even if the risk materializes, there are good grounds for arguing that some imaginable "cures" might be worse than the "diseases" in question.

That seems to be precisely what the people of the UK have decided. I continue to wonder why anyone else regards their decision as any of his/her business.

And I continue to wonder why anyone who persists in "pass<ing> on implementing that kind of system in the USA until the government can guarantee my safety" would find it necessary to so transparently pretend that the effects of the system are something that s/he simply cannot offer any good reason to believe that they are.

.

[xchrom]

4. the article quotes a guy

who blames a youth -- but the alleged stick up guy was described to be 60. 60?! that's a little old for street thugery even in this country. isn't there a retirement age for that job?

[MrBenchley]

6. The article also says this:

"Really, what we need to do is focus on youngsters who find it acceptable to carry guns as part of their image. It is profoundly dangerous and becoming more wide-spread..."

Would that the problem was limited to youngsters here....unfortunately here we've got full grown neurotics backed by a corrupt industry and the GOP.

[Pert_UK]

11. Some arguably important thoughts from an Englishman...

Firstly, it's important that BOTH sides of the RKBA argument realise that the UK has NEVER claimed to have "solved" the gun problem. Nor has the UK developed a system that could be rolled out globally, solving gun problems in every country it meets around the world.

I believe that there are some aspects of the UK laws / enforcement of laws that could prove helpful in the US, but you undermine your own arguments if you say either"

1. The UK's "perfect" model hasn't worked - look, the gun crime is still rising, therefore their ideas are all crap and shouldn't be looked at here, or,

2. The UK's laws are working, look how many fewer gun crimes they have than the US, they've got the right ideas so let's use them all.

The UK gun restriction laws were never intended to address the factors prevalent in the US, i.e.

-widespread gun ownership
-guns sanctioned as self-defence
-significant numbers of gun accidents / unsecured guns available for kids to find
-"casual" use of guns as just one more weapon that can be reached for during an argument or at times of stress
-significant numbers of legally-held weapons being used in violent crimes

The UK gun laws were brought in SPECIFICALLY to prevent massacres such as those in Dunblane, where legally held weapons were employed to kill large numbers of innocent people. The intention was to declare gun ownership illegal and to remove legally-held weapons from the hands of the public - effectively, the government decided that the rights of a relatively small number of sporting shooters did not outweigh the potential horror that could be unleashed if just one of them abused their position of gun ownership.

In addition, I should point out that in the UK guns have always been regarded as "special" objects, rather than everyday/common ones. There is no history of "casual" gun ownership in the UK - if you wanted one, you had to join a club and satisfy the police that you were responsible enough to have one, as well as purchasing expensive and secure gun cabinets and be subjected to checks to ensure that you were storing and use the gun appropriately.

From this, I make 2 points.

1. These UK gun laws were not aimed at reducing the number of illegally-held weapons used in crimes - how could they? They were solely targeted at removing registered, legal weapons from the public domain. An increase in illegal gun use amongst criminals should be taken as a totally separate issue, because their use of guns was always illegal and is addressed by different legislation and tactics. An increase in drug-gang activity and armed robbery is not related in any way to the UK's ban on handgun ownership.

2. UK gun laws were not intended to address a large base of gun ownership in a society that has a history and tradition of "casual" gun ownership and where guns are often seen as everyday objects. They are clealy unsuitable for implementation in the US, where there are huge numbers of guns and an enshrined "right" of ownership. I somehow don't think that a sponsored, compulsory police "buy-back" of all handguns would gain the wholesale support of the US public, or address the problems you have, which include the chronic misuse of guns by irresponsible owners (the least likely people to surrender them).

There are some aspects of the UK laws which may help the US situation, and place a barrier between the gun owner and his weapon when that owner intends to use it illegally. However, suggesting that the UK law is a panacea and then criticising it because it doesn't work is wasting everyone's time.