Update from gun-free England

[Merchant Marine]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/6438601/Gun-crime-doubles-in-a-decade.html
>Gun crime has almost doubled in the last decade despite high profile Government campaigns to tackle the problem.

Uh oh. :/

[PavePusher]

1. Gosh, whoever could have predicted that. (Smell that? That's sarcasm...) n/t

[damntexdem]

12. Yeah, imagine, nearly 10k gun crimes in a single country.

(Smell sarcasm right back at you.)

[Merchant Marine]

15. 10k gun crimes

In an island nation with easily closed borders, a total ban on semiautomatic weapons and a de-facto ban on justifiable self-defense. And the gun crime is increasing because availability is increasing. But guns are banned! HOW ARE CRIMINALS GETTING GUNS WHEN GUNS ARE ILLEGAL?

[tabatha]

2. You took your sentence out of context.

"One part of the country has seen the problem increase almost seven fold as the availability of guns, and criminals' williness to use them rises."

Britain used to be much safer with even the police unarmed.

The availability of guns has changed that.

[Merchant Marine]

7. England is an island

And has banned the civilian ownership of all semiautomatic weapons. Guns are as unavailable as any gun control true believer can make them.

England has done to guns what we have done to drugs- create a lucrative criminal market over which they have no control.

[tabatha]

10. I repeat

"One part of the country has seen the problem increase almost seven fold as the availability of guns, and criminals' williness to use them rises."

England has historically been without guns - and the Bobbies were not armed.
There was no problem, then.

[Merchant Marine]

13. But why are guns availiable to criminals?

Isn't gun control effective?

[paulsby]

23. bull

the gun ban is recent. england has not HISTORICALLY been without guns

england has NEVER (not since their invention) been WITHOUT guns.

what is interesting, but not surprising, is that crime, part I crime, and violent crime have all significantly INCREASED since they passed their near total gun ban.

and as pointed out, this is an island nation. it's not like you can use the argument that "oh, they just drove to the next state over and made some straw purchases" excuse

[Euromutt]

32. Well, you can drive to the next country over, sort of...

In that you can take your car onto a ferry or the Channel Tunnel car train, but it's not like that's going to put in or even near any countries where you're going to find someone with a clean criminal record who can just walk into a gun shop and straw purchase a handgun for you.

[SteveM]

47. Uh, England has NOT been "historically... without guns."

Most of gun laws in England have come about over the last 100 years (since slightly before WWI), and have had since their inception a notably anti-proletarian, anti-working class bent to them. I would agree that England over the last couple hundred years has had a notably low crime rate -- even during times when guns were quite legal and more widely distributed.

post hoc, ergo propter hoc isn't just for breakfast anymore.

[tabatha]

11. From wiki

A Home Office study published in 2007 reported that gun crime in England & Wales remains a relatively rare event. Firearms (including air weapons) were used in only one in every 250 recorded crimes (one in every 500 when air weapons were excluded). It said that injury caused during a firearm offence was rare with less than 3% resulting in a serious or fatal injury.<28>

The number of homicides committed with firearms has remained between a range of 49 and 97 in the 8 years to 2006. There were 2 fatal shootings of police officers in England and Wales in this period and 107 non-fatal shootings - an average of 9.7 per year over the same period.<29>

In 2005/6 the police in England and Wales reported 50 gun homicides, a rate of 0.1 illegal gun deaths per 100,000 of population. Only 6.6% of homicides involved the use of a firearm. <29>

By way of international comparison, in 2004 the police in the United States reported 9,326 gun homicides.<30> The overall homicide rates per 100,000 (regardless of weapon type) reported by the United Nations for 1999 were 4.55 for the U.S. and 1.45 in England and Wales. <31> The homicide rate in England and Wales at the end of the 1990s was below the EU average, but the rates in Northern Ireland and Scotland were above the EU average.<32>

While the number of crimes involving firearms in England and Wales increased from 13,874 in 1998/99 to 24,070 in 2002/03, they remained relatively static at 24,094 in 2003/04, and have since fallen to 21,521 in 2005/06. The latter includes 3,275 crimes involving imitation firearms and 10,437 involving air weapons, compared to 566 and 8,665 respectively in 1998/99.<33> Only those "firearms" positively identified as being imitations or air weapons (e.g. by being recovered by the police or by being fired) are classed as such, so the actual numbers are likely to be significantly higher. In 2005/06, 8,978 of the total of 21,521 firearms crimes (42%) were for criminal damage.<34>

Since 1998, the number of people injured by firearms in England and Wales increased by 110%,<35> from 2,378 in 1998/99 to 5,001 in 2005/06. Most of the rise in injuries were in the category slight injuries from the non-air weapons. "Slight" in this context means an injury that was not classified as "serious" (i.e. did not require detention in hospital, did not involve fractures, concussion, severe general shock, penetration by a bullet or multiple shot wounds). In 2005/06, 87% of such injuries were defined as "slight," which includes the use of firearms as a threat only. In 2007, the British government was accused by Shadow Home Secretary David Davis of making "inaccurate and misleading" statements claiming that gun crime was falling, after official figures showed that gun-related killings and injuries recorded by police had risen more than fourfold since 1998, mainly due to a rise in non-fatal injuries. <36><37> Justice Minister Mr Jack Straw told the BBC, "We are concerned that within the overall record, which is a good one, of crime going down in the last 10-11 years, the number of gun-related incidents has gone up. But it has now started to fall." <38>

In late 2009 it was reported that gun crime had doubled in the last 10 years, with an increase in both firearms offences and deaths. A government spokesman said this increase was a result of a change in reporting practices in 2001 and that gun crime had actually fallen since 2005. Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, attributed the rise to ineffective Policing and an out of control gang culture. <39>

So what's your point?

[Merchant Marine]

14. I wouldn't expect

for the British Government to admit that its policies are ineffective. Cute how they say crime has fallen and the attribute a rise in crime to ineffective police and gang culture.

But the point is clear- the British government's long crusade against not only guns but any and all self defense rights has resulted in a society that is less safe than it has ever been. Britain suffers from higher rates of carjacking, burglary and mugging then the US. Note that these are all violent crimes against the person. British criminals have no reason to fear the people they are robbing, unlike US criminals who fear an armed citizen more than the cops.

[tabatha]

16. The crime rate in the US is worse than that in the UK.

Where do criminals get guns? where do they get anything?

[tabatha]

17. Here check the crime rates in various countries:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap-crime-murders-per-capita

US: 0.042802 per 1,000 people
UK: 0.0140633 per 1,000 people
Australia: 0.0150324 per 1,000 people

The US had four times the amount that the UK and Australia have.
Australia has strict gun laws.

[Merchant Marine]

19. You're only looking at murder

The only category the US leads in thanks to inner-city drug violence.

Australia leads the world in carjackings, 23 per 1000
UK is leading this year in kidnappings, with over 3.5k total.
Australia leads in burglaries, 21 per 1000. UK follows with 13
US and UK are nearly tied for assaults, around 7.5 per 1000
Australia and Canada lead the US in rape .77 vs .30
UK also leads US in robberies, 1.7 to 1.5 per 1000

So you have a small added chance of being murdered if you live in a US inner city, but on the other hand living in a gun-free utopia like the UK you have a immensely higher chance of being raped, robbed, assaulted, burglared, robbed carjacked or have your children kidnapped. Sounds like a great place to live, especially since if you try to stop and of the scum perpetrating this you'll be sent to prison yourself while they get out on "cautions".

[tabatha]

26. If you are talking about guns and killing

then one looks are murders/deaths.

Australia may lead in burglaries, but the weapon of choice is a KNIFE not a GUN.
https://www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=101186
Hence laws on guns are not applicable to that statistic.

And one cannot begin to estimate whether or not guns were used in kidnapping, carjacking, robberies, etc.

[paulsby]

24. jeez, you can't even get your OWN statistics right

or understand them.\

you did not quote the CRIME RATES as you claim. you quoted the murder rates.

england has a higher crime rate, but a lower murder rate, fwiw.

nobody denies the US has a higher murder rate.

but you could at least understand and properly explain your own statistics.

keeerist

[tabatha]

25. I thought the discussion was about guns and killing.

See #26.

[Merchant Marine]

27. Reading comprehension

I said that England's laws had resulted in a less safe society, not that they had a higher rate of murder.

[tabatha]

28. Writing comprehension

This is your heading "Update from gun-free England"

[Merchant Marine]

29. So?

It's an update, and England is as nominally gun free as man's law and dominion can make it. I saw this article in my daily news offering, thought "Oh, how are those limeys keeping on?" and posted it.

Now where in that header did I say "Murder", "rate", or "England's higher than US"?

[tabatha]

30. So?

What was the point of your original post?

[Merchant Marine]

31. My point

was to bring an article detailing a rise in England's gun crime to the attention of the DU community and perhaps add in a short, snarky line to mock the failure of their gun control utopia.

[tabatha]

40. I hope you do realize

that for the most part poverty breeds crime.

That is why the crime rate is so high in South Africa - the difference between the haves and have-nots is probably greater in that country than anywhere else. Years of poor eating (read Kaffir Boy, where a family went without food for a week) and lack of education, have resulted in a large number of people being unable to fit into a society where work and money are essential to survive.

You may have noticed that the economies throughout the world have suffered, and more people fall into poverty every day.

Guns to do not create crime. Someone with a gun does not say, I have a gun, therefore I'll go rob a bank.
People say I need the money, therefore I'll go rob a bank. If they have a gun to help the robbery, then it is used. Some people have tried to rob a bank without a gun, using their hand under a sweater to simulate a gun. In Australia, where guns are not easy to come by, knives are the weapon of choice.

However, as I said, poverty for the MOST part breeds crime, but not always.

There is also white-collar crime, such as Bernie Madoff, who stole more money than has been stolen in South Africa in probably its entire history. And he never even used a gun.

So usually, it is the desire to commit a crime that comes first, and then the means to do it comes second - sometimes with a gun, sometimes without.

So saying that England's gun crime has anything to do with gun control is illogical, and makes no sense. It has more to do with the increase in poverty, and because there is a long history of guns in that country, they are probably stolen to help commit crimes that have arisen out of any reason but stricter gun control.

[Euromutt]

45. I think it's social inequality, rather than poverty as such

Black (and other minority) kids in blighted inner-city areas aren't susceptible to the lure of the drugs trade just because they're poor (though obviously that's a large part of it), but because they're shown a more affluent lifestyle in popular culture, and aspire to it. Given the choice between living in poverty till age 60-70 and living like a hip hop star till age 25, many opt for the latter, but the only reason they do is because there's an alternative to poverty.

Conversely, the perpetrators of white-collar crime, who may already be quite affluent, are likely motivated by fear of losing the money they have (a not unrealistic fear with dodgy investments like the ones that caused the current economic clusterfuck) so they try to grab as much they can while they can.

You're quite correct, in my opinion, that an increase in gun crime is not the effect of gun control; more usually, an increase in violent crime creates a demand for guns, which in turn results in the imposition of gun control measures in an effort to stem the violent crime. Which is why it's big cities (e.g. NYC and Chicago) that tend to have the tightest gun control measures. That said, however, gun control does restrict the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against violent crime, in particular violent crime that is not committed using firearms.

[NewMoonTherian]

46. I think that's exactly what the OP is driving at.

England's strict gun control laws are not helping to reduce the crime rate. They are either having zero impact, or are exascerbating the problem because criminals don't need to take into account armed resistance. Maybe I'm reading too much into the OP,, but that's the general argument of the pro-RKBA side with regard to England.

[paulsby]

43. that may be true but tabatha

said she was quoting crime rates, and she wasn't. she was quoting murder rates.

[Euromutt]

38. No, it's about violent crime in general, and violent crime using firearms in particular

You can't attribute the lower homicide rate in the UK (compared to the US) to British gun control laws, for the very simple reason that the UK homicide rate was lower than the US's prior to the most recent measures (the ones that prohibited ownership of semi-automatic and pump-action centerfire long guns post-Hungerford, and handguns post-Dunblane) being enacted. Moreover, the American non-firearm homicide rate is higher than the UK's overall homicide rate.

I can't explain why--maybe this is something for a sociologist or cultural anthropologist--but while American society is comparatively not particularly violent (and a lot less violent than many countries), when violence does occur, it is disproportionately homicidal. And the impression I get is that it's not that America's "gun culture" is the cause of the national homicidal tendency, but rather, that it's the homicidal tendency that is partly the cause of America's gun culture.

But the UK still has one of the highest homicide rates in western Europe (after Finland and Belgium), and has just about the highest non-fatal violent crime rate of any wealthy industrialized country. In 2004, you were about 1/3 as likely to be murdered in the UK as you were in the US, but about half again as likely to be assaulted. For an awful lot of British, Saturday night just isn't complete without an alcohol-fueled punch-up in the car park after the pubs close.

The UK homicide rate actually used to be higher; it's actually been dropping since 2003. But during the same period, non-fatal firearm injuries trebled, and hospital admissions for knife wounds increased as well. The most plausible explanation is that more (both in relative and absolute terms) serious (i.e. armed) violence is being committed by, not to put too fine a point on it, amateurs.

Whatever has been driving this increase in violent behavior in Britain, availability of firearms isn't it. In 1988, Britain came in eighth out of the European countries surveyed in the ICVS, and well behind the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in terms of non-fatal violent crime. By 2001, it was a close second behind Australia, and by 2004 it was firmly in the lead. During this period, possession of firearms was several restricted, with large numbers of legally held firearms being confiscated and destroyed. The increase in violent firearm crime has occurred almost entirely with illegal firearms, and the supply has been driven by the demand.

And that's the fundamental flaw of gun control: it's based on the premise that criminals will be discouraged from committing crimes if they don't have a firearm available and, more importantly, that they won't try to get one illegally, be it by bribing a police armorer or evidence clerk, smuggling them in from abroad, or even making improvised ones. The very existence of the zip gun, as used by gangs in places like New York in the 1950s, is evidence that this is incorrect. It is violent crime that creates the demand for guns, not the presence of guns that creates violent crime.

[tabatha]

44. You're saying much of what I said here, but from a different point of view

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=264116&mesg_id=264190

[paulsby]

42. you said you were quoting the

CRIME rate, and you quoted the murder rates.

if you can't be intellectually honest enough to admit that simple mistake, then you are hopeless

i am hopeful at this point that you are a person who is intellectually honest

do i need to quote you, to show you?

[tabatha]

18. deleted

[villager]

3. I know! Let's have the NRA write their gun laws! That will make it *all better!*

n/t

[Merchant Marine]

8. The NRA

Supports the 1934 Registry, NICS checks and all of the sensible gun laws on the books.

In any case, they can't make it any worse than your ideology has.

[GreenStormCloud]

21. Sounds like a good idea. They are doing a good job here. N/T

[Bucky]

4. About 10,000 total "firearm offenses" in one year from a population of 53 million

One-sixth the size of the US. One percent of our gun-crime rate.

PS, I wonder where all those guns are coming from.

[Merchant Marine]

9. I confess

I bought them all at a gun show in Virginia. :/

[GreenStormCloud]

20. But their total violent crime rate is higher.

You leave out muggings, strongarm robbery, knife crime, rape, etc. I guess those don't count since an eeevvviiilll gun wasn't used.

[Bucky]

35. You seem to have an agenda. I don't. But let me ask you this...

if you were to be the victim of a violent crime, would you rather be victimized by a knife or by a gun?

[Euromutt]

37. If I may be pedantic, very few people have ever been victimized *by* a knife or gun

Plenty have been victimized with knives or guns, but they were victimized by the people wielding those weapons.

And to answer your question, if I were unarmed myself, I'd probably greatly prefer to be confronted by a criminal wielding a gun than a knife. Knife wounds can be just as fatal as gunshot wounds, and are generally messier to boot. Moreover, there's criminological research that indicates that robbers who use blades or bludgeons quite often injure their victim "pre-emptively," to show they "mean business"; gun-wielding robbers, on the other hand, generally find that the presence of gun alone is sufficient to guarantee compliance.

[GreenStormCloud]

39. Neither. I carry a gun to fight back.

In actual practice, a knife mugger is more likely to cut you than a gun robber is to shoot you. The knife goblin usually makes a cut to prove that he is serious and to establish situation dominance. A gun robber rarely shoots as he feels confident that showing his gun will instantly establish both seriousness and dominance.

BTW - I posted this BEFORE I read Euromutt's reply. So you have two different people telling you exactly the same thing.

[Euromutt]

36. The guns are mostly coming from elsewhere in Europe

Though they weren't necessarily capable of firing live ammunition originally. An article in the Guardian last year (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/aug/30/ukcrime1) described how somebody smuggled in a shipment of at least several hundred Baikal MP-79 8mm tear gas pistols (http://www.baikalinc.ru/en/company/64.html); the MP-79 is essentially a 9mm Makarov pistol (http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg21-e.htm) with the barrel and some other parts replaced so it can only fire 8mm tear gas cartridges. But once in the UK, the barrel and other parts are replaced, in effect restoring it to its original live-firing form, except that the replacement barrel is longer, and threaded for a sound suppressor (silencer). You can buy the refitted pistol with a silencer for between £1,000 and £1,500.

In 2006, some enterprising chap bought up a load of several hundred blank-firing revolvers in Germany (for maybe €60 each), smuggled them into the UK, replaced the cylinders with ones capable of accepting live rounds, and sold them for £700-800 each.

Other guns are "diverted" from manufacturers in central/eastern Europe (the former Yugoslavia, Romania, etc. as well as Turkey) by local organized criminals and trafficked to western Europe. In the Netherlands, mob hits are typically carried out by ex-Yugoslav guns for hire, who travel up from Croatia or Serbia to do a job, bringing their own guns with them.

[katandmoon]

5. Do try to contain your glee.

[Merchant Marine]

6. Your ideology

was dead on arrival and further attempts to make it work abroad will only make the corpse twitch.

[oneshooter]

22. Why the long face?

Can't face the truth?

Oneshooter
Livin in Texas

[proteus_lives]

34. The truth hurts.

Doesn't it?

[russ1943]

33. some are converted.

A brand of replica gun sold on the high street as a starting pistol is behind a surge in gangland shootings that have led Scotland Yard to deploy armed patrols on London estates, The Times has learnt. Olympic BBM 9mm revolvers, converted by criminals to fire real bullets, make up 40 per cent of the live-firing guns seized by the Metropolitan Police in the past year. Despite being relatively easy to convert, the Olympic pistols are legally on sale in hunting, sports and outdoor shops across Britain for £80-90. They are also available on the internet, where one retailer’s blurb states that the gun is “Home Office approved”. In the 12 months to September, London saw a 17 percent rise in gun offenses, up from 1,484 to 1,737. According to government figures for England and Wales, there are about 50 to 60 shooting deaths in the country each year. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6888107.ece

[rrneck]

41. In other news...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/3481419.stm

Police response times to emergency calls in London are slowing down, according to the latest figures.
The number of incidents Metropolitan Police officers get to within the recommended 12 minutes has dropped to an average of 71% - down 1.3%.

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/gen/30354res20070705.html

•Ultimately, boundless human ingenuity will always defeat technological solutions such as cameras. Rather than turning into a surveillance society, we have no choice but to rely upon old fashioned intelligence and investigatory techniques (the only thing that has ever succeeded in actually stopping an attack), as well as attacking the root causes of terrorism and improving our ability to respond to an attack.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/world/europe/25surveillance.html

Britons Weary of Surveillance in Minor Cases
By SARAH LYALL
POOLE, England — It has become commonplace to call Britain a “surveillance society,” a place where security cameras lurk at every corner, giant databases keep track of intimate personal details and the government has extraordinary powers to intrude into citizens’ lives.

A report in 2007 by the lobbying group Privacy International placed Britain in the bottom five countries for its record on privacy and surveillance, on a par with Singapore.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0206/p07s02-woeu.html

Big Brother in Britain: Does more surveillance work?
It's successes like these that are giving CCTV, or closed-circuit television, a good name in Britain. The technology has become popular and widespread, with the result that Britons are by far the most watched people on earth, with one camera for every 14 people, according to recent estimates.
...
But serious question marks hang over the technology and its dark Orwellian implications. Many cameras are hidden or not signposted, in breach of regulations. Several cases of abuse have been documented, raising fears of snooping or worse.

Civil liberty groups complain that the intrusive lens scanning for suspicious characters contravenes that pillar of civil society - the presumption of innocence.

Research meanwhile suggests that the camera systems may not actually deter criminals.

http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article936

Great Britain: Excessive video surveillance
Great Britain is the country where there are the most CCTV cameras in the world. But what is the use of those 4.2 million CCTV cameras that monitor sixty million citizens and decorate the buildings and the streets of the country? Not much, according to police inspector Mike Neville, in charge of the video surveillance branch of the metropolitan police in London.

In a report published last week, he claims that CCTV cameras helped to solve only 3% of the crimes in the capital and that they do not even have a preventive effect against crime. The system is “a fiasco”, says the inspector. Of course, he asks for more money to make it more efficient.