One year ago today..............

[Little-Acorn]

On April 16, 2007, a madman with multiple weapons entered a classroom at Virginia Tech university and killed 31 of his fellow students, before finally getting one right and killing himself.

Thanks to a complete ban of firearms on campus, law-abiding students who obeyed found themselves unable to defend themselves as the gunman calmly reloaded again and again, moving from room to room and gunning down more victims. The gun ban, praised by many liberal officials, gave him plenty of time to rack up an impressive body count before police finally arrived.

[Noir]

yeah, if only there were more guns there'd be less shootings, like in the UK...where we have so few guns...and so few shootings...oh...damn :slap:

[Little-Acorn]

yeah, if only there were more guns there'd be less shootings, like in the UK...where we have so few guns...and so few shootings...oh...damn :slap:

I couldn't agree more.

--------------------------------------------

http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html

Gun Control's Twisted Outcome
Restricting firearms has helped make England more crime-ridden than the U.S.

Joyce Lee Malcolm | November 2002 Print Edition

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, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes."

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.

[Noir]

I couldn't agree more.

--------------------------------------------

http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html

Gun Control's Twisted Outcome
Restricting firearms has helped make England more crime-ridden than the U.S.

Joyce Lee Malcolm | November 2002 Print Edition

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, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes."

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.

This is priceless...so "apart from murder" we are worse than you guys...i'll settle for that, wouldn't you?

[Hobbit]

This is priceless...so "apart from murder" we are worse than you guys...i'll settle for that, wouldn't you?

Considering your murder rate's up since the weapons ban...no.

[Noir]

Considering your murder rate's up since the weapons ban...no.

Are you talking about the UK? I assume you have statistics to back this claim up...

lets look at the stats for that, with the number of deaths per year from guns in the UK, 1994-2006

1994-341
1995-356
1996-254
1997- 198
1998- 229
1999- 207
2000- 204
2001- 193
2002- 181
2003- 187
2004-191
2005- 185
2006-210

looks like its soared to a 30% drop since 1994
(http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF07.htm)

yes there are little pikes up every now and then but it is an undenyable trend downwards over a 12 year span, when gun crime has been gettin so bad in the uk....

[Hobbit]

Are you talking about the UK? I assume you have statistics to back this claim up...

lets look at the stats for that, with the number of deaths per year from guns in the UK, 1994-2006

1994-341
1995-356
1996-254
1997- 198
1998- 229
1999- 207
2000- 204
2001- 193
2002- 181
2003- 187
2004-191
2005- 185
2006-210

looks like its soared to a 30% drop since 1994
(http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF07.htm)

yes there are little pikes up every now and then but it is an undenyable trend downwards over a 12 year span, when gun crime has been gettin so bad in the uk....

Eh, maybe I was misinformed, or maybe I'm thinking of Australia. Still, I'll take the ability to defend myself over the nanny state any day.

In any case, I'm checking out that research. I don't trust gun stats from a site called 'gun control network' any more than I trust 'rape' statistics from NOW (fyi, they counted leering as rape in their study).

[Noir]

In any case, I'm checking out that research. I don't trust gun stats from a site called 'gun control network' any more than I trust 'rape' statistics from NOW (fyi, they counted leering as rape in their study).

The stats come from freedom of information questions from our houses of parliament, so i should hope they are reliable enough for you...now you did claim that "Considering your murder rate's up since the weapons ban" so do you have anything to back this up or not?

[Hobbit]

Yeah, it's like I suspected. According to the London Times, the government's been covering up a four fold increase in gun related injuries and deaths.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2328368.ece

Not only that, but the murder rate in Europe is 16 times higher than in the U.S. when you take into account murders committed by government officials, mostly against unarmed civilians. That's why the founders believed in arming the populace against the government.

http://www.gunowners.org/sk0703.htm

Armed robbery is up almost 50%

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=paFiguresThurs18Crimefiguresud2Subs titute&show_article=1

Edit: Did you not see "maybe I was misinformed, or maybe I'm thinking of Australia?" That means, "Maybe I'm wrong. Let me check up on things and I'll let you know." However, it looks like I wasn't wrong, after all.

Additional Edit: And no, I don't trust the stuff straight from parliament. Those figures are made by politicians who want to look good, and one of your 'golden' bills going belly up doesn't win you a lot of votes. Here in the U.S., the Congressional transcript has a bunch of stuff in it that wasn't actually said. The law states that the record must contain 'the essence' of what was said, in order to prevent typos from being felonies. What we got instead was politicians going in and editing the congressional record to say they'd said something about some crap in their district in order to weasel their way into votes. Also, the federal budget doesn't count expenses until they're paid, in violation of federal laws on businesses. When done the way businesses do their accounting, the deficit doubles. When they actually include payouts to government pensions and social security, it increases tenfold. So, no, I don't trust the official government account.

[Noir]

"Not only that, but the murder rate in Europe is 16 times higher than in the U.S. when you take into account murders committed by government officials, mostly against unarmed civilians”

I really don’t get where this is coming from, the rest of the European Governments must be having a blood bath cus this certainly isn’t happening in the UK. I remember about 2-3 years ago, a young man Jean Charles de Menezes, he was a suspected terrorist, was followed, and ran from police through a train station when they tried to stop him, he was shot dead. Turned out a woeful and deplorable number of errors meant he was just an ordinary citizen mistaken for another man.
An innocent unarmed man shot dead. There was a public enquiry, countless programs made, and heads rolled. The British public do not accept murder, to claim that it is 16 times higher must simply be wrong.
Upon looking at the link it becomes rather clear, you are comparing the USA’s murder rate to all of Europe’s. That’s your one country and our 50 or so countries, with a population of aprox 709,608,850p
I would dismiss this article as it is to vague, there are many different attitudes to gun ownership and control. To tar them all with the same brush is naïve in my view, it is much easier and more logical to compare one country with another, not one country with a group of 50 others.



Armed robbery is up almost 50%

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1

This link doesn’t lead to any stats (unless it is my school firewall system block page content) Is this referring to just the UK or all of Europe? And within what time frame?


I don't trust the stuff straight from parliament...So, no, I don't trust the official government account.

Okie dokies.

And if I may take an extract from the source you provided

“The Home Office figures - which exclude crimes involving air weapons ….”

Wait! Home office figures? You mean…figures from the government?...surly we can’t trust those….can we? :slap:
I'm pretty sure that these are stats that came out from the Freedom of information act...but as you said...we can't trust that...so what are we to do?
Ah, i love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning

[Little-Acorn]

Oh, now we can't trust government figures?

So I guess these are out the window also?


the number of deaths per year from guns in the UK, 1994-2006

1994-341
1995-356
1996-254
1997- 198
1998- 229
1999- 207
2000- 204
2001- 193
2002- 181
2003- 187
2004-191
2005- 185
2006-210


So, since we can't trust government figures, I guess that means murders HAVE gone up in the UK since the gun ban?

Please make up your mind.

[Noir]

I'm the one saying we can trust goverment stats, its 'hobbit' that says we can't...and then trys to prove his point by quoting me goverment stats =/

Yes it seems that 'gun crime' has gone up, but 'gun deaths' have gone down. I know which way round i want it.