Truth in love
Well-Known Member
I did not see the pics a saw a few years ago. I did find this.
London Bans Knives Despite Failure Of Gun Ban
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Fear of Guns
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
London Bans Knives Despite Failure Of Gun Ban
There are 2 basic approaches to gun control....
- Demand that reality be different.
- Enact what is both possible & productive.
But beware....banning the AR15 would achieve nothing.
There are many alternatives, some with more firepower.
But urging a ban that isn't constitutional, or doomed to
be useless (eg, the 1994 ban) is counter-productive.
It gives the appearance of progress, which saps the will
to do something actually useful.
Instead of banning, I sense too little desire to restrict
who possesses guns, training required, & storage being
secure. Such events seem to cause partisans to dig in
to extreme positions.
Truth in love
Well-Known Member
Trying to disarm good people is not lawful, moral or productive.
In our view.
For some, what is good & lawful is having an
armed government & disarmed populace.
Truth in love
Well-Known Member
True. The nice thing about a republic is that law rules not random opinions.
And the ability to reside in a state with
stronger support for rights we value.
Erebus
Well-Known Member
Okay, I think I better understand where you're coming from now.
The article you posted gets a couple of things right and a couple of things wrong. Greater London's murder rate briefly topped New York's for a couple of months in 2018. That didn't last long though.
London murders back below New York levels, but set for highest rate in a decade
Another thing the article got partially right is that 2018 and 2019 were particularly bad years in terms of murder rates. However, the murder rates still remained lower than New York's overall and had fallen again in 2020 (though to be completely fair, you could probably chalk that one up to the pandemic).
So while knife crime is certainly a problem in the UK, the murder rate is significantly lower than that of the US:
United Kingdom vs United States: Crime > Violent crime Facts and Stats
That we need a more gun conscious culture.
We need professionals like you who focus on eliminating accidental deaths caused by firearms.
Why focus on accidental deaths?
In your OP, you argued how we should base our priorities on body count. Most gun deaths are suicides.
I think your post points out that we won't eliminate murder
& assault. To do so would be a false & problematic goal.
But there are opportunities to reduce the crimes to a lower
level without excessively infringing upon freedoms.
Truth in love
Well-Known Member
We have some major problems here. However legal gun ownership does not increase murder rates.
Erebus
Well-Known Member
I agree. Attempting to make people perfectly safe 100% of the time is the stuff of sci-fi dystopias. You have to aim for a happy balance.
This is where my confusion on the gun debate comes in. I can certainly see cases where having guns makes sense (such as if you're a hunter) but I struggle to understand why so many people want to have guns despite not really needing them. I personally don't think that the UK's approach is excessively restrictive when it comes to gun ownership but again, I acknowledge that I'm approaching this from a different cultural mindset.
It appears that in the UK, the right to self defense
is weaker. And of course, Ameristan began its
existence by armed revolt. That left lasting impressions.
Of course, restricting just who can legally own
what kinds of guns has the potential to reduce
the murder rate.
Erebus
Well-Known Member
This is a tricky one for me to argue for or against to be honest. I had a quick look online and found studies demonstrating that increased number of firearms also coincides with an increased number of firearm homicides. My immediate response to that was, "Well obviously!" I think I'm done sifting through articles and studies for a while.
I strongly suspect that legal gun ownership does correlate with higher homicide rates, though I acknowledge that it's not always easy to pin homicide rates on any one thing. I shared some crime statistics comparing the UK to the US but I'm not going to pretend that the disparity is solely due to gun ownership. For one thing, I know that the UK police receive substantially more training than US police do which could be one factor. Differences in our healthcare systems could be another and so on.
The culture surrounding guns is certainly markedly different and you're probably correct that our histories play a role in that.
I don't know enough about the differences in self defence laws (I'm assuming in the US it varies by state?) to comment on that part.
Well, we tend to treat such as defence, so killing another might seem to be one step too far if it is actually avoidable. Something the USA doesn't seem to have a problem with, even as to cops shooting and killing those apparently fleeing arrest.
Like @Revoltingest said chances of my committing suicide are 0. Me shooting myself is not something I am afraid of so no reason for me to personally fear guns because of this statistic.
The OP is about one's personal fear of being killed by a gun.
Cops are held to a much lower standard than civilians.Well, we tend to treat such as defence, so killing another might seem to be one step too far if it is actually avoidable. Something the USA doesn't seem to have a problem with, even as to cops shooting and killing those apparently fleeing arrest.
Odd, isn't it.