Protection Or Peril?

[Liffrea]

Gun Possession Of Questionable Value In An Assault, Study Finds

In a first-of its-kind study, epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that, on average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. The study estimated that people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090930121512.htm

[The Lawspeaker]

Propaganda. Meant to disarm the people by coercion rather then outright force.

[Ulf]

I don't even... sigh

That article made me rage.

n1yfRbU6HmU

[Troll's Puzzle]

yeah that's it guys! down with this study! it must be propaganda! *sticks fingers in ears and starts whistling* ;)

I'd imagine it's got some truth in. I can't imagine having a gun is much use to protect yourself if you don't already have the draw on someone. Unless you're a highly trained professional killer;
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it also helps to be slender and nimble: (unlike most americans :icon_lol:)
cPMEVzv0AO4

I guess the 4.5x higher chance of being shot was due to the chubby yankee fingers fumbling in their belt trying to emulate the guy above while someone had a gun on them :icon_lol: for the average civilians I don't understand how having a gun could help you if someone has their out already - IE, someone who is trying to rob or rape (or kill, but if someone really wanted to kill you you wouldn't have any chance)

Guns aren't for sale here and I feel safe :) I'm not going to be shot and noone in nearby schools is going to be shot (the latest psychological export from america :)). America has highest deaths per head of any 'western' country from firearms, ie. europe (where most countries have stronger controls). case closed?

The line about '...then only criminals will have guns' is true but so what? I don't associate with criminals and armed robbers are not common here. It is not common for criminals to kill random people anyway, mostly they kill each other. The above 'crazy man shoot out clip' -> doesn't happen either since crazies can't get guns easily as in america. It could happen but never as frequent as it happens in america. and apparently even in america guns didn't stop this guy shooting up a whole resteraunt (did noone there have one?)

I especially don't buy the paranoid US survivalist 'govt. disarms the people to protect itself' (like the woman said 'protect us from you guys' wtf?) nonsense either, what bunch of survivalists are going to take on the govt. and win with their pop-guns? none of them. Just ask the guys at waco. oh wait, they died. :(

[Skandi]

I think it is probably true too, if I'm a criminal with a gun I am unlikely to shoot you if you can't shoot back, but if I think you can, then I will shoot you just incase.

[Liffrea]

A gun would be next to useless for me, never held or fired one, I might throw it at you but that’s about it......

[Ulf]

No one's going to be shot in Europe, you'll just get stabbed. When us fat Americans get stabbed we just shrug it off and hit the next McD's, it's our body armor. :thumb001:

Yes, the 2nd Amendment is for defending ourselves from our government.

I'm not going to try to convince you of anything, as most hoplophobes can't be convinced of the need for firearms. Disarm yourself and submit to your gov't and criminals if you wish.

[Frigga]

Well, I'd rather have a gun (oh wait, I already do! :lightbul: ) then be unarmed. There are differing gun laws that vary state by state, so the statistic of gun crime and gun deaths need to be broken down by state, and not the country as a whole. You can legally conceal carry in many states without a permit, and those are the states with the lowest gun crime. Washington DC has a total ban on firearms, and they have one of the highest crime rates in the country. I would rather have peace of mind with being able to legally own and carry a gun then to be prevented from carrying a tool which could save my life, and the lives of those that I love.

Criminals do not obey laws, so why should you feel so much safer with firearms being banned? They're on the black market anyway, and it just means that the law abiding civilians are unable to fight back on equal terms. Butcher knives and pitchforks against a shotgun? I think that the shotgun would win. Just because you feel safe does not mean that you are. There have been murders in sleepy little towns all over the world. Just because there is not a prevalance of armed murders and robberies in your area should not mean that you should wholly depend on law enforcement to come to your aid. They may not get there in time. There have been many instances where the bad guy got his because there was an armed citizen. I am glad that we can legally own firearms in America. I feel badly for you guys in countries that cannot, as that is a disadvantage for you.

Also, the stereotype of obese Americans really doesn't have any bearing on defending yourself, so why bring that up? Why mock Americans for wanting the right to defend ourselves with saying that we're all just a bunch of lard asses? Please stick to the subject matter.

[Liffrea]

There’s plenty of chances of being shot in England, where I live there have been (let me think) two drive by shootings in the area, one lad got gunned down on a street a few hundred yards from where I live, and a whole house got shot up by some gang or other all in about the last three years. In nearby Nottingham shootings happen nearly every week. I could acquire an uzi, several types of shotgun and a few handguns within a few hours (both legally and otherwise). Guns are prelevent in the UK, we just don’t have a tradition of legal ownership and most folks are like me, ignorant of firearms.

Of course there are laws on gun ownership but, strangely enough, criminals don’t give a shit about laws…..

[Troll's Puzzle]

No one's going to be shot in Europe, you'll just get stabbed. When us fat Americans get stabbed we just shrug it off and hit the next McD's, it's our body armor. :thumb001:

Yes, the 2nd Amendment is for defending ourselves from our government.

I'm not going to try to convince you of anything, as most hoplophobes can't be convinced of the need for firearms. Disarm yourself and submit to your gov't and criminals if you wish.

LOL. the same goes for you in reverse ('you're already convinced of your need for firearms'). In fact it goes for almost all debates (especially religious ones, ask lutifiere or w/e he's called ;)). That's 'cognitive dissonance'. The difference is, the numbers are on my side. ;)

some Homicides rates via firearms:

Germany 0.21
Romania 0.12
Hungary 0.47
Spain 0.19
UK 0.13
Poland 0.27
Austria 0.53
Czech Rep 0.92 (more liberal guns than most of europe)
USA: 6.24 :(

re. Knives: yes, i'd much rather our criminals have knives instead of guns. I do agree with you :thumb001:

[The Lawspeaker]

It is being said that:

In a state that outlaws guns- only the outlaws have guns.

Those in favor of gun control take notice !

[Troll's Puzzle]

It is being said that:

In a state that outlaws guns- only the outlaws have guns.

Those in favor of gun control take notice !

Ya and...? it is being said that:

In a state that outlaws murder- only the outlaws murder!

the horrible state!
:rolleyes2:


There’s plenty of chances of being shot in England, where I live there have been (let me think) two drive by shootings in the area, one lad got gunned down on a street a few hundred yards from where I live, and a whole house got shot up by some gang or other all in about the last three years. In nearby Nottingham shootings happen nearly every week. I could acquire an uzi, several types of shotgun and a few handguns within a few hours (both legally and otherwise). Guns are prelevent in the UK, we just don’t have a tradition of legal ownership and most folks are like me, ignorant of firearms.

Of course there are laws on gun ownership but, strangely enough, criminals don’t give a shit about laws…..

I'm assuming this is 'gang on gang' problems mostly with niggers.
I hear nottingham has many niggers for instance. and this is where most gun crime in UK happens (outside of london or other yardie spots).
Also I don't belive you that 'guns are prevelent in the UK' or 'plenty of chance of being shot'. You are exaggerating. See stats in prior post.

I don't care about such people killing each other (already I said - criminals mostly killl each other, not get in law troulb eby killing random innocents. This is partly why 'only outlaws will have guns is a weak statement), only about what is more likely to kill innocent peoples? with guns, that's more likely, especially with psychologial precident. For example the schools shooting and 'monkey see monkey do' shootings are now established 'fashion' for random psychos. In places with gun control, those psychos can't get guns easily (no guns for sale, and they have no friends who could get them) and have to use knives if they want to go mad. So, less people die.

[Frigga]

I'm assuming this is 'gang on gang' problems mostly with niggers.
I hear nottingham has many niggers for instance. and this is where most gun crime in UK happens (outside of london or other yardie spots).
Also I don't belive you that 'guns are prevelent in the UK' or 'plenty of chance of being shot'. You are exaggerating. See stats in prior post.

I don't care about such people killing each other (already I said - criminals mostly killl each other, not get in law troulb eby killing random innocents. This is partly why 'only outlaws will have guns is a weak statement), only about what is more likely to kill innocent peoples? with guns, that's more likely, especially with psychologial precident. For example the schools shooting and 'monkey see monkey do' shootings are now established 'fashion' for random psychos. In places with gun control, those psychos can't get guns easily (no guns for sale, and they have no friends who could get them) and have to use knives if they want to go mad. So, less people die.

I think that that is a blanket statement full of wishful thinking. There are white criminals in this world, not just minorities. Plus, with places with gun control, the law abiding citizens are not able to get guns as easily, but the criminal element will always have access to guns. Because they're criminals already, they're not going to care about breaking another law to get a firearm. I don't know about you, but I live in the real world, and I would rather have something in my hands to protect me then a fantasy of "Well, the criminals aren't supposed to have guns, so that means I'm protected, and law enforcement is always around to do it's job."

[Troll's Puzzle]

I think that that is a blanket statement full of wishful thinking. There are white criminals in this world, not just minorities. Plus, with places with gun control, the law abiding citizens are not able to get guns as easily, but the criminal element will always have access to guns. Because they're criminals already, they're not going to care about breaking another law to get a firearm. I don't know about you, but I live in the real world, and I would rather have something in my hands to protect me then a fantasy of "Well, the criminals aren't supposed to have guns, so that means I'm protected, and law enforcement is always around to do it's job."

obiously there are white criminals.

I don't agree. Guns are controlled here and it is not common for criminals to have guns. There is some american myth that 'if guns are outlawed then the outlaws will have guns' = all crimnals are armed to the teeth and preying on defencless civilians who naively put trust in the law :rolleyes2:

Because guns are controlled they dont' proliferate much at all amongst common criminals (who are a threat to the public) like they are in america. Only 'harcore' gangsters (both chaotic negro drugs gangs or 'organised' white criminals) are common to have guns, and mostly they only kill another gangster in drug fights or 'hits'. This isn't a problem for law abiding citizens.
Even where the public can have guns, it's not easy to stop someone who has planned to rob/rape you, probably has support, and has his weapon drawn, and suspects you might have a gun too so is 'on edge'. This is what my first post was alluding to, and what the study in the original post seems to back up.

[Ulf]

some Homicides rates via firearms:

Germany 0.21
Romania 0.12
Hungary 0.47
Spain 0.19
UK 0.13
Poland 0.27
Austria 0.53
Czech Rep 0.92 (more liberal guns than most of europe)
USA: 6.24 :(

What is this in relation to? Per 100 per 1000? Source?

Murders with firearms (per capita) (most recent) by country


# 1 South Africa: 0.719782 per 1,000 people
# 2 Colombia: 0.509801 per 1,000 people
# 3 Thailand: 0.312093 per 1,000 people
# 4 Zimbabwe: 0.0491736 per 1,000 people
# 5 Mexico: 0.0337938 per 1,000 people
# 6 Belarus: 0.0321359 per 1,000 people
# 7 Costa Rica: 0.0313745 per 1,000 people
# 8 United States: 0.0279271 per 1,000 people
# 9 Uruguay: 0.0245902 per 1,000 people
# 10 Lithuania: 0.0230748 per 1,000 people
# 11 Slovakia: 0.021543 per 1,000 people
# 12 Czech Republic: 0.0207988 per 1,000 people
# 13 Estonia: 0.0157539 per 1,000 people
# 14 Latvia: 0.0131004 per 1,000 people
# 15 Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of: 0.0127139 per 1,000 people
# 16 Bulgaria: 0.00845638 per 1,000 people
# 17 Portugal: 0.00795003 per 1,000 people
# 18 Slovenia: 0.00596718 per 1,000 people
# 19 Switzerland: 0.00534117 per 1,000 people
# 20 Canada: 0.00502972 per 1,000 people
# 21 Germany: 0.00465844 per 1,000 people
# 22 Moldova: 0.00448934 per 1,000 people
# 23 Hungary: 0.00439692 per 1,000 people
# 24 Poland: 0.0043052 per 1,000 people
# 25 Ukraine: 0.00368109 per 1,000 people
# 26 Ireland: 0.00298805 per 1,000 people
# 27 Australia: 0.00293678 per 1,000 people
# 28 Denmark: 0.00257732 per 1,000 people
# 29 Spain: 0.0024045 per 1,000 people
# 30 Azerbaijan: 0.00227503 per 1,000 people
# 31 New Zealand: 0.00173482 per 1,000 people
# 32 United Kingdom: 0.00102579 per 1,000 people


http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_wit_fir_percap-crime-murders-firearms-per-capita

[Frigga]

obiously there are white criminals.

I don't agree. Guns are controlled here and it is not common for criminals to have guns. There is some american myth that 'if guns are outlawed then the outlaws will have guns' = all crimnals are armed to the teeth and preying on defencless civilians who naively put trust in the law :rolleyes2:

Because guns are controlled they dont' proliferate much at all amongst common criminals (who are a threat to the public) like they are in america. Only 'harcore' gangsters (both chaotic negro drugs gangs or 'organised' white criminals) are common to have guns, and mostly they only kill another gangster in drug fights or 'hits'. This isn't a problem for law abiding citizens.
Even where the public can have guns, it's not easy to stop someone who has planned to rob/rape you, probably has support, and has his weapon drawn, and suspects you might have a gun too so is 'on edge'. This is what my first post was alluding to, and what the study in the original post seems to back up.


Well, I still feel that your sentiments are misguided in this regards. We obviously have some culture clashing going on here. You have a preconcieved notion of how things are here in America, but what you have described I have never experienced. Granted, I have never been to Europe and have not experienced crime over there. So I think that we are not going to agree on this. I still feel that I am correct in my observations about criminals still getting ahold of weapons even if they are illegal.

Plus, in your post, you say that if someone is going to do something to you, there's nothing to be done, because they have the intent, and the will, and the impression that I got was all hope is lost at that point, so don't even bother trying. I don't know about you, but I would like to think that I would be able to at least put up a fight, even if it meant that I would still be beaten. If I'm in an area that allows concealed carry, I would like to be able to draw a gun and shoot the bastard. Since I don't, I have to resort to pepper spray and a knife, which I always carry.

Also, criminals do not always keep gun violence to themselves. That's a pipedream that they do. Many innocent lives are taken by gang violence every year, and it's not just by guns. I still hold to my stance that gun control is suicide for a country and it's citizens. You are not going to agree with me, so we may as well call it a draw.

[Troll's Puzzle]

What is this in relation to? Per 100 per 1000?

per 100,000


Source?


here (http://www.allcountries.org/gun_deaths_by_country.html)

although on the stats you put up, USA (which is above all 'western' countries) still has almost 25x more per head than the UK, which is at the bottom of your list (and has strong controls). So much for Liffrea's 'plenty of chance of being shot' (below :wink)

[Liffrea]

Originally Posted by Troll's Puzzle
Also I don't belive you that 'guns are prevelent in the UK' or 'plenty of chance of being shot'.

Then don’t believe me.;)

[Ulf]

Not my words, but they explain my position pretty well.

"The single most important thing for you to understand is that while the vast majority of guns in the hands of Americans are never used to kill or hurt another human being, they are indeed designed for that purpose. And though we target shoot or hunt, we will ultimately acknowledge that. Well, most of us. I don't really want to pretend to speak for everyone but there are other gun owners here who will probably agree with what I am saying:

For gun owners, the context is important.

One gun is found in a desk drawer by a child, who kills his little brother with it in a deplorable gun accident.

One gun is used to shoot a fascist in Spain, in defense of a village.

One gun is used by a pregnant woman to kill a carjacker.

One gun is used to kill a rival drug dealer on the street.

One gun is used by a radical leftist political group who shoots an armored car guard.

One gun is used to shoot that same leftist political group down when they take hostages and begin firing at police.

One gun is used by a hiker who is attacked by a bear in Alaska.

One gun is negligently discharged and kills another hunter.

One gun is used to kill a home invader, who is in turn armed himself, with an intent to rape one of the residents.

For those who oppose guns, or hate guns, all guns are one thing: killing.

To gun owners, context is everything - that is to say, defense of innocent human life from one who tries to violate another's right to life (and/or liberty).

As a gun owner, I consider the blanket rejection of guns to be simplistic and, without being overly strident, infantile. It would be nice to live in a world without violence. I do not believe that disarming people who are responsible, who would never initiate a criminal or violent act against another person, will do anything to serve this goal. It is odd to me that so many of those who most despise the State - the US government, would turn around and at the same time insist that only this same government be allowed to own arms, to the exlusion of responsible citizens. To me that indicates a contempt for one's fellow man and a bizarre, childlike faith in the government. What are agents of the government? Men and women - just like civilians.

We who you will find online arguing in favor of the Right are not gang members. We are not criminals. We are not, for the most part anyway, Travis Bickle wannabes, lying in wait, hoping we have a chance to use our weapons on someone.

We believe that guns equalize good people and bad people. We believe they are a disincentive to bully and victimze other people. We believe their presence in prudent and judicious hands are a deterrent.

Most of us believe in caustic, malevolent evil - which almost always comes armed. Most of us believe in the right to defend the life one oneself and other innocent people against that evil.

If you want to really understand American gun owners, you will first have to understand that "gun culture" is not one thing - the inner city streets and the Second Amendment crowd almost never meet - they are two completely separate worlds. That is something those who hate guns and gun owners refuse to see, more than anything else.

For this reason and the reasons stated above, we do not view guns or gun ownership as a single thing: we abhor the decontextualization of gun ownership and resent the way we are stereotyped or lumped in with psychopaths and criminals, where the use of a firearm in self defense is grouped in the mind of some anti-gun people as the same thing as cold blooded murder.

We see a gun as a neutral, inanimate object, until it is picked up by a sentient human being.

We support the right to keep and bear arms because we believe the good guys ought to be armed, if not in numbers and firepower superior to, then at least at parity with criminals, and, god forbid, a tyrannical government run amok.

As those who believe we ought not to be armed should basically surrender to any armed criminal believe we live in a fantasy world when we assert that fighting back is not only our right, but is the prudent thing to do, we look with equal disbelief at those who think we should take the word of armed criminals that if we just cooperate, everything will be just fine.

We believe this because we believe in the right to one's own life, and the means to defend that life. That is really all it comes down to. We do not believe that it is privilege granted by the State. We do not believe we have any obligation to seek consent from others to own weapons. We believe it is a right all men and women have, and would have, whether the US Constitution enumerated it in the Second Amendment or not."

[Taciturn]

A post from the Phora, explaining why this study is BS:


What an absolutely idiotic study. The following explains why:


Criminologist Gary Kleck of Florida State University said the Penn results can be explained by the fact that people who are at risk of being shot are also more likely to buy or carry guns. Such people might have dangerous jobs or belong to a street gang or be involved in the illicit drug trade, for example.

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=55479

[SwordoftheVistula]

Murders are rare wherever you go.

What banning guns, and even knives now, has done to the UK is to make daytime burglaries common: burglars will come in even when people are home! That rarely happens in the US, most burglars will only enter houses they think are empty, because they are afraid of getting shot. Also, just personal experience there, people are a lot mouthier, more aggressive drunks etc, because such shitbags don't get shot/stabbed there. At the hostel I stayed at, some arab came and kicked in the door, staggered around a bit, then came back and kicked the door again shattering the glass. Never see that in the US, because random douchebag hoodlums can't run around doing that shit without repercussions. Most people who get shot here are criminals of some sort, usually criminals/gangs shooting eachother, and sometimes by ordinary citizens.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/britain-polls-highest-in-eu-survey-of-burglary-rates-435218.html

The Home Office faced embarrassment yesterday after a survey concluded that Britain has the highest rates of burglary and assault in the EU.

The European Crime and Safety Survey found that crime levels had fallen since 1995, but not as fast as in the rest of the EU. It labelled Britain a "high-crime" nation, with only the citizens of Ireland facing a higher risk of falling victim to crime. The Home Office minister Tony McNulty dismissed the findings as out of date. He also raised doubts over the " quality" of the results and the comparisons with other countries.

But Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "So much for Tony Blair's tough-talking 10-year record on crime. These days it is on crime that we are the 'sick man of Europe'."


http://reason.com/archives/2002/11/01/gun-controls-twisted-outcome

On a June evening two years ago, Dan Rather made many stiff British upper lips quiver by reporting that England had a crime problem and that, apart from murder, "theirs is worse than ours." The response was swift and sharp. "Have a Nice Daydream," The Mirror, a London daily, shot back, reporting: "Britain reacted with fury and disbelief last night to claims by American newsmen that crime and violence are worse here than in the US." But sandwiched between the article's battery of official denials -- "totally misleading," "a huge over-simplification," "astounding and outrageous" -- and a compilation of lurid crimes from "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic where every other car is carrying a gun," The Mirror conceded that the CBS anchorman was correct. Except for murder and rape, it admitted, " ."

In the two years since Dan Rather was so roundly rebuked, violence in England has gotten markedly worse. Over the course of a few days in the summer of 2001, gun-toting men burst into an English court and freed two defendants; a shooting outside a London nightclub left five women and three men wounded; and two men were machine-gunned to death in a residential neighborhood of north London. And on New Year's Day this year a 19-year-old girl walking on a main street in east London was shot in the head by a thief who wanted her mobile phone. London police are now looking to New York City police for advice.

None of this was supposed to happen in the country whose stringent gun laws and 1997 ban on handguns have been hailed as the "gold standard" of gun control. For the better part of a century, British governments have pursued a strategy for domestic safety that a 1992 Economist article characterized as requiring "a restraint on personal liberty that seems, in most civilised countries, essential to the happiness of others," a policy the magazine found at odds with "America's Vigilante Values." The safety of English people has been staked on the thesis that fewer private guns means less crime. The government believes that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger, and that disarming them lessens the chance that criminals will get or use weapons.

The results -- the toughest firearm restrictions of any democracy -- are credited by the world's gun control advocates with producing a low rate of violent crime. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell reflected this conventional wisdom when, in a 1988 speech to the American Bar Association, he attributed England's low rates of violent crime to the fact that "private ownership of guns is strictly controlled."

In reality, the English approach has not re-duced violent crime. Instead it has left law-abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals who are confident that their victims have neither the means nor the legal right to resist them. Imitating this model would be a public safety disaster for the United States.

The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted. A government study for the years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world. A hundred years and many gun laws later, the BBC reported that England's firearms restrictions "seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld." Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. Worse, they are increasingly ready to use them.

Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London's Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.

Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England's inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England's rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America's, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world's crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.

This sea change in English crime followed a sea change in government policies. Gun regulations have been part of a more general disarmament based on the proposition that people don't need to protect themselves because society will protect them. It also will protect their neighbors: Police advise those who witness a crime to "walk on by" and let the professionals handle it.

This is a reversal of centuries of common law that not only permitted but expected individuals to defend themselves, their families, and their neighbors when other help was not available. It was a legal tradition passed on to Americans. Personal security was ranked first among an individual's rights by William Blackstone, the great 18th-century exponent of the common law. It was a right, he argued, that no government could take away, since no government could protect the individual in his moment of need. A century later Blackstone's illustrious successor, A.V. Dicey, cautioned, "discourage self-help and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians."

But modern English governments have put public order ahead of the individual's right to personal safety. First the government clamped down on private possession of guns; then it forbade people to carry any article that might be used for self-defense; finally, the vigor of that self-defense was to be judged by what, in hindsight, seemed "reasonable in the circumstances."

The 1920 Firearms Act was the first serious British restriction on guns. Although crime was low in England in 1920, the government feared massive labor disruption and a Bolshevik revolution. In the circumstances, permitting the people to remain armed must have seemed an unnecessary risk. And so the new policy of disarming the public began. The Firearms Act required a would-be gun owner to obtain a certificate from the local chief of police, who was charged with determining whether the applicant had a good reason for possessing a weapon and was fit to do so. All very sensible. Parliament was assured that the intention was to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and other dangerous persons. Yet from the start the law's enforcement was far more restrictive, and Home Office instructions to police -- classified until 1989 -- periodically narrowed the criteria.

At first police were instructed that it would be a good reason to have a revolver if a person "lives in a solitary house, where protection against thieves and burglars is essential, or has been exposed to definite threats to life on account of his performance of some public duty." By 1937 police were to discourage applications to possess firearms for house or personal protection. In 1964 they were told "it should hardly ever be necessary to anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person" and that "this principle should hold good even in the case of banks and firms who desire to protect valuables or large quantities of money."

In 1969 police were informed "it should never be necessary for anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person." These changes were made without public knowledge or debate. Their enforcement has consumed hundreds of thousands of police hours. Finally, in 1997 handguns were banned. Proposed exemptions for handicapped shooters and the British Olympic team were rejected.

Even more sweeping was the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act, which made it illegal to carry in a public place any article "made, adapted, or intended" for an offensive purpose "without lawful authority or excuse." Carrying something to protect yourself was branded antisocial. Any item carried for possible defense automatically became an offensive weapon. Police were given extensive power to stop and search everyone. Individuals found with offensive items were guilty until proven innocent.

During the debate over the Prevention of Crime Act in the House of Commons, a member from Northern Ireland told his colleagues of a woman employed by Parliament who had to cross a lonely heath on her route home and had armed herself with a knitting needle. A month earlier, she had driven off a youth who tried to snatch her handbag by jabbing him "on a tender part of his body." Was it to be an offense to carry a knitting needle? The attorney general assured the M.P. that the woman might be found to have a reasonable excuse but added that the public should be discouraged "from going about with offensive weapons in their pockets; it is the duty of society to protect them."

Another M.P. pointed out that while "society ought to undertake the defense of its members, nevertheless one has to remember that there are many places where society cannot get, or cannot get there in time. On those occasions a man has to defend himself and those whom he is escorting. It is not very much consolation that society will come forward a great deal later, pick up the bits, and punish the violent offender."

In the House of Lords, Lord Saltoun argued: "The object of a weapon was to assist weakness to cope with strength and it is this ability that the bill was framed to destroy. I do not think any government has the right, though they may very well have the power, to deprive people for whom they are responsible of the right to defend themselves." But he added: "Unless there is not only a right but also a fundamental willingness amongst the people to defend themselves, no police force, however large, can do it."

That willingness was further undermined by a broad revision of criminal law in 1967 that altered the legal standard for self-defense. Now everything turns on what seems to be "reasonable" force against an assailant, considered after the fact. As Glanville Williams notes in his Textbook of Criminal Law, that requirement is "now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it [self-defense] still forms part of the law."

The original common law standard was similar to what still prevails in the U.S. Americans are free to carry articles for their protection, and in 33 states law-abiding citizens may carry concealed guns. Americans may defend themselves with deadly force if they believe that an attacker is about to kill or seriously injure them, or to prevent a violent crime. Our courts are mindful that, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, "detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an upraised knife."

But English courts have interpreted the 1953 act strictly and zealously. Among articles found illegally carried with offensive intentions are a sandbag, a pickaxe handle, a stone, and a drum of pepper. "Any article is capable of being an offensive weapon," concede the authors of Smith and Hogan Criminal Law, a popular legal text, although they add that if the article is unlikely to cause an injury the onus of proving intent to do so would be "very heavy."

The 1967 act has not been helpful to those obliged to defend themselves either. Granville Williams points out: "For some reason that is not clear, the courts occasionally seem to regard the scandal of the killing of a robber as of greater moment than the safety of the robber's victim in respect of his person and property."

A sampling of cases illustrates the impact of these measures:

� In 1973 a young man running on a road at night was stopped by the police and found to be carrying a length of steel, a cycle chain, and a metal clock weight. He explained that a gang of youths had been after him. At his hearing it was found he had been threatened and had previously notified the police. The justices agreed he had a valid reason to carry the weapons. Indeed, 16 days later he was attacked and beaten so badly he was hospitalized. But the prosecutor appealed the ruling, and the appellate judges insisted that carrying a weapon must be related to an imminent and immediate threat. They sent the case back to the lower court with directions to convict.

� In 1987 two men assaulted Eric Butler, a 56-year-old British Petroleum executive, in a London subway car, trying to strangle him and smashing his head against the door. No one came to his aid. He later testified, "My air supply was being cut off, my eyes became blurred, and I feared for my life." In desperation he unsheathed an ornamental sword blade in his walking stick and slashed at one of his attackers, stabbing the man in the stomach. The assailants were charged with wounding. Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.

� In 1994 an English homeowner, armed with a toy gun, managed to detain two burglars who had broken into his house while he called the police. When the officers arrived, they arrested the homeowner for using an imitation gun to threaten or intimidate. In a similar incident the following year, when an elderly woman fired a toy cap pistol to drive off a group of youths who were threatening her, she was arrested for putting someone in fear. Now the police are pressing Parliament to make imitation guns illegal.

� In 1999 Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone in a shabby farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass as two burglars, both with long criminal records, burst into his home. He had been robbed six times before, and his village, like 70 percent of rural English communities, had no police presence. He sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders. Martin received life in prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for wounding the second, and a year for having an unregistered shotgun. The wounded burglar, having served 18 months of a three-year sentence, is now free and has been granted �5,000 of legal assistance to sue Martin.

The failure of English policy to produce a safer society is clear, but what of British jibes about "America's vigilante values" and our much higher murder rate?

Historically, America has had a high homicide rate and England a low one. In a comparison of New York and London over a 200-year period, during most of which both populations had unrestricted access to firearms, historian Eric Monkkonen found New York's homicide rate consistently about five times London's. Monkkonen pointed out that even without guns, "the United States would still be out of step, just as it has been for two hundred years."

Legal historian Richard Maxwell Brown has argued that Americans have more homicides because English law insists an individual should retreat when attacked, whereas Americans believe they have the right to stand their ground and kill in self-defense. Americans do have more latitude to protect themselves, in keeping with traditional common law standards, but that would have had less significance before England's more restrictive policy was established in 1967.

The murder rates of the U.S. and U.K. are also affected by differences in the way each counts homicides. The FBI asks police to list every homicide as murder, even if the case isn't subsequently prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge, making the U.S. numbers as high as possible. By contrast, the English police "massage down" the homicide statistics, tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is reduced to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense, making the English numbers as low as possible.

The London-based Office of Health Economics, after a careful international study, found that while "one reason often given for the high numbers of murders and manslaughters in the United States is the easy availability of firearms...the strong correlation with racial and socio-economic variables suggests that the underlying determinants of the homicide rate are related to particular cultural factors."

Cultural differences and more-permissive legal standards notwithstanding, the English rate of violent crime has been soaring since 1991. Over the same period, America's has been falling dramatically. In 1999 The Boston Globe reported that the American murder rate, which had fluctuated by about 20 percent between 1974 and 1991, was "in startling free-fall." We have had nine consecutive years of sharply declining violent crime. As a result the English and American murder rates are converging. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and the latest study puts it at 3.5 times.

Preliminary figures for the U.S. this year show an increase, although of less than 1 percent, in the overall number of violent crimes, with homicide increases in certain cities, which criminologists attribute to gang violence, the poor economy, and the release from prison of many offenders. Yet Americans still enjoy a substantially lower rate of violent crime than England, without the "restraint on personal liberty" English governments have seen as necessary. Rather than permit individuals more scope to defend themselves, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government plans to combat crime by extending those "restraints on personal liberty": removing the prohibition against double jeopardy so people can be tried twice for the same crime, making hearsay evidence admissible in court, and letting jurors know of a suspect's previous crimes.

This is a cautionary tale. America's founders, like their English forebears, regarded personal security as first of the three primary rights of mankind. That was the main reason for including a right for individuals to be armed in the U.S. Constitution. Not everyone needs to avail himself or herself of that right. It is a dangerous right. But leaving personal protection to the police is also dangerous.

The English government has effectively abolished the right of Englishmen, confirmed in their 1689 Bill of Rights, to "have arms for their defence," insisting upon a monopoly of force it can succeed in imposing only on law-abiding citizens. It has come perilously close to depriving its people of the ability to protect themselves at all, and the result is a more, not less, dangerous society. Despite the English tendency to decry America's "vigilante values," English policy makers would do well to consider a return to these crucial common law values, which stood them so well in the past.


These laws really are lame. Last time I was in London, this March for spring break, I got busted with an 'assisted opening' knife and was informed that I could get 5 years for an 'offensive weapon'. I don't see what is so 'offensive' about it since it doesn't smell bad or anything, but they took it from me and never mailed it to me even after I gave them my address and instructed them to do so.

[Taciturn]

Another great post from the Phora, showing how this study is of questionable credibility:


The article claims "experts...agree on the need for solid scientific information about the risks or benefits of guns" yet this study, to use the term loosely, was funded by the heavily politicized National Institutes of Health (Director is presidentially appointed) and published in the American Journal of Public Health, a peer reviewed monthly propaganda journal of the American Public Health Association. The APHA rallies for universal healthcare and pushes climate change hysteria, among involvement in other social issues.

So much for scientific... :rolleyes:

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=774817&postcount=8

[Ulf]

Gun Possession Of Questionable Value In An Assault, Study Finds

In a first-of its-kind study, epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that, on average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in an assault. The study estimated that people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090930121512.htm

In other news, carrying an umbrella increases your chances of encountering rainy weather.

[2DREZQ]

The old saw that the guy who "has the drop on you" will always shoot you before you can draw your weapon is inaccurate and overly simplistic.

Speed and surprise are on your side, should you choose to act. There are many strategies and ruses that one can use to gain the upper hand. In addition, most "gangstas" can't shoot worth shit. I can. I can tell you that in a stress-fire situation hitting anything at all, even for a trained expert, is difficult in the extreme. Don't believe me? Watch any of the surveilance videos of robberies that deteriorated into gunfights. The primary activity engaged in on both sides consists of flinching, ducking, and running away. If you still doubt me, try paintball fighting with nothing on but shorts and eye protection and specific instructions to aim for the testicles. Totally non-lethal (dangerous in its own way, though). So you say I can't hit anything either? I DON'T HAVE TO! All I have to do in most cases is make the bad guy as terrified for his life as he wanted me to be, and that ends the encounter.
I am licensed to carry a concealed weapon in 32 states. I carry everywhere I am legally allowed to, and avoid places where I cannot carry whenever possible. Those of you who will not understand why a gentle humanitarian such as myself (no, I'm not being sarcastic) would carry, and be willing to use, a deadly weapon have a less than complete view of humanity. I refuse to cede the moral high ground to those who will not kill. I have already passed judgement upon any person who would take my life, or the life of another innocent person, to further his own desire for pleasure, money, or drugs. My life is of greater value than his. If I am given an either/or choice, I choose to live, and to live with the consequences of whatever action I am forced to take to back up my judgement. I will not willingly submit or be a victim. If my actions cost me my life, so be it. If the cost includes the life of my killer, then no one will ever be victimized by him, ever again.

Evil uses force, and understands only force. There are more good and decent men out there, by an order of magnitude, than there are evil men. We should not fear them, they should fear us.