What the hell?! Virginia thread

A violent crime involving guns will lead to more injuries and deaths than a crime involving any other kind of weapon... the difference is fairly obvious. Crime rates are fairly constant in the UK and US, but in the UK fewer people are killed or injured because there are so few guns.

Dirtyvibe... The homicide rate in the UK is significantly lower than in the USA, I think by a factor of about 3 when adjusted for population difference.

 

Yes, but the 1997 ban was specifically to outlaw handguns, all guns have always been tightly licensed and controlled in the UK. The 1997 ban just meant that you couldn't own a handgun even with a license.

 

It think that it is said that you take and tragidy that had nothing to do with governments gun law or anything else and make it a thred about bashing the US. There are things wrong with the US but there are things wrong with every country. The man who did the shootings is the one to blame and in my opinion the University is also to blame because they knew he had a history of mental problems with rage and anger issues but they still let him live on campus and go to school. Everyone has a right to their opinion but I think there is a lot of narrow minded conversations going on about this topic.

 

I haven't seen any US bashing in this thread

 

The reason I said that is becauase a lot of suicides in the U.S are incorrectly reported as murders to save the family embarassment. I don't know how much that actually effects the statistics.

 

If you've seen Ross Kemp On Gangs it really seems the U.K is turning into the new "america" of gun crime =/ but alas you can't always believe what the tv shows.

 

I'm sure they meant "The right to bare arms"... surely, allowing stupid people (meaning "low intelligence", NOT "stupid Americans") to have guns is just insane! Is the right to bear arms to do with self defence or the right to attack? A gun has no defencive properties whatsoever... I'm sure I've opened another can of worms!

And while I'm at it, it went almost unnoticed that (in the UK) the "War Office" was renamed "Ministry of Defence", there should be a field somewhere in the world where it is legal for people to just go in guns blazing and kill other like minded people until they themselves are killed, at which point a nice shiny medal is pinned to their shirt.

 

I think the problem is that most tv shows don't provide a representative sample. They might explore individual incidents, but they don't tend to provide studies on which general laws can be inferred. There are certainly areas of South London that are quite dangerous and no doubt have higher rates of violent crime than the national average, but tv shows will explore this precisely because it is the exception, not the rule. Imagine a news report: "There is no news today, everything is fine, no one was shot." Well, that happened once, but I'd say it's pretty rare....

 

Heh, wouldn't it be funny if all the founding fathers meant was defending people's right to wear a t-shirt

Interestingly, there seem to be different interpretations of "the right to bear arms" from the second amendment, varying from 'the right of the state to keep a standing army' to the right of an individual to take up arms in defense of himself and the state. The phrase to "bear arms" is primarily used in a military sense, to act as a soldier. The constitution was conceived in the context of a newly free republic whose citizen militia has just won independence from Britain, and whose future and security was far from assured.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." (second amendment to the US constitution)

I think the right to bear arms is very much meant in this context as the right (in fact responsibility) of the individual to take up the fight for the USA against any invading power. It clearly has very little to do with the right to defend yourself against crime, and was conceived in such a different context from the USA of today that to rely on this constitutional right as a defense of owning assault weapons in the 21st century is clearly ludicrous.

 

Kudos to Lith, food for thought.

Rule books need to be written and re-written as the very structure of society shifts beneath them.

 

hey, even with guns the citizens of the States are doing that already!
how else did Bush get back in office for one? I know I certainly didn't vote for the bastard.

 

bah ... if it werent' for the States Canada and Mexico would have much fewer weapons to then illegally smuggle into the States in the first place!

this statement alone just makes me totally question your perspective of reality. honestly.

 

a knife though is something close at hand as well. you can not get "caught in the crossfire" of knife violence (unless someone decides to throw one).

guns have a degree of violence associated with them that are worse than knives. it isn't just a personal act of violence it is an impersonal machine you are using to create violence and anyone caught in the midst has a chance of dying.

no, this doesn't make one type of violence better than the other; but i tell you despite people using knives over here to commit crimes i feel much safer knowing that someone would have to be close to me to hurt me as opposed to being 10 feet away or more or possibly even trying to shoot at someone else and i get hurt in the process.

 

there was an episode of Family Guy that had a line in it somewhat like that. I was trying to find the clip as a bit of humor but can't find it anywhere.


...oops, i found it.


http://www.metacafe.com/watch/128834/family_guy_right_to_bear_arms/

 

=== @ nacht ===

*laffs!*

...

well, ya gotta laff!

=== @ phoenix_indigo ===

lolz!

sry.

 

his daddies friends on the supreme court installed him, as well as help from diebold.

 

that's ridiculous......I question your perspective of reality as well. Perhaps illegal firearms from Mexico would be less of a threat considering firearm ownership there is illegal (only people who have weapons there are LEO's and criminals) but if anything Canada is more supportive of firearms than the united states.....everybody in canada has guns.............when I lived in Quebec, every single solitary person I knew owned a firearm.....I can't even say that about the states.

 

did they own shotguns or did they own sub machine guns and glocks?

 

All of the above, in all honesty i've seen some insane collections in Canada, i've never seen anything quite like it in the states, Americans tend to own 1-3 guns, Canadians seem to be preparing for Armageddon......but hey, whatever it's their right. They also have a much, much, lower murder rate than the states, which brings me back to my point that I feel it is more cultural than anything.

 

Yep, I'm sure there are some guns smuggled from other places, but frankly ... why would you go to the trouble of doing something so dangerous when it's so easy to get hold of guns legally in the US and for these guns to end up on the black market. I'm sure the major source of illegal weapons used by criminals are those weapons bought legally inside the US and then sold or stolen. This idea that the sale of legal guns is just for reponsible citizens and does not feed into the criminal use of firearms is just frankly ridiculous. Widespread availability of firearms = high gun crime.

Restricting legal gun sales will (obviously) not stop the black market in firearms, but it will reduce the overall availability of weapons, make it harder for people to obtain them and force criminals to seek weapons from sources which can be far more easily targeted and policed than the black market sale of guns purchased legally. I think dudenamedrob is suffering from a basic failure of logic when he implies that restricting the sale of guns will somehow make guns more available! Gun control = fewer guns = less gun crime. Simple as.