Gun Control

R

RimieAgrawal

New member
Only if you think that the sole reason that people buy guns is because they want the thrill of shooting. Home defense, which is one of the big reasons for handguns, is not likely to be helped by that idea.
 
N

NatazhaT

New member
I am not sure that you really need to test various forms of guns if the person is buying a certain type of gun. (I.e. guy buying a revovler for home defense doesn't really need to handle a shotgun, 9 mm, etc.) You also have to wonder what their shooting proficiency test would be. But overall, I think most Americans would agree to something along those lines. The NRA, if I understand it correctly, have pushed for something close to that several times along with toughening the penalities when committing a gun crime.
 
G

GerogeH

New member
Once again, show me people are safer when you take away law abiding citizens' guns. Nobody has yet to come even close to doing so.
 
B

Beno

New member
How about show us the evidence from your ban first? Oh wait, your official statistics say that your violence against persons is up 6 times what it was in 1990. Total violent crime is up 5 times. Murders are up. Gun crimes are up.

Yes, according to statistics, the number of gun deaths are down from their high, but the biggest decrease in gun deaths came before the ban, not after. Yes, there is a decrease in the percentage of real guns used in reported gun crimes, but the actual number of real guns used has almost doubled.

Statistics on violent crime are down here without the ban. Yours are up with the ban. What do you want to show us?
 
D

DudemDuuuude

New member
Try Ireland. I dont think there has been a single school shooting in this country. Firearms have been under control for longer than I have been alive, we have stricter controls than the UK, and handguns have always been illegal.
 
C

CodyBurr

New member
After having a look around and following this thread the thing that strikes me is the way that statistics are put together is confusing , the wikipedia page on uk gun crime highlights this imo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom
Tellingly they list injury in relation to gun crime to include being struck by the weapon or even threatened!
I don't think anybody is arguing that gun crime doesn't exist at all over here as i think somone has already mentioned that genie is well and truly out of the bottle , but mass shootings do seem to be thing of the past (i hope) and shootings of police officers don't seem too common my understanding is that the majority of gun crime seems to be people being threatened with guns (many of which seem to be replicas or decommisioned) , violent crime isn't going away , to think so would be stupid , so expecting violent crime to drop because guns are banned is naive , people will obviously just pick up a knife or even a hammer if they want to really hurt or kill somone , what i think does decrease is the ability to kill lots of people in a short space of time.

Now one question i've got to ask the americans posting , is armed home invasion such a big problem over there? It's been cited as a reason to own a gun many times in this thread , but to my knowledge this is still pretty rare in the uk.
 
B

barclay431

New member
For those of you who are proponents of gun control please read the attached PDF document. It makes my case for me.

I would also like to point out the prohibition of any kind always fails so long as the market for the prohibited item still exists. Prohibition simply creates a black market for the prohibited goods and increases the price for those who wish to obtain the goods. I would argue that prohibition has never in the history of man worked as intended and that it always had the negative effect of creating a black market for the banned goods.

If you make guns illegal, people will still want and be willing to pay for that item. Thus the market reacts to a demand by the consumers and certain people like myself, in the case of guns, would be willing to break the law and supply the citizens of the U.S. with those guns. Please, don't make me into a criminal.

I would also like to point out that violence and not guns is the real problem in the U.S. If you like to read history, you will find that Americans have always been violent and the the world has always seen us as such. There has never been a point in our history when we weren't killing each other or waging war. Go to your local library and read all about how the Europeans thought we were a violent bunch of colonials long before the American revolution.

The problem of our naturally violent culture will still exist regardless of any gun prohibition. The only thing a prohibition will serve to do is disarm the public and place guns into the hand of criminals. The mayor of Nagasaki was gunned down in a country that has very strict gun control laws and is bordered by the sea on all sides. If the Japanese have a black market for guns what hope have we here in the U.S.
 
X

xxevillbeautyxx

New member
With a talent for distorting statistics like that you should be in politics. It is worthy of note that many of the increases in firearms crime in past years can be put down to changes in the ways that crimes were recorded by the police and that in 2004/5 52% of firearms offences were committed using an air powered weapon. Also worthy of note is that firearms (including air powered weapons) are only used in 0.4% of all crimes, excluding air powered weapons this falls to 0.2% and of all firearms crimes only 1 in 40 resulted in a serious or fatal injury.

I would be astounded if the US' firearms crime statistics are more favourable than that.
 
U

upssius

New member
The statistics bear it out. Very few people are ever hurt by firearms and those that are tend to be gang related shootings rather than 'run of the mill' robberies.
 
H

honeohhone

New member
Please show me where I distorted any statistics. I have posted links to your gov't website and used it's numbers. When tkdmitch, posted numbers, I showed where there were flaws. How is that a case of distorting numbers?

There is no doubt that the rule changes have made things different in your reports. However, your official reports showed increases before the changes took effect. And how does the rule changes on reports affect the number of dead in the report? It doesn't.

Once again, if you look at gun control as only being concerned with gun crimes and not at reducing overall violent crime, maybe you can make a case for it. I am more concerned total violent crime. The type that your government says is higher than it was before the ban.

Do you have stats for your assertions here? I posted mine in the link to the 100 years of official stats from the homeoffice.
 
M

Melissae

Member
We are talking about gun crime, of course violent crime is a problem, but it is decreasing, it is interesting to note that in a lot of violent crimes, the victim suffers no injury (49% in 2005/2006).

Firearms stats came from here.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/hosb0206.pdf
another interesting nugget of information is that firearms were only used in 9% of all homicides in the UK 04/05. Again I'd be surprised if the US can match that.
 
Top