Guns in Society

[stu knowles]

At the time of the post Dunblane firearms cull I felt strongly that gun owners had been very badly treated and that the cull was unnecessary. I now think that the country was very fortunate to have strangled the availability of firearms back then and I would support ever more severe gun control.

'merica has got itself into such a hole that I see only bad things for them in the future.

[Peter Miller]

Well, yes but they only stopped the legal ownership of guns. It didn't do a lot about the illegal guns.

At the time of Dunblane I was working a a gun enthusiast who lost his revolvers.

The point was made that someone with a couple of sawn off shotguns and a couple of boxes of cartridges could have created just as much carnage.

I couldn't help wondering if that had happened would there have been a total ban on the ownership of shotguns?

Somehow I doubt it.

[Former Member]

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[Jon H]

I have a large number of friends in the US and most are my age and younger. This younger generation for the most part see that things need to change but the older generation think that more guns are the answer. Some states have passed legislation which allow school teachers to be armed to counter the threat posed by armed students. schools even have 'active shooter' drills as well as the normal fire drills. I cannot even begin to understand this.

The other thing seems to be a great deal of 'that's tragic but it will never happen to me' syndrome. They also don't seem to see the link between guns and shootings.

While I agree with the argument that criminals will always be able to get guns, most of the shootings are not carried out by career criminals and most are carried out by troubled people who need help. These people should not have access to weapons and yet they are freely available.

For reference, just shy of 14,000 have been shot dead in the US this year.

[Former Member]

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[john stones 1 - Moderator]

I'm surprised that the numbers 14,000, thought it would've been higher, hardly seems a day goes by without an incident in U.S.A, crazy country.

[Former Member]

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[Jon H]

This link gives all the details or the last few years and this year. The really shocking stats for me are the children involved. 666 children ages 0-11 years killed or injured this year alone

**LINK**

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

The USA is relatively gun death free - compared with such well regulated countries as Honduras, which heads the death involving firearms table with a rate per head of population nearly 10 times as bad! Despite the apparent influx of guns from eastern Europe within the criminal community and the unarmed nature of the general population and the majority of our police force, our own gun related death rate is something in the region of 1/40th of the USA's.

There was a recent report where an armed US citizen stopped a mass shooter because he had a gun about his person - the first I can ever remember reading though but no doubt will be quoted in many counter arguments to calls for any stricter gun controls.

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

I stand corrected Percy, I'll go with crazy World n getting worse by the day.

[Tony Harrison 2]

Posted by stu knowles on 25/11/2017 10:09:23:

At the time of the post Dunblane firearms cull I felt strongly that gun owners had been very badly treated and that the cull was unnecessary. I now think that the country was very fortunate to have strangled the availability of firearms back then and I would support ever more severe gun control.

'merica has got itself into such a hole that I see only bad things for them in the future.

The country only "strangled the availability of firearms" (well, handguns) to the law-abiding, of whom I am one. My Colt 1911 .45 semi-auto pistol was retrospectively declared illegal to possess and my shooting sports were radically curtailed. Laws only affect the law-abiding: and before you say Thomas Hamilton owned his guns legitimately on a Firearm Certificate, ask yourself why, when the police always protest violently that they are the only ones capable of administering gun ownership, Central Scotland Police serially renewed his FAC despite the expressed doubts of more than one officer who knew him: ask why much of the evidence from the enquiry is suppressed under a 100-year secrecy ruling.

Laws have never stopped criminals from owning whatever guns they want. Less than 100 years ago we had virtually no "gun control" laws: my grandparents' generation could and did own whatever guns they wanted, unchecked and with no registration. Gun crime then was lower in proportion to the population that it is today: as gun laws have become ever more restrictive, so gun crime has grown in parallel. Go figure.

America? Whenever people in UK talk about America and guns they tend to show that they know nothing about the subject! Gun laws vary hugely across the USA. As a rough guide, those places with the most liberal gun laws, and where lots of ordinary people are armed, are the most free of gun crime... Go figure, again. America is a more violent country than ours in general: their rates of violent crime with knives, clubs or anything else are much higher than ours. Much violent crime there is criminal types fighting one another, and much of it is heavily weighted ethnically, so that black gun crime (in which blacks kill other blacks) is higher than for other groups. Interesting point: the frequency of burglary against homes that are occupied is far lower (maybe 3 times) than it is for the UK, since American crims know they might be confronted by an armed homeowner.

Edited By Tony Harrison 2 on 25/11/2017 11:36:22

[Tony Harrison 2]

Posted by Peter Miller on 25/11/2017 10:28:42:

Well, yes but they only stopped the legal ownership of guns. It didn't do a lot about the illegal guns.

At the time of Dunblane I was working a a gun enthusiast who lost his revolvers.

The point was made that someone with a couple of sawn off shotguns and a couple of boxes of cartridges could have created just as much carnage.

I couldn't help wondering if that had happened would there have been a total ban on the ownership of shotguns?

Somehow I doubt it.

You are right to doubt there being any rational, causal link: our "gun control" laws have never been founded on anything like an objective analysis of cause & effect, any detailed presentation of evidence gathered over a long period. The original Firearms Act of 1920 (prior to which we had virtually no gun laws at all, at least nothing which hindered ordinary people from owning whatever guns they wanted) was based on Establishment fears about Bolsheviks, anarchists, and all those working class chaps such as my grandfathers returning from the trenches knowledgeable about weapons... It was nothing to do with gun crime, since pre-WW1 our rates of gun crime were extremely modest.

Footnote: after three London coppers were shot dead by a pair of crims armed with off-ticket pistols in 1967, the then Home Secretary decided he's get tough - and put shotguns, previously something anyone could buy with a licence from the Post Office, onto a police ticket. He didn't ban handguns. The most convincing rationale for this that I;'ve seen is that he was under pressure to restore capital punishment, something he was opposed to, so wanted to make a grand gesture. Making shotguns subject to police registration would really inconvenience hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people, so it was very high profile, talked about, a "grand gesture". Not rational at all of course, not morally or legally or evidentially justifiable, but hey, it's politics. This mindset has dominated UK "gun control" from the start. It's easy: gun owners like me are an electoral minority and it doesn't matter if we're shafted, since the popular press is always ready to paint us as knuckle-dragging "gun nuts".

[Former Member]

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[Cuban8]

it's a mindset thing - for example over 27000 people were killed in 2014 in accidents on the Indian railways (Hindustan Times) yet even with mass education of users to keep off the rail lines etc still thousands are killed annually.

I can fully understand the sporting aspect of firearms (target shooting etc rather than big game hunting) along with shotgun use by farmers and rifles used to cull deer, but I find videos of shooters in the US loosing off machine guns and goodness knows what else just for the hell of it and with no real purpose, very alarming.

Edited By Cuban8 on 25/11/2017 12:23:56

[J D 8]

And if we had no knives no one would be stabbed,and if we had no exposive no one would be blown up,and if we had no cars no on would be run over. Trouble is these things are out of the box.

Someone once said a firearm is just a tool for throwing balls. I agree with Percy that somehow today it is the gun that is seen as evil and not the person holding it.

The news often reports that someones plane/car has crashed, not that said person crashed their car/plane.After all most of the time had the person not been in it it would not have crashed.

A new one out of the box is driverless cars and then who/what will be blamed.

[David Davis]

Posted by Jon Harper - Laser Engines on 25/11/2017 11:07:12:

This link gives all the details or the last few years and this year. The really shocking stats for me are the children involved. 666 children ages 0-11 years killed or injured this year alone

**LINK**

I see that the figures quoted do not include over 20,000 suicides carried out in the USA each year, many of which would have involved firearms.

[Geoff S]

I was brought around weapons. Most of them were air or gas rifles. Dad was something of a collector and had some quite unusual air rifles and actually made a gas (Co2) rifle. We sold them (and shot guns) in the shop alongside the main business of electrical goods. Dad was a registered gunsmith so he could get 0.22 ammunition for the local small bore rifle club of which he, and for a time I, was a member. Because he had been physically disabled from childhood (he had a TB hip which meant his right leg was some 4" shorter than the left) rifle shooting was sport in which he could compete equally with non-disabled people.

I was given my first air rifle for passing what we then called the scholarship to go to grammar school and it was upgraded as dad sold my old one. No bird was safe in sight of our backyard and I even shot at pigeons on the chimney tops I could see over the houses on the opposite side of the main street where we lived. That was until I shot a sparrow which fell into our entry and I saw it writhing on the ground in agony. I never shot at a bird, or other living thing after that. I felt ashamed of myself. I find organised driven pheasant and grouse shooting absolutely pointless and there's a lot of it on the Derbyshire moors

Other than in a closely controlled environment like a rifle club range (our 25 yard range was safely in the cellars of a local brewery) or clay pigeon club there really is no place in a civilised society for firearms in the general population. Even as a vegetarian I might go so far as to accept hunting for food - provided you eat all you kill. The National Rifle Association (NRA) in the USA say that guns don't kill people, people kill people. Which is superficially true but my response is that spanners don't strip and rebuild engines, people do but without spanners people wouldn't be able to do the work.

Geoff

[cymaz]

Some interesting reading here

[stu knowles]

And if we had no knives no one would be stabbed,and if we had no exposive no one would be blown up,and if we had no cars no on would be run over. Trouble is these things are out of the box.

Maybe in the UK the point is that the box lid is kept closed.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) in the USA say that guns don't kill people, people kill people. Which is superficially true but my response is that spanners don't strip and rebuild engines, people do but without spanners people wouldn't be able to do the work.

Spot on Geoff, my favourite along those lines, Lawnmowers don't cut lawns - people cut lawns. However, if you have ever tried to cut a lawn without a lawnmower you definitely won't get far

 

Edited By stu knowles on 25/11/2017 13:14:30

[Tony Harrison 2]

Posted by Percy Verance on 25/11/2017 12:10:40:

With respect Tony, in all probability it's the knuckle dragging gun nuts whom have got you painted as knuckle dragging gun nuts I think.........

when people start getting shot it understandably gets hard for some folk to differentiate....

Sure, there are some rather unsavoury people out there whom have weapons they certainly shouldn't have. No question, they're the bad guys. That can't be argued. But in many people's eyes guns are evil. Be it right or wrong, that's the way many see it I'm afraid.

Edited By Percy Verance on 25/11/2017 12:15:45

Which "knuckle dragging gun nuts" might those be, PV? I've never met any, in a lifetime's (well, since I was 12-13) experience of shooting. I've encountered a couple of people I didn't think were safe gun handlers - one of those was a serving police officer.

It is people's absolute responsibility, their duty, to "differentiate" between lawful gun-owners on the one hand, and gun-toting criminals on the other. It is utterly wrong and immoral and futile to lump guns together and pass laws banning their ownership, when this does not affect in the slightest criminals' use of guns. It is politically cynical, intellectually lazy and downright wicked & undemocratic to push through laws that criminalise large numbers of law-abiding folk in the knowledge (and politicaians are not for the most part too stupid to know this) that it does not even begin to address a problem to do with crime.

People who think guns are "evil" and that it's therefore ok to penalise them and their owners are dimwitted, shallow, shortsighted, have no knowledge of history or cause & effect, and clearly don't give a stuff about democracy.

rgds Tony

[Don Fry]

Tony it is forever so. Change gun for drone in your last two paragraphs.

[Tony Harrison 2]

Posted by Geoff Sleath on 25/11/2017 12:44:08:....there really is no place in a civilised society for firearms in the general population.....

Geoff

Firearms enabled us to protect our "civilised society" against armed aggression many times. Firearms enable hundreds of thousands of citizens in the US alone to protect themselves, their families and their property against the depredations of criminals - in the great majority of cases without a shot being fired.Until 1920 we could acquire and use any guns we wanted (yes, including automatic weapons) without let or hindrance from police or the State - and gun crime was at much lower levels than today. The freedom to own guns is fundamental to political liberty and a free society: governments which suppress this right are illiberal. No government which does not trust its citizens to own weapons ought to be trusted by those citizens. I own rifles and shotguns - and used to own a succession of semi-automatic pistols. I regard myself as civilised.

rgds Tony

[Tony Harrison 2]

Posted by Don Fry on 25/11/2017 13:34:58:

Tony it is forever so. Change gun for drone in your last two paragraphs.

Don, I was thinking of mentioning drones - when politicians start to contemplate severe legal restrictions on drone ownership, or talk about compulsory licencing for r/c aircraft models (it's not inconceivable), some people here might start to appreciate what I've been talking about in relation to gun ownership.

rgds Tony

[Tony Harrison 2]

Posted by stu knowles on 25/11/2017 13:13:52:

Maybe in the UK the point is that the box lid is kept closed.

That box lid is only closed to the law abiding, and has never had any discernible impact on criminals - as I've already pointed out, a short look at the stats shows that (a) gun crime pre-WW1 when we had practically no real restraints on gun ownership was at lower levels than today (yes, allowing for the fact that our population was half today's), and (b) as gun laws have become ever more restrictive (i.e. continually bigger & tighter "box lids", so gun crime has simply grown in parallel. Gun laws and gun crime are not connected: criminals do not obey laws - that's why they're criminals. They certainly don't obey gun laws. Why would they?

rgds Tony

[Ian Jones]

It doesn't matter how high your horse is or on which side it's ridden, the purpose of a firearm is to kill, that does not apply to all the other analogies that have been made. That there are now also sporting uses for firearms is beside that point as the more firearms there are; the more suffering there is because of them.

I've had the opportunity to try a few firearms from time to time and been surprisingly good at it but I do not think that justifies any further interest in them on my part.

Edited By Ian Jones on 25/11/2017 14:38:41