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Brits and handguns.

Nessie said:
Since 1900 twenty four UK police officers have been stabbed to death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty

After years of resisting change from the traditional uniform and basic baton, police on patrol have a better baton, CS spray and stab proof vests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police...d_Kingdom#Equipment_that_an_officer_may_carry

Your assessment of policing in the UK is wrong, please do some simple easy research before future posts.
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I don't need to do research to correct my crime of not knowing bobbies carry pepper spray and wear vests, you just told me.
 
Marcus said:
I don't recall claiming that widespread carrying of guns would reduce mass shooting casualties. What I did refer to was places like schools where existing CCH holders are not allowed to bring their weapons. I was thinking of that massacre in Colorado, if one of the adults present had a weapon, perhaps the security guard, I think it is likely he would shoot the crazy while he was leisurely picking off students .
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A simple check of mass shootings and was there an armed person thereabouts and how many died and how it ended will show you there is only an assumption having more CCW people about would reduce mass shootings.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map

What you are saying is the gun owner unevidenced hypothesis that Americans with guns in places where they may be a mass shooting will reduce the death rate.
 
Rat said:
If I ignore the fact that you originally said "the UK", and if I charitably take British to mean "contemporarily inhabiting Great Britain", then it gets slightly closer.



Yes they were. But as the link you provided states, "Forests of this type were found all over what is now the island of Great Britain for a short period, before the climate began to slowly warm and the pinewoods retreated north into the Scottish Highlands, the last remaining climatic region suitable for them in the British Isles".

I don't deny that a good deal of GB was deforested deliberately (yes, by people), mainly to make grazing land or other agricultural land. A good deal of it was done before there was England as a political entity, let alone Great Britain or the UK.
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Or indeed the Roman Empire, for a fair bit of it.
 
The original premises in the supposed poll were rather odd.

Firstly the 1997 Bill did not take a lot of firearms out of circulation because very few people owned hand guns and nobody was allowed military style weapons anyway.

Secondly, violent crime has been decreasing and murders are well down on previous decades. The gun ban has little to do with this because so few people owned guns before 1997.

Deaths by shooting in the UK run at 50 to 60 per annum and are generally actions between criminal gangs. What possible incentive is there to have a free for all in gun ownership? In the US the deaths caused through accidental discharge of a weapon even allowing for population difference far exceeds our total gun deaths. Allowing people to own guns would not prevent the few gun deaths we do have and the accidents and guns used in domestic disputes and in times of emotional crisis would see our gun deaths balloon upwards.

There is a small pro gun lobby in the UK and to them I would say "you are not getting a gun and that is an end to the matter, now go and collect stamps or something"
 
It seems to me that a fundamental cultural difference between the UK and US is how people feel about the idea of defending themselves. To a great many US people, the idea of being able to defend themselves against an aggressor is something that gives them a very visceral kind of pleasure. Especially for men, where it seems to tie into their sense of manhood. And it's nothing at all to do with the actual need to do so - the pleasure comes purely from knowing that you are able to do so. That's why it does so little good to talk about statistics on how often guns are used in self defence, etc - they don't care if they will never need it. They just want the nice feeling.

In the UK, this feeling is almost entirely absent. Most people's feelings about guns is that they are kind of nasty and icky things and the fewer of them that are around, the better.
 
BStrong said:
On gun ownership, intelligence and being made safe by armed individuals -

Not surprising in the least. More than a few individuals with direct contact with their armed security make it known that they view their security team(s) as lesser human beings.

I choose not to associate with and/or work for any such individuals.
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<shrug> People don't get personal armed security in the UK unless it's from the police. It's not really a widespread need here, precisely because the chances of any potential threat being armed are so low.
 
Seismosaurus said:
It seems to me that a fundamental cultural difference between the UK and US is how people feel about the idea of defending themselves. To a great many US people, the idea of being able to defend themselves against an aggressor is something that gives them a very visceral kind of pleasure. Especially for men, where it seems to tie into their sense of manhood. And it's nothing at all to do with the actual need to do so - the pleasure comes purely from knowing that you are able to do so. That's why it does so little good to talk about statistics on how often guns are used in self defence, etc - they don't care if they will never need it. They just want the nice feeling.

In the UK, this feeling is almost entirely absent. Most people's feelings about guns is that they are kind of nasty and icky things and the fewer of them that are around, the better.
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In another thread I made a similar point

Nessie said:
jimbob said:
FWIW, I have always lived in the UK, and as a schoolboy have fired NATO standard ammunition (5.56mm) albeit from a bolt-action rifle (the L98. variant of the then-unpopular SA80). Friends also fired fully automatic weapons (Bren gun). This was in the school cadet corps, in a state school, which was common in local schools but fairly rare elsewhere.

Like Multivac I never felt the need to own a gun, indeed for as long as I can remember, in the UK significant interest in guns has been considered not only unhealthy but the preserve of losers who read "Guns and Ammo" magazine* and will always live with their parents.


*Several steps below trainspotters.
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jimbob said:
I was just highlighting what the situation in the UK is. *There*, interest in guns is generally considered strange.
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LTC8K6 said:
I really doubt that interest in guns in the UK is considered strange, given it's rich history of wonderful gunmaking, which continues today.
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zooterkin said:
Then you'd be wrong. The majority of people in the UK have not even seen a firearm close up, outside of a museum, and there is little interest in guns. A desire to own guns on the part of people who have no practical use (e.g. vermin control) for them is seen as strange.
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zooterkin said:
Certainly the gun culture that exists is well organised, and has a long tradition. The fact remains that it is very much a minority pastime, which most people view with suspicion.
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OK now I accept you guys do not think British gun owners are strange or losers. I just wanted make sure that our American cousins got an accurate picture of what UK gun owners are really like, not the picture you were painting of them by describing others attitudes.
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Possibly this has been reinforced by British news reports of killers often having such fantasists' literature

The Hungerford massacre (1987) being the first that I can remember, where there were news reports that the killer had a collection of publications like "Soldier of Fortune" magazine - but then spree shootings are rare in the UK.

Since that post, British media mentioned that he killer of April Jones had a similar fantasy life, including a photo of him firing an automatic weapon.

http://news.sky.com/story/1097385/mark-bridger-the-man-with-two-lives
 
Seismosaurus said:
It seems to me that a fundamental cultural difference between the UK and US is how people feel about the idea of defending themselves. To a great many US people, the idea of being able to defend themselves against an aggressor is something that gives them a very visceral kind of pleasure. Especially for men, where it seems to tie into their sense of manhood. And it's nothing at all to do with the actual need to do so - the pleasure comes purely from knowing that you are able to do so. That's why it does so little good to talk about statistics on how often guns are used in self defence, etc - they don't care if they will never need it. They just want the nice feeling.

In the UK, this feeling is almost entirely absent. Most people's feelings about guns is that they are kind of nasty and icky things and the fewer of them that are around, the better.
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I think only in regards to guns, I know several people that have a baseball bat* or a cricket bat somewhere that they think they can use in case of necessity.



*Probably accounts for 99% of all purchases of baseball bats in the UK.... :)
 
Information Analyst said:
<shrug> People don't get personal armed security in the UK unless it's from the police. It's not really a widespread need here, precisely because the chances of any potential threat being armed are so low.
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The only politicians in the UK to get permanent armed guards (as in police) are the Prime Minister, The Deputy Prime Minister, The Defence Secretary and the Northern Ireland Secretary if they want it, which most have not since the Troubles ended. Then various members of the Royal Family have armed protection, but it depends on what they are doing.
 
The gunssavelive link in the OP was certainly heavy on what at best can be said to be extreme wish fulfilment, and at worst outright lies. For example, it relies on a 2009 Daily Mail article screaming that the, "total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year [2007/08] - a rise of 89 per cent." This was highly misleading, given that the peak years after 1998/99 were actually 2004/05 & 2005/06 at 11,069 & 11,088 respectively, after which there was a fall to 9,645 and then a slight rise to 9,865. There were then fall for the next three to 7,024 - obviously this is after the DM report, but these figure are publicly available, so either gunssavelive knew about them and therefore misrepresented the situation , or were too stupid to find them. And even so, the devil is in the detail. In 1998/99 11% (n=566) of offences were known to be imitations, but by 2007/08 it was 26% (n=2,562), and had been around 30% in the two peak years (n=3373 & 3277). These were, of course, the crimes positively identified as involving imitations - the vast majority being Airsoft types - and the real numbers are likely to be much higher.

The Telegraph poll, of course, is beyond a joke.
 
the point is really, unless you are a potential threat, you can legally get firearms in the UK.

and if you are a threat, you can probably get them illegally if you are persistent enough..

but even if the laws were loosened up so we could legally keep them in the cupboards for our kids to play with when we are out, its never going to be legal to take it out with you and dispense summary justice to somebody you consider " a threat"

nor should it be in the UK, although if I were in the US with all you gun loons, I would probably feel different too.
 
jimbob said:
Possibly this has been reinforced by British news reports of killers often having such fantasists' literature

The Hungerford massacre (1987) being the first that I can remember, where there were news reports that the killer had a collection of publications like "Soldier of Fortune" magazine - but then spree shootings are rare in the UK.
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Indeed. While it later turned out that Ryan didn't own a video recorder - hence scuppering the initial tabloid "Rambo" claims - he did have a large collection of such magazines and books.
 
kevsta said:
but even if the laws were loosened up so we could legally keep them in the cupboards for our kids to play with when we are out, its never going to be legal to take it out with you and dispense summary justice to somebody you consider " a threat"
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And, of course, there's no crime that we execute people for here, so the idea of using deadly force to effect arrests for "self defence" is somewhat bizarre.

In a similar vein, I once had a very convoluted discussion with an American on one forum who couldn't wrap his head around police not being armed in general, and when escorting convicts to prison. It was quite some way into this discussion before it became apparent that his confusion was being driven by the idea that while the police might be not armed, surely all the prison guards must be! He just couldn't envisage that prisons can be operated without armed guards.
 
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One reason for not allowing the public to carry and shoot in defence is because the police are unarmed. You cannot have the public "defending" themselves against the police with guns.
 
Ranb said:
How does your claim jive with an incident like this one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes

Ranb
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That was a cluster beep of the first water. Army, police and security services contriving to demonstrate how to do unjoined thinking. From the moment it happened they went into overdrive trying to extricate themselves from the mess.

This led to the public being even less happy about guns not an argument for more.
 
Nogbad said:
That was a cluster beep of the first water. Army, police and security services contriving to demonstrate how to do unjoined thinking. From the moment it happened they went into overdrive trying to extricate themselves from the mess.

This led to the public being even less happy about guns not an argument for more.
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I was asking IA as his sentence was a bit vague.

To introduce another topic in this thread, how is it that the shooters or their supervisors were not put on trial for murder or manslaughter as a result of the killing?

Ranb
 
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Ranb said:
I was asking IA as his sentence was a bit vague.

To introduce another topic in this thread, how is it that the shooters or their supervisors were not put on trial for murder or manslaughter as a result of the killing?

Ranb
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I don't think it's relevant to the topic, but they were not tried because the CPS determined that there was insufficient evidence to warrant a prosecution. Link. The CPS decided to charge the superiors of the officers for Health and Safety violations, because they screwed up. As for the officers who fired the shots, they genuinely believed that Menezes was an immediate threat to their lives and the lives of others, which is why the shot him.
 
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