Funny how much firepower some think they need here at home

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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby Woodsman » Sat Jan 08, 2011 7:52 pm

I do not believe I am mistaken - your reply supports exactly what I just stated.

Despite that minor angular quibble, at the very least guns are nearly outlawed, yet thousands of people somehow wind up shooting others.

I guess that piece of paper that the governor (broad based term here) signed wasn't worth a nickel - but you all paid plenty for it, which is pretty much what is so upsetting.

I don't mind the rock stars getting money for nothing and chicks for free but politicians? That right there is fucked up.

Man this wine is good. Gotta go. Some reloading to do and then it's up and down the snowy hills for me.


Penta wrote:
Woodsman wrote:If I'm not mistaken, gun crime has gone up proportionally to the restrictions to guns in England.


I think you are mistaken. Crime statistics are notoriously difficult to read sensibly. For instance, recorded gun offences go up every time there's a new restriction, because of the number of people who haven't yet complied with the new requirements. That doesn't mean that people are being threatened, injured or killed by guns more often. Or they apparently go up one year, but it turns out that it's only because there's been a much bigger reduction than usual the previous year. The trend in all offences involving firearms is clearly downwards. Here's the relevant bit from the latest British Crime Survey:

Offences involving firearms
Provisional statistics for 2009/10 are available for police recorded crimes involving firearms
other than air weapons (referred to as ‘firearm offences’ in the remainder of this section).
Firearms are taken to be involved in an incident if they are fired, used as a blunt instrument
against a person, or used in a threat. Finalised figures are planned for publication in January
2011.
Provisional figures show that 7,995 firearm offences were recorded in England and Wales in
2009/10, a three per cent decrease from 2008/09 (8,208). Following the introduction of the
NCRS in April 2002, there were small increases in the number of firearm offences recorded
by the police until 2005/06, followed by a general downward trend since. This mirrors the
trend in police recorded violence against the person. The number of firearm offences
recorded in 2009/10 is 22 per cent lower than in 2002/03 (Figure 3.3 and Table 3.10).

Provisional firearm offences can be broken down both by injury and by the type of weapon
used (Tables 3.10 and 3.11).
• There were 39 firearm offences recorded by the police that resulted in a fatal injury in
2009/10, the same number as the previous year.
• The number of injuries resulting from firearm offences increased by eight per cent from
1,764 in 2008/09 to 1,901 in 2009/10. This follows a substantial 46 per cent decrease in
the previous year, which was largely due to reductions in offences that resulted in slight
injuries.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby Sri Lanky » Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:26 pm

Hey vet...no offense about the inbreeding thing. I'm part mennonite so I get that shit all the time. Anyways,there are so many misconceptions...like there's some stark difference between canada and the states with regards to guns. Where I live in southern Manitoba you won't see more free and crazy use of firearms. I started shooting rifle when I was nine and have gone on hunts at any time of year or day despite what kind of gay laws the eastern elites in Toronto,Ottawa,or Montreal dream up. I've ALWAYS used an "illegal gun". Fuck,it's a joke. The Angels took over the unions in Quebec. Well how the fuck do you think they did it.....duh.

Holy shit...I ranted.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby vetparatrooper » Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:45 pm

Never lost a gun before...If I did then as I have said before about other situations....i deserve to be shot....And I do not have a gun on my hip everytime I leave the house rickshaw...it just so happens that in this state, (I think I may have mentioned this), you have to have a Carry permit to carry a pistol afield with you...that is, to carry one when you are hiking up in the mountains, walking in the fields, or to have one with you when you are hunting during any hunting season with any other type of weapon (i.e. rifle, Muzzleloader, Bow) I mainly Bow hunt so I like to have a pistol with me when I am out during bow season. However I do NOT I carry a weapon with me when I check the mail

...Now when I am out at night in the fields around my house (my dog is sort of a night owl, or may very well have caught insomnia from me - you have heard how they say some animals adapt to their owners habits right - so i usually have to go out and play with him quite bit in the early night so i can wear him out for the rest of the night.) I might carry one but that is when I am on my own property and I have a right to carry on my property without a carry permit....and it is way more for the critters I might encounter when I walk into the barn or the chicken house at nighttime rather than it is to protect me from any people on my own property. Not that such a situation might not arise, but really it is more for the critters (we have a bad coyote problem here and having lay stock so i can have my own eggs, I also worry about red foxes in the chicken house) and such when and in the rare situations that I do carry it on my own property at all...However, if I wanted to carry when checking the mail I guess that too would be totally up to me...other people's opinions do not really matter too much to me when it is my legal right to do something -- although i agree with you that in some situations like going to the grocery store at high noon, it is more a show-off thing to have a pistol on your hip in that situation.....However, I am not one to judge anyone else's decision to carry when and if they are legally allowed to do so....None of us know what another person has been through or what makes them feel safe and everyoe has a right to feel that way in this world...It is just becoming harder and harder to acquire that feeling from day to day for some people...

there is a guy in town who, every time I see him he has his .45 on his hip and at first I thought to myself, because he was sort of short and skinny, he is probably just carrying to show people that he is a "big man"...but then someone told me that he and his wife had been held up in the grocery parking lot one evening at knife point several years back and that is why he has part of his cheek missing and really scarred up I guess is because the guy who held them up sliced him up pretty badly....so I guess he carries so as to never have that experience ever again.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby Penta » Sat Jan 08, 2011 9:01 pm

yet thousands of people somehow wind up shooting others

Not quite 2000, so not really. 39 killed, 1,901 injured. (Unless you can shoot people without injuring them. The other thousands of offences will be threatening, waving about, but not actually shooting people, presumably, though it could include shooting at and missing completely.) I think you'd find most people here are not itching to own guns or terrified of being robbed at gunpoint or have gun-toting burglars at their doors. It's a comforting delusion, no doubt, but it's not true. The huge majority of gun crime is between members of criminal gangs, not against the general public. I've lived in inner-city London and Birmingham (2 of the cities with the worst figures) for 30 years and have seen in all that time one handgun, which was probably a replica.

I'm not going to do a major search for up-to-date statistics, but this graph shows over 8,000 homicides from handguns plus another 2,000 or so from other guns in 2004. I don't know whether your figures have been rising or falling since then. Ours are definitely falling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ushom ... weapon.svg

Since the US population is 5 or 6 times the British population, you'd expect 40 x 5 = 200 or 40 x 6 = 240 deaths (not necessarily homicides) from firearms annually in the US if the numbers were anything like similar, rather than about 10,000 (homicides, presumably not including accidental deaths). Can that be right? (I'm notoriously bad at arithmetic.)

Maybe British criminals are just very bad shots?
Last edited by Penta on Sat Jan 08, 2011 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby vetparatrooper » Sat Jan 08, 2011 9:13 pm

Penta wrote;

Maybe British criminals are just very bad shots


LOL,,,pretty funny.....yeah we kill more people herre in the USA because we are such good shots....I would like to know approxiamately how many people are killed each year due to "accidents" ..for example in getting shot from their hunting buddies (remember Dick Cheney shooting his pal in the face?), or in mishandling of firearms when showing them to other people, or from not securing weapons in the home in a responsible manner from any children you might have living with you, etc??? you do not have to look it up...I am sure I can find it...but sometimes i wonder about some of these "accidental" shootings....
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby Caliban » Mon Jan 10, 2011 12:55 am

Penta wrote:
yet thousands of people somehow wind up shooting others

Not quite 2000, so not really. 39 killed, 1,901 injured. (Unless you can shoot people without injuring them. The other thousands of offences will be threatening, waving about, but not actually shooting people, presumably, though it could include shooting at and missing completely.) I think you'd find most people here are not itching to own guns or terrified of being robbed at gunpoint or have gun-toting burglars at their doors. It's a comforting delusion, no doubt, but it's not true. The huge majority of gun crime is between members of criminal gangs, not against the general public. I've lived in inner-city London and Birmingham (2 of the cities with the worst figures) for 30 years and have seen in all that time one handgun, which was probably a replica.

I'm not going to do a major search for up-to-date statistics, but this graph shows over 8,000 homicides from handguns plus another 2,000 or so from other guns in 2004. I don't know whether your figures have been rising or falling since then. Ours are definitely falling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ushom ... weapon.svg

Since the US population is 5 or 6 times the British population, you'd expect 40 x 5 = 200 or 40 x 6 = 240 deaths (not necessarily homicides) from firearms annually in the US if the numbers were anything like similar, rather than about 10,000 (homicides, presumably not including accidental deaths). Can that be right? (I'm notoriously bad at arithmetic.)

Maybe British criminals are just very bad shots?



They are. Ten years ago and longer when we look at a time when lawful section 1gun ownership was still allowed in this country(and please take the point I am only talking about Merseyside here because that is where my knowledge lies but I doubt it is much different in other parts of the country and anecdotal evidence from other officers in other forces I have regular contact with suggests so) It was quite unusual for firearms offence occurence. A shooting made all the papers and tv news. A gun crime murder made national news.

Now we have gun crime incidents almost every day. Woundings occur about twice, three times a week here - the last three days ago and the victim on a machine technically dead still.. There was a murder of a fairly high up crime group criminal a couple of days before christmas, that made the front page of the Liverpool echo and about 20 seconds on regional news and only yesterday we had an incident, actually seven or eight incidents, when a coked up drug dealer was driving round south Liverpool shooting at several bystanders (none hit) Chases called off several times because his demeanour, threat to bystanderrs and driving on the wrong side of roads at high speeds to escape threatened life. It went on from 7am to 4pm when he was contained and arrested still in possession of the gun. Not A SINGLEWORD ON THE NEWS OR IN THE PAPERS. On the same day the more mundane issues inolving guns were a robbery of a car at gunpoint by three youths considered about 16 -17 years old and a male outside his former girlfriends making thretas with a gun. There were a couple more but I don't know the details of them as the first one took up most of my time yesterday for obvious reasons.
Those things to a greater or lesser degree are going on in Merseyside every single day. Yes it is a good job that criminals are bad shots.

I do not for one second think that the restrictive laws on gun ownership have anything to do with the rise in gun crime. But I do think the laws governing gun crime are up the shoot and impotent and I do know that things are actually a lot worse than the statistics suggest.

I do agree with you, because it is a fact, that the vast majority of gun crime does not involve humans as it is criminal on criminal and so the average person has no concept of what goes on and it does not effect their lives in real terms but it does create perceptons of fear and in some areas ordinary people live under seige because of what goes on around them, finding themselves potential victims for simply going about their daily business at the wrong place or time.. Yesterdays incident shows exactly how ordinary members of the public are more and more finding themselves unwittingly in the firing line. And it is getting worse.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby Penta » Mon Jan 10, 2011 4:06 pm

I do know that things are actually a lot worse than the statistics suggest

I'm very sorry to hear that. How could that be though? Are such incidents not being included in police statistics? They surely don't depend on what is reported in the media.

Is it also true that there's been a switch from guns to knives among the younger members, at least, of gangs? Or is that just the impression given by tabloid scare stories following Damilola Taylor and the other high-profile cases?

It would be interesting to know what the figures on killing people with knives are in the UK, and whether they make up the difference, proportionally, between our 39 killings with guns and the US's 10,000. If they brought it up to about 2000 a year in the UK, that would make our societies about as violent as each other (though for that you'd have to add killings with knives in the US too), but I have an idea our total murders are down to about 6 or 700 a year now (excluding exceptional events like Harold Shipman and the London bombings, neither of which had anything at all to do with gun laws).

My impressions, and without studying all the relevant evidence that's all they can be, are that the UK is a naturally much less violent society than the US, though possibly getting gradually worse; that gun crime (by which I mean here the actual use or threat of guns, not offences involving illegal possession) has been falling steadily; that use of of knives instead may well have gone up, but not by a huge amount; that car crime has plummeted (because of better security systems and the fact that their radios etc. are pretty much worthless on the street); that burglaries have fallen sharply (because the resale value of televisions, videos - now DVD players - and the other things junkies used to steal has fallen so steeply), but that street robbery of phones, laptops, etc., has gone up instead. And that even though the risks of robbery have gone up, it's still extremely rare for it to be at gunpoint. Plus, though we do have these lone nutters attacking people randomly, they are far rarer than in the US, and that may well be partly to do with the fact that such nutters, who must presumably exist in comparable numbers, are much less likely to have access to guns.

Which is why I can't think of any British person I know vaguely comparable to Woodsman would ever think it necessary to carry a gun for self-protection here in any normal circumstances. And why their suggestions that our gun control laws have done more damage than good - or that we are thereby slaves - seem to me ludicrous and delusional.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby Woodsman » Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:30 pm

Penta wrote:
Which is why I can't think of any British person I know vaguely comparable to Woodsman would ever think it necessary to carry a gun for self-protection here in any normal circumstances. And why their suggestions that our gun control laws have done more damage than good - or that we are thereby slaves - seem to me ludicrous and delusional.


The more you are controlled through restrictions in society, the less control you have over your own self. I wouldn't call it being enslaved by laws, but rather imprisoned - since the laws are much broader than labor and its economic consequences.

I really enjoy marksmanship and hunting and really like the fact if I want to load up some extra power ammo that sounds like dirty harry's gun going off - I can unload a magazine off my back porch at a target, a tin can or whatever - It's fun. All the "neighbors" I have do some shooting occasionally. It's fine.

If I lived in the U.K. and couldn't legally do that, or had to go through a bunch of hoops just to allow myself a teeny tiny bit of the hobby I enjoy here, it would be a decrease in the quality of my life.

I vaguely remember someone -maybe nowonmai? - wondering what he could do to get rid of varmints that were attacking some livestock out on a farm somewhere - without getting arrested. That is pathetic.

I'll put it another way:

If individual freedom means there are -0- restrictions on what an individual chooses for his/herself, and imprisonment means that the individuals choices have been fully suppressed by the state, is it so delusional to think that those whose individual choices are more restricted are living in conditions closer to being imprisoned than those whose individual choices are less restricted?

I don't think so.

Who owns us - ourselves or the state? Frankly, I am in the solid belief that we should be able to do whatever we want without restriction as individuals, so long as our actions do not restrict the individual choices of others.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby Penta » Mon Jan 10, 2011 8:38 pm

We can shoot pheasant and deer. We can shoot rabbits and squirrels. We can shoot a dog that is worrying our sheep. And we can join a shooting range for target shooting. So don't feel too sorry for us.

If I lived in the U.K. and couldn't legally do that, or had to go through a bunch of hoops just to allow myself a teeny tiny bit of the hobby I enjoy here, it would be a decrease in the quality of my life.

If I felt I needed to be armed to protect myself in my house or on the street, it would be a gigantic decrease in the quality of my life. I'd much rather live without fear of a myriad bad guys and nutters armed to the teeth and a hugely increased risk of being threatened or killed by one of them than worry about my government's refusal to let me have a fully automatic weapon or a gun disguised as a mobile phone. Swings and roundabouts.

Frankly, I am in the solid belief that we should be able to do whatever we want without restriction as individuals, so long as our actions do not restrict the individual choices of others.

Wouldn't the gangster's and the nutter's freedom to own and carry weapons almost unimpeded severely restrict my individual choices? To walk pretty much where I like without fear? To feel safe in my own home? To know with near-certainty that my children were never going to be involved in a Columbine-type incident, and need never expect to have to go through metal detectors to get into school or university? That any playground bullying they faced would involve only punch-ups and nothing worse? That they were safe?

Your (and other flaggers') descriptions of why they need to carry guns for self-defence make me think you must live your lives in fear of attack, even if not consciously all the time, at least sub-consciously. I don't. And I have no reason to. Who's more restricted? Who's more free? Whose quality of life is better?
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby Penta » Mon Jan 10, 2011 11:31 pm

I should add that I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle in the US (which is one of the many things I've learned here). The right to own guns is too deeply ingrained in your culture. It isn't in ours, no idealisation of the wild west, no cowboys and Indians, no second amendment, so we have a good chance to stop it taking root. What I do think is that the criticism of our gun control laws, from an American perspective, is misguided. Which is what I was trying to get at.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby Sri Lanky » Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:46 am

Was it not the British who invented gunboat diplomacy? The British might not be socialized into enjoying gunplay at home but they sure love to point guns at other peoples' heads....but only at the ones they can intimidate.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby ktrout » Tue Jan 11, 2011 5:27 am

If there's a difference in the level of violence between the UK and the US I think it has to be that the social dynamics are very different. Apples and Oranges, actually. Blacks still aren't quite equal here and we have a large politically unstable continent to the south. England ... well you guys are on an island of mostly white people in a civilisation that's been stable for hundreds of years. Even Australia doesn't have the same problems we have. Canada didn't have slavery and the population is far lower.
Basically we have a much more mixed, youthful, growing, and dynamic population.
The "Wild West" and John Wayne references are simply Anti-American propaganda. In the frontier outlaws fought amongst themselves for the most part. Anyone who stayed out of that part of town and didn't associate with that type was safe. Things haven't changed much in that regard. You've been relegated to the shadow of the colonials and it's sour grapes that you're irrelevant.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby Penta » Tue Jan 11, 2011 10:06 am

Sri: I don't know if we invented it, but we certainly used it a lot.

ktrout wrote:If there's a difference in the level of violence between the UK and the US I think it has to be that the social dynamics are very different. Apples and Oranges, actually.

Yes, I agree it's apples and oranges. But I don't think you can honestly leave it at "if" there's a difference. Since the US has an annual rate of murder by guns 44 times ours, that is pretty stark. And you could look at these official figures by state:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog ... e-us-state
I'm well aware that Arizona isn't typical, but with a tenth of the population of the UK it has nearly 40 times as many murders with firearms, 4,053 aggravated assaults involving firearms, and 3,671 robberies involving firearms. Whatever the social differences, the freedom to carry a concealed weapon without a permit doesn't seem to be making it a safe place to live.

The "Wild West" and John Wayne references are simply Anti-American propaganda.

Are they? I mentioned it simply as part of a historical explanation for the gun culture. Part of the apples and oranges distinction, if you like.
In the frontier outlaws fought amongst themselves for the most part. Anyone who stayed out of that part of town and didn't associate with that type was safe. Things haven't changed much in that regard.
The same as here then.

You've been relegated to the shadow of the colonials and it's sour grapes that you're irrelevant.
I couldn't count the number of times somebody has levelled that accusation at me. Is it a standard riposte from some playbook?

I guess some gun-loving Americans like to criticise our controls because they fear it as an example that some people want to apply in the US. But if the "social dynamics" are so different, and I agree they are, then the example is irrelevant. So why not let us get on with it, and hope that the measures are successful here, and find your own, more appropriate methods to tackle the much more serious problem there? But first you surely have to acknowledge that it is a serious problem and that ever laxer regulation (which is what so many of you seem to advocate and has been happening in practice, with your new freedom to carry in national parks, the ban on assault weapons being allowed to lapse, Washington DC's and Chicago's controls on handguns being removed) is unlikely to make things better. And then you can start trying to find the underlying factors that make the difference between the US and other countries with little regulation but very low levels of gun crime, such as Switzerland, Norway and Japan.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby ktrout » Tue Jan 11, 2011 11:28 am

Penta wrote:
You've been relegated to the shadow of the colonials and it's sour grapes that you're irrelevant.
I couldn't count the number of times somebody has levelled that accusation at me. Is it a standard riposte from some playbook?

Maybe it's just that fricking obvious.
Those low violence countries with lax firearms laws are also pretty homogeneous. I guess we're just a bit like South Africa, which also has a bit of a problem with violence from its oppressed majority. I kind of wonder if the Confederacy had won its independence if we might have turned into a larger version of Haiti and the DR.
DC, Louisiana, and Alabama are off the charts, but you might like South Dakota, Vermont, or Iowa. I grew up in rural northern Michigan which was a pretty strong bastion of conservatism and gun ownership. You would have been hard pressed to find examples of gun crimes there. DC has the strictest gun control in the country, but is still the murder capital. I still think singling out gun crimes as that article does is propagandistic.
It's kind of a fantasy that authoritarian population control measures such as the war on drugs and gun control will fix structural social problems. As the war in Mexico shows, this meddling just makes the problem worse.
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Re: Funny how much firepower some think they need here at ho

Postby ktrout » Tue Jan 11, 2011 11:50 am

Penta wrote:Which is why I can't think of any British person I know vaguely comparable to Woodsman would ever think it necessary to carry a gun for self-protection here in any normal circumstances. And why their suggestions that our gun control laws have done more damage than good - or that we are thereby slaves - seem to me ludicrous and delusional.

Well, maybe those laws just haven't done a damned bit of good, which I think is just as bad. Taking away freedoms without any real net benefit while costing taxpayer dollars in enforcement, lost opportunities (for those who break impotent laws), and the cost of the lost freedom itself doesn't make any sense to me.
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