Firearms amnesty as UK gun crime rises 27% this year

....and utterly factless blather like you just posted is why serious discussion of public safety is impossible.

Plain and simple: the US is NOT the "most violent developed country on Earth" - we're not even close to the top of that list per capita, simple truth - and claims to the contrary are what actually define "nonsense."

 

I doubt that anyone who makes anything out of steel, studies history or collects firearms in the UK shares your uncivilized & Orwellian opinion.

 

I will never apologize for defending my basic rights. Those who attack Constitutional rights and pursue authoritarian policies that undermine personal freedom and political liberty are the ones who owe all free people an apology.

 

Four years after guns were banned Manchester became "Gunchester:".

"Killings put 'Gunchester' back on crime map," "Police warn that weapons have become a fashion accessory as 17-year-old becomes latest victim of Manchester's gangland rivalry London's gun violence: special report," "The Guardian," 1/14/00.

Do you suppose they forget to ban machine guns?

"The estimate that 3m guns are illegally held
in the UK - made by researchers collecting
evidence for a parliamentary inquiry into the
gun trade - is far higher than previously
thought. The vast stockpiles of weapons have
fuelled the recent spate of shootings in
cities including London, Birmingham and
Manchester, where a 17-year-old was killed
last week.

Research suggests that in some areas a third
of young criminals, classed as those aged 15
to 25 with convictions, own or have access to
guns ranging from Beretta sub-machineguns to
Luger pistols, which can be bought from
underworld dealers for as little as £200.

“There is a move from the pistol and the
shotgun to automatic weapons,” said Detective
Superintendent Keith Hudson, of the national
crime squad.”
Jon Ungoed-Thomas, “Armed force:
police are worried at the escalation of gun crimes,
including gang shootings,” “Killings rise as 3m
illegal guns flood Britain,” Sunday Times, 1/16/2000

 

I read this and just shake my head.

Living in a free society, where government is prevented from micromanaging people's lives and people are free to live their lives as they choose, entails a certain amount of risk. There will ALWAYS be those who will choose to prey upon their fellow man; this is true regardless of what nation you live in.

I look at places like the UK, where CCTV cameras record every breath the people take in public and the criminal justice system is based upon "guilty until proven innocent"; where footage of mobs of people brutally beating innocent people nearly to death on a whim is broadcast nearly daily, and I simply can't comprehend a mindset such as defined above. It's mostly false, for one thing, but it still defines a mindset that I find anathema to pretty much everything I believe in or find meritorious in life.

 

Before the ban, all crime rates were declining. When the govt not only disarms the population but has every intent to harshly penalize a person who uses a firearm to defend themselves, then criminals get very bold and aggressive.

 

my...you are pious....and smug

 

histrionic zealots

 

wrong in so many ways. BTW white americans-with the highest rate of legal gun ownership among private citizens on earth, are less violent than disarmed White Brits

 

we need them in case people like you ever take power in the USA.

 

left wing luddites

 

Lets hope its not people like you that ever do so

 

Actually I kinda like that idea.

 

Thankfully you and your violent ilk live a long way from me then

 

Thanks for outlining the fact that I'm nearly 50 times more likely to meet a violent end in the US than in the UK

 

Your denial of reality is noted .... and not for the first time. Learn to count

 

Are we that scary? Boo!

 

Don't worry, the 20k jihadi's living in your country will kill you first.

 

which is why we wonder about your frantic hyperventilating concerns about laws in a country where you neither reside nor count

 

facts are not your friend.

 

Gun crime has doubled, not shootings.
When you make waving a water pistol at someone a gun crime, gun crime figures can be expected to rise.

UK gun crime statistics can half or double easily.
2+2 = 4 gun crime doubled.
2 -1 = 1 gun crime halved.

Because these events are so very rare here, it's a small number, so % variances in the statistic will be high.

 

Guns are available to anyone who wants them in the UK. Gun crime, like all crime, has surged since the gun ban. Surely you know that.

 

Here is another dose of reality:

“A hundred years and many gun laws later, the BBC reported online in January
that England's firearms restrictions, including its 1997 ban on handguns, "seem
to have had little impact in the criminal underworld". Guns are virtually outlawed,
and, as the old US slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. And what is worse,
they are increasingly ready to use them.

Five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent
crime has been climbing ever since, and armed crime -
with banned handguns the weapon of choice - is now
described as "rocketing". In the two years following the
ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 per cent.
From April to November 2001 the number of people
robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 per cent.

In the course of a few days last summer, gun-toting
men burst into a 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
neighbourhood of north London. On New Year's Day,
2002, a 19-year-old girl walking on a main street in east London was shot in the
head by a thief after her mobile phone.” FINANCIAL TIMES, Trigger unhappy, BY Joyce Lee Malcolm, Jun 21, 2002.

 

Not if you stay out of the cities.

 

Only if you are a gang banger or are involved in the urban drug world.