"Just a Piece of Paper"

[HoreTore]

That would be a robot society. If you were convinced that someone was going to kill you, would you just sit back and rely on the police? I would have bought a gun for sure.

In a civilized society, you're confident that the police will stop whoever is trying to kill you, so whether you should get a gun or not is not a question.

[Whacker]

In a civilized society, you're confident that the police will stop whoever is trying to kill you, so whether you should get a gun or not is not a question.

In a perfect world, I'm sure that this is true. Reality isn't even close to what you are suggesting though.

How come it's quite hard for criminals to get guns where there is strict gun control then? Why is it that the criminals here are usually armed with knives?

Because you're wrong, it is incredibly easy? Kinda like how Washington DC has some of the harshest gun laws in the nation, and it's also got one of the worst crime rates in terms of gun-related crime?

And why is it that our murder rate is lower?

Because you're a fraction of the size of the US?

[Sir Moody]

not quite true - there were more murders in LA alone last year than in the entire of England and Wales - theres far more people in England and Wales than in LA - and we are one of the more violent European peoples...

either we are doing something right law wise or we just arnt as prone to violence in general...

Edit

seems my numbers were slightly out (i misread an article)

There were more murders in the state of California than in the entire of england and wales (CA pop is 36 million England and Wales 53 million)

see

England and Wales

and

CA

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

In a civilized society, you're confident that the police will stop whoever is trying to kill you, so whether you should get a gun or not is not a question.

A society with a murder rate of zero, then? Where would that be, perchance?

[Tribesman]

Tribesman is apparently having trouble reading,

Don..read the friggng article, it might help you in relation to what was written
You should be able to do better Don

[Crazed Rabbit]

A few points: England has always had a lower murder rate, even when you could buy a pistol and carry it about with you legally in both countries with no fuss.

A couple English pro-gun editorials for your perusing:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle2409817.ece

In Britain, however, the image of violent America remains unassailably entrenched. Never mind the findings of the International Crime Victims Survey (published by the Home Office in 2003), indicating that we now suffer three times the level of violent crime committed in the United States; never mind the doubling of handgun crime in Britain over the past decade, since we banned pistols outright and confiscated all the legal ones.

We are so self-congratulatory about our officially disarmed society, and so dismissive of colonial rednecks, that we have forgotten that within living memory British citizens could buy any gun – rifle, pistol, or machinegun – without any licence. When Dr Watson walked the streets of London with a revolver in his pocket, he was a perfectly ordinary Victorian or Edwardian. Charlotte Brontë recalled that her curate father fastened his watch and pocketed his pistol every morning when he got dressed; Beatrix Potter remarked on a Yorkshire country hotel where only one of the eight or nine guests was not carrying a revolver; in 1909, policemen in Tottenham borrowed at least four pistols from passers-by (and were joined by other armed citizens) when they set off in pursuit of two anarchists unwise enough to attempt an armed robbery. We now are shocked that so many ordinary people should have been carrying guns in the street; the Edwardians were shocked rather by the idea of an armed robbery.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m...ixopinion.html

Conan Doyle's Dr Watson, dropping a revolver in his pocket before going out about town, illustrates a real commonplace of that time. Beatrix Potter's journal records a discussion at a small country hotel in Yorkshire, where it turned out that only one of the eight or nine guests was not carrying a revolver.

We should not fool ourselves, however, that such things were possible then because society was more peaceful. Those years were ones of much more social and political turbulence than our own: with violent and incendiary suffrage protests, massive industrial strikes where the Army was called in and people were killed, where there was the menace of a revolutionary General Strike, and where the country was riven by the imminent prospect of a civil war in Ireland. It was in such a society that, as late as 1914, the right even of an Irishman to carry a loaded revolver in the streets was upheld in the courts (Rex v. Smith, KB 1914) as a manifestation simply of the guarantees provided by our Bill of Rights.

In such troubled times, why did the commonplace carrying of firearms not result in mayhem? How could it be that in the years before the First World War, armed crime in London amounted to less than 2 per cent of what we see today? One answer that might have been taken as self-evident then, but which has become political anathema now, is that the prevalence of firearms had a stabilising influence and a deterrent effect upon crime.

To all those insisting one rely on the police, I ask; can your police predict the future?

You say the police here acted wrongly; assuming they actually sought this man out and arrested him, how long could he be held for emailing a death threat?

Suppose, even, that he emailed or spoke no such threats before going to the house and crashing into cars.

Listen to the 911 call from someone from another nearby house observing the murderer as he attacked:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...778062.mp3file

He describes how the man had gotten out of his car after crashing it around the street, then approached the house. Then he says the man has gone behind the house. Then he reports gun shots.

There is no way the police could have gotten there in time to stop him. It's not an insult to police, they simply physically can't.
How could the police have stopped that? How can you have such confidence in the police? Why does there seem to be a belief that they can be anywhere instantly?

On a different angle, how is it civilized to not be self reliant, but a mere peasant depending on protection from a sort of feudal lord?

CR

[Csargo]

A society with a murder rate of zero, then? Where would that be, perchance?

Utopia??

[InsaneApache]

Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit
A few points: England has always had a lower murder rate, even when you could buy a pistol and carry it about with you legally in both countries with no fuss.

When did the UK allow people to buy and carry firearms? Certainly not in my lifetime.

[Tribesman]

I did read the article. I don't think you did, or if you did, you're ignoring portions that don't comply to your view.

Wow Don are you sure ?

There was no history

Ahem...

But former UCF student Erinn Redd, who knew Allred and Ruschak since their days at Oviedo High School, remembered Allred as "deviously clever and capable of taking matters to the extreme."

He had threatened other friends in the past, she said. "But we never expected him to go murder someone."

Hmmmmm..try again
Now of course the police officer couldn't have known that this individual had a history of threatening people , the people that knew him didn't think that is threats meant anything much.
There was nothing at all to hinder this jilted turd from legally obtaining a firearm was there..... its his right


Now this isinteresting

The 2nd was written to create a last resort safeguard against tyranny.

Hmmmmm...so it isn't an inalianable right for anyone to use their constitutional right to have as many of whatever guns they choose as is their right for whatever purpose they seem fit with no restictions at all as is set out in the second quite clearly and can only be interpretted in one way .

Rabbit have you attended gun safety courses ? as it seems that you have shot yourself in the foot yet again .

If someone is determined to stick a knife in you - no matter how much self defense training you have your chances of getting stuck are great. What self defense training does or should do is train you to take the stab in a part of the body that you might or can survive.
Ie the arm versus the body.


Its not the weapon that kills the individual, its the one using the weapon. Guns and knifes are only tools.

You want to lower the crime rate address the causes of crime, not the tools that are being used.

Stop it Red please be less sensible in your writing .
OK just to be pickyIe the arm versus the body.ie the weaker of your arms
However that doesn't cover small knuckle blades where you don't realise you have been stabbed but are just confused how a punch could make you bleed so much

[Don Corleone]

Don..read the friggng article, it might help you in relation to what was written
You should be able to do better Don

I did read the article. I don't think you did, or if you did, you're ignoring portions that don't comply to your view.

So he had a history of threatning people but they couldn't stop him from buying a gun because buying a gun is his right until he does something like kill someone upon which he forfiets the right to buy a gun .
Is that what you are trying to say Rabbit

There was no history. The guy cleaned out her checking account late in the morning. He sent the email around 7PM. The deputy came by and said "Tough luck, you're own your own, try to get a restraining order, it should be in place in a few days". He showed up and killed them all at 11PM. ALL IN THE SAME DAY. There's no history in that.

Besides, I said you and Hore Tore were right. We should just let criminals have the run of the place. It's the only civilized thing to do.

[Productivity]

Because you're a fraction of the size of the US?

What does the size of a country have anything to do with a rate. Rates are usually put in a capita adjusted manner. ie. Murders/100000 people/year. I really don't see how having a larger population impacts that as it is inhernetly adjusted for in the rate.

[Marshal Murat]

What does the size of a country have anything to do with a rate.

Even adjusted, using the California -> UK data, there is a larger amount of deaths in California per 1,000 people than UK (unless I read the data wrong). To explain it better.

You have LA with 100,000 people and a 90% squalor rating
You have Bergen with 100,000 people and a 50% squalor rating

or....

There are more people in the USA killing more people, and with a smaller population you see fewer killings. One of the bugs of reality that God needs to patch... Jesus 1.1 crashed after the Romans took Judea.


Or...
you could get someone else to explain it.

Personally, I think it's the culture of society.

People will kill, and will continue to do so. It's only the means that have changed.