Shooting UK: UK Second Amendment

I'm afraid it is your logic that is flawed mate as is your graph from the BCS who have been ridiculed in the past and largely dismissed for not painting a very accurate picture and just being a propaganda machine for the Labour govt. The BCS don't even include figures for criminal and victims of crime under 16. In fact they don't include or state quite a number of things in their figures. It is an extrapolated figure based on only 0.06% of the population at best. Your claim that violent crime has dropped 40% is factually wrong especially if you’re getting your figures from the discredited BCS!

Don't believe me?
See the following links:
http://tinyurl.com/4j9roz
http://tinyurl.com/4jhryy
http://tinyurl.com/3jwnxo
http://tinyurl.com/4nxnc7
http://tinyurl.com/4gnqs4

Now here are some true figures for violent crime before the government started fiddling the figures and these I might add are the home offices own figures:

This seems to conflict with your 40% drop yet the figures are both from the government. Mine direct from the Home Office and yours via the dodgy discredited BCS.

Violent Crime has soured since 1997. It has more than trebled.

Gun and knife crime has quadrupled under Labour government.

You are correct that the use of illegal handguns in crime has being going on for a long time. It has just proliferated and skyrocketed in the last ten years and since the guns laws came in after Dunblane.

I never suggested anywhere that “we” “law abiding” “subjects” run around with kalashnikovs. Please point out to me where I suggested this? I would like to point out that at the moment criminals are running around with such weapons though. Gang members in London have them and teenage chavs hanging out at train stations in the greater Manchester area have been filmed with Mak 10 sub machine guns. This is not stuff I am making up but all documented and in the news in the last year or so.

What I am saying is that law-abiding subjects in this country should be legally allowed to carry a firearm, a handgun and that the laws rushed through after Dunblane have not worked. You seem to agree with this that the laws after Dunblane haven’t worked as you use the word “ineffective”???

As the comment on the BBC article link I posted above says, "To be persuaded crime is going down, look at the government figures. To be persuaded it is not, look out the window".

So you consider the gun problem in the UK to be isolated? Staggering! I can very much attribute Gun crime in this country to the ineffectiveness of the gun ban. And I remind you that it was you that correctly used the word "ineffective".

I can say with 100% certainty that the ban on guns wont prevent another atrocity like Dunblane from happening. I can also say with 100% certainty that in the United States law abiding citizens have been able to prevent atrocities by legally being able to carry guns and use them to defend themselves and others.

The handgun ban will in no way prevent another Dunblane from happening in this country when it is so easy to get hold of guns illegally and you should not be so complacent to think that the ban has worked because of that when quite clearly gun and knife crime have quadrupled under this government and there have been many innocent kids in London and elsewhere in this country killed by guns especially in the last couple of years.

An interesting article below on our gun laws in this country, and how a different approach is needed.

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For James Andre Smartt-Ford, 16, Michael Dosunmu, 15, and Billy Cox, 15, the hand-wringing by police and politicians over the escalation of gun crime comes a little late: all three have been shot dead in south London over the past 10 days.

Public revulsion over such criminality is, shamingly, blunted by the fact that they appear to be victims of ethnic gang crime. Society at large sees it as "their" problem, not its own. Such a view is criminally complacent.

We have, post-Dunblane, what are said to be the toughest gun control laws in the world. They have actually proved strikingly ineffectual.

Gun crime has doubled since they were introduced. Young hoodlums are able to acquire handguns - either replica weapons that have been converted, or imports from eastern Europe - with ease. With no dedicated frontier police, our borders remain hopelessly porous. The only people..

Full article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/02/16/dl1601.xml

Source: Telegraph Media Group Ltd

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One of the points I find the most powerful is in the comments section at the end from a British Ex-Pat living in the United States.

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In Colorado recently, an 18 year old man killed seven people in a shopping mall. He had a backpack stuffed with arms and ammunition as he walked in, intending to kill as many people as possible. He was killed by an off-duty policeman who was armed. How many people would have been killed if the policeman hadn't have been armed?
Here in Florida we have the right to carry a concealed weapon only after rigorous training and a background check. No shooting crimes have been committed by anyone with a Concealed Weapons Permit.
I feel safe in my house!

Posted by Vincent Jones, English ex-pat who used to be against guns.

For the rest of the comments follow the link I posted higher up.

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Is it not time that we were allowed to defend ourselves in this country as well? At least if you had the means to defend yourself you would have a fighting chance. At the moment if someone pulls a gun or knife on you, the only thing you can do is pray you have enough money in your wallet to pacify them.

Violent Crime has gone up and up and up since Labour came to power in 1997. It is now clearly out of control.

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Detectives arrested a man on Sunday over the murder of a pregnant woman found dead in her home in south London after being shot twice in the head.
Krystal Hart, 22, was found with gunshot wounds by police in the hallway of her flat in Battersea, south London, on Friday shortly after 11 a.m.
Media reports said she was three months pregnant.
Detectives said a 40-year-old man had attended a police station in south London and had been arrested in connection with..
Full article: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070408/tuk-uk-britain-shooting-fa6b408_1.html
Source: Reuters (2007)
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LONDON (Reuters) - Police were questioning two teenagers, one aged 13, on Saturday after a 14-year-old boy was stabbed to death in east London, the latest murder involving young people in recent weeks.
The dead boy, named as Paul Erhahon, and his 15-year-old friend were found with stab wounds by police officers on Friday night near a block of flats in Leytonstone after being attacked during a confrontation with a large gang of youths.
They were taken to hospital but the 14-year-old died while his friend is in a critical condition.
"We understand a large group of youths were involved in an incident in the..
Full article here: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070407/tuk-uk-britain-stabbed-fa6b408.html
Source: Reuters (2007)

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This Labour governments policy of releasing criminals from Prison early or not sending them there at all in the first place due to a lack of space clearly isn’t working. How many people have been murdered in London this year now? Even the last few months?

We could really do with the help of someone like a Rudi Giuliani the former Mayor of New York, as well as the former Chief Police commissioner in New York Howard Safir for help on fighting violent crime and zero-tolerance policing in this country.

That alone though will be no good unless it is backed up by lengthy prison terms, and for that to happen someone is going to have to get building more prisons. After a decade of Labour government it doesn’t seem like they’re interested in the slightest in locking criminals up, or in passing laws to allow judges to give appropriate sentences to criminals.

It seems current Labour policy is not too punish murderers, paedophiles, burglars etc based on the severity of their crime, but based on the amount of space we have in our prisons and the amount of time we would be able to accommodate them in that space without infringing their human rights.

It seems that if hell froze over and we ever had a Lib-Dem government they would be even worse than Labour based on the quotes of some of their MPs:

Simon Hughes, Lib Dem president, said too many criminals are sent to jail. The Liberal Democrats would impose prison sentences 'only as a last resort'
Source: Lib Dem Policy Paper 51, Justice and the Community, June 2002.

The Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman, Mark Oaten, says he is 'absolutely convinced that prison is a complete and utter waste of time'
Source: BBC Radio 4 Westminster Hour, November 2003.

One of the top Lib-Dem policies would be to Abolish mandatory sentences. At least with Labour we still have some criminals getting sent to Prison, even if it is only for a short period of time, until we have to release them to make room for someone else.

Since Labour came to power in 1997, violent crime has gone from fewer than 400,000 (reported incidents) a year to almost 1,200,000, 1 Million 200 Thousand (reported incidents) a year by the year 2006. These figures are from the Home Office!

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Outrage as Lord Chief Justice says life sentences are 'too long'
The Lord Chief Justice declared yesterday that serious criminals are being sent to jail for too long.
Lord Phillips said politicians and judges have been pushed into setting increasingly long sentences and called for more community punishments outside jail.
And he said future generations will see the whole life sentences handed down to the most atrocious killers as too harsh.
Lord Phillips, the most senior judge in England and Wales, spoke amid an outcry over the sentences handed down to the teenage killers of ten-year-old Damilola Taylor.
The Preddie brothers may be freed from jail in three years' time.
Damilola's father Richard said yesterday: "The Lord Chief Justice is wrong and he is out of touch with reality."
But Lord Phillips compared the jail terms given to murderers with the cruel and barbarous punishments of past centuries.
In 100 years' time, prison terms of..
Full article: http://tinyurl.com/3xuy5d
Source: Evening Standard (2006)

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I think it’s probably time this judge retired. It’s also time that we started to build more prisons and get tough with criminals and send them to prison for lengthy periods.

Guns laws that Constrain the law abiding:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/02/16/dl1601.xml

I think it’s extremely naive to believe that the ban on guns will prevent another Dunblane or prevent gun crime from "continuing" to skyrocket.

At the Pantera concert were four people were killed it would be naive to believe if they banned guns that this would not happen. If guns were banned many more people would have been murdered at that concert as the security there wouldn't of been allowed guns to "take the killer out with".

Recently were there have been tragic incidents at Schools and Shopping Malls etc, many more people would have been murdered had it not been for private citizens, security guards and police whom were armed (thanks to the second amendment of the great constitution of the USA) and able to dispatch the crazed gun wielding killers.

In many US towns with high levels of gun ownership amongst private citizens there is virtually zero crime. You only get problems in bigger cities and places with more gun controls and regulations were it is mainly the criminal elements, gangs and drug dealers that have guns, with a lack of legal gun ownership amongst private citizens or a much lower level of ownership.

If you look at countries were guns have been banned in fairly recent times, violent crime has since soared out of all control and there have been many more incidents of this nature. This included the UK and Australia.

In Australia since they banned guns down under their violent crime and burglary has soared. Burglars no longer fear people being able to defend themselves.

Violent crime with guns and knives has soared in the UK in the last ten plus years especially since the gun laws rushed through after Dunblane on the back of public sentiment and emotion.

The UK now has immense problems and the latest campaign against knife and gun crime isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference.

If someone is crazed enough in the head that his first thought is to stab someone violently several times for looking at them the wrong way or asking them to behave themselves or stop swearing how does the UK government think that posters and television ads will work? They wont and the government is completely deluded to believe this.

You can't reason with these crazed individuals or ask them nicely not to go around stabbing people.

This Labour government has been soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime. And even started released criminals early from prison including violent criminals.

Is it any wonder more innocent people get shot and stabbed when they are no longer allowed to defend themselves or their property?

Labour is not living up to their primary responsibility as a government, which should be the safety and security of the people and to serve the people of this country. To also allow the good people of this country the ability to fend for themselves!

You need to remember that its not guns that kill people. Its people that kill people, and its especially at the moment here in the UK criminals that kill innocent people thanks to the ban on guns and thanks to this Labour governments policy of being soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime.

Gun Crime and violent crime is out of control in this country. There has recently been a wave of gun crime in the UK with quite a number of murders in the news. It has gone from less than 400,000 incidents of violent crime a year in 1997 to over 1.2 Million incidents a year in 2006 for the UK. Who knows what it is now since the Labour government started changing how they measure crime and fiddling the figures!!! These are just the reported incidents and they are the Home Office’s own figures. However much you can trust the Home Office these days!!!

The gun laws after Dunblane haven’t worked. They were ill thought out and rushed through on the back of public emotion. They just prevent innocent people from being able to legally carry a gun with a license and full training to be able to defend themselves.

Gun laws after Dunblane haven’t stopped the criminals and bad people in society from getting hold of guns. There are more on the streets now than ever before. You have 10-year-old gang members in South London in possession of Mak-10 sub machine guns. We will more than probably have another Dunblane in this country before long unfortunately. If someone is that far removed that they want to go out and kill a load of people then its more than probably likely that they will find a gun and go out and do exactly that.
At least in the US when tragic things like this happen, they at least have some chance to defend themselves from this type of thing as they have the right to carry a gun themselves.

They have more of a fighting chance and can often prevent people like this from killing even more by taking them out. Over here if someone pulls a knife or gun on you, you have no chance. The only thing you can do is give them all your money, hope the money in your pocket is enough to satisfy them, and then still hope that they don’t stab you or put a bullet in your head anyway.

The person who killed all those people in the US at Virginia Tech in 2007 had been watching a violent Korean movie beforehand. This is probably where he got the idea in the first place. If you ban or increase the age limit on videos like that which can cause younger people to get influenced then you would do more to reduce the problem than banning guns for the law abiding could ever hope to do.

A young Christian in London who had only recently come to the UK from Ghana to work was robbed by a gang of youths calling themselves the Muslim Boys. They took his mobile phone and his life. He was stabbed repeatedly by a pack of animals and died at the scene.

Chinese students after the Tiananmen Square massacre in a message smuggled out and addressed to the American people said to them to never ever give up their right to bear arms or the same thing would happen to them as well. Between 200 and 300 students protesting peacefully were killed by the Chinese army that day.

Another interesting article:

Gun crime trebles as weapons and drugs flood British cities

GUN crime has almost trebled in London during the past year and is soaring in other British cities, according to Home Office figures obtained by The Telegraph.

Police chiefs fear that Britain is witnessing the kind of cocaine-fuelled violence that burst upon American cities in the 1980s. Cocaine, particularly from Jamaica, now floods into Britain, while the availability of weapons - many of them from eastern Europe - is also increasing.

Detectives in London say that the illegal importation of guns started after the end of the Bosnia conflict and that they are changing hands for as little as £200. During the 10 months to January 31, there were 939 crimes involving firearms in the Metropolitan Police area compared with 322 in the 10 months to the end of January, 2001 - an almost three-fold increase.

In Merseyside there were 57 shootings during the 12 months to last December compared with 15 in the same period the year before. Greater Manchester also recorded a 23 per cent increase in gun crime and there have been rises in Nottinghamshire, Avon and Somerset, West Yorkshire and the Northumbria Police area which covers Newcastle.

Gun crimes during the first 10 months of the annual period have trebled in most of the urban areas which have so far submitted statistics to the Home Office. Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said gun gangs were spreading across the country whereas…
Rest of article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/02/24/nguns24.xml
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Some of the safest crime free communities in America where there have never been any gun crimes are areas where all the people living there legally own and carry a gun and are required to by the district after a certain age.

If you want to know what happens when a country takes away the right to bear arms of its citizens, take a look at China and more recently Zimbabwe. We could also be heading slowly in that direction.

If the state fails us the only thing we can do is defend ourselves. Greek philosopher Aristotle considered popular arms ownership the single most reliable indicator of whether a society was free.

John