Re: It was clearly the right thing to do...
 

Sorry presumed l was talking to an American.
l was talking about the US not the UK.

l drink with a canadian and a yank, funniest people around, really, you should here some of the stuff they come up with, awsome.l dunno about drinkin with a scot, first you gotta understand em, LOL, then you gotta be carefull not to call him Irish ! LOL !
Saw the funniest thing with a scot in the torquay pub here in hervey bay qld australia, about 2 years ago, the scot bet some aussie clowns over a game of pool, two drink bet, the scot won, and the last thing l saw was the scot chasing the aussies down the esplanade with the pool que. Funny thing is the aussies had been kinda intimidating him for a couple of hours, but when they fuked with his beer, jeeeeessuuuuuusss, he went into syko daddy mode, and me and brett [ mate ] were just pissing ourselves laughing, pissing ourselves !

Re: It was clearly the right thing to do...
 

Of course not, if you want to kill someone you go and get a gun - if you can't get a gun you run them over with a car, failing that you go with a hammer or a knife or a bottle or some other weapon. You don't want to fight them, you want to kill them.

The use of your fists is primarily on women and children to knock them into line, and you're quite right there are relatively few fatalities from it. That's not an aspect of the thing itself though it's an aspect of the threat environment it exists in. If I want someone dead and I don't have a weapon then I'm going to use my hands, (and a few mates to hold him down while I do it.) Since there are guns however I don't need to do that and thus there are relatively few fist related deaths.

If you're using a fist to try and kill someone it just means you've exhausted all other options. If you're smart - well if you're smart you won't be doing it but if you're an evil little shit you don't want to fight someone, you want to kill them.

They're going to have lethal weapons anyway, it's not like they're hard to come by. Indeed there are estimated to be more guns in the hands of criminals now than there were before the UK effectively banned the things.

All you get to do with legislation is fiddle with the proportion of firearms in responsible hands versus those in irresponsible hands. The real problem occurs when you have a place where people are generally unarmed and there are a few psychos with guns - school shootings and the like. We hear about columbine all the time but how often do you hear about the campus shootings that were prevented by armed citizens? They've happened - but you don't hear about them very much since, to quote an old media maxim, 'If it bleeds it leads.' Wonder what genius came up with that idea.

If it takes the idiot to prove it then it's not really the gun that's at fault.

It might be easier for him to kill me with a gun but that doesn't seem to be in conflict with my earlier point.

Besides most people really suck at shooting, idiots especially. Look at school shooting statistics, pay special attention to the number of shots fired versus the fatalities. Theoretically if he was really close or really lucky he could kill me with one shot but the same goes for coming up behind me with a knife, or he could run me over with a car a couple of times, or just on luck he might hit me at the right angle and with enough force to kill me.

The number of crimes involving firearms went up dramatically in the years following the ban, at its peak more than doubling its pre-ban rate, and as far as I know has yet to return to its pre-ban level.

Ah here’s an interesting one from last year
Culture of violence: Gun crime goes up by 89% in a decade | Mail Online
Most interesting part of it is this bit,
The number of murders peaked during the 2000s, specifically 02/03, though 08/09 went pretty well with a surprise 20 year low in reported murders. More people getting shot less people dying?

Considering the ten years or so the ban on handguns had been in effect by that point though, that there are now predicted to be more weapons in the country than before the ban - the majority of which will be illegal, and the fact that murders were much higher the year before it seems unlikely that the handgun ban was responsible for that though.

The number of crimes involving sharp pointy things is around four times the number of crimes involving firearms.

I don’t think the handgun ban did much to alter the number of criminals with handguns or the number of murders – those things are far more an aspect of culture than an aspect of law. Police are openly patrolling with submachine guns in some areas now which gives me a bit of a chuckle.

‘Trust the policeman and his MP5, sweetie.’

Yeah, bollocks to that.

If things keep going the way they have been over the last decade I think it’s only a matter of time before we start arming our entire police force, (rather than just the selected firearms officers we arm at the moment,) with more formidable weapons to balance the criminals increasing arsenal.

Re: It was clearly the right thing to do...
 

And you are a shining exsample of why America will never change.
Because you live in denial, take guns away, no matter what you say, the deaths absolutely decrease , ALOT.
Believe what you want, but the real evidence is in the stats, and if you look at them objectively, its obvious gun laws need very tight control.

Re: It was clearly the right thing to do...
 

Let's see these stats of yours then.

Re: It was clearly the right thing to do...
 

Couple of year old but the average is about the same, or higher. It was 29000 deaths sorry not 25000, mmm lul...

The New York Times > Week in Review > Image > An Accounting of Daily Gun Deaths

and here from OZ


and by the way, the stats speak for themselves.


Results of the '96 Australian Gun Laws (updated 2009) (GunsAndCrime.org)

Re: It was clearly the right thing to do...
 

According to that the major group of those gun deaths was suicides, so they're hardly something to be overly concerned about. And as I've pointed out simply because a gun is involved in an incident it doesn't make it responsible for that incident.

Did you even bother reading it? You realise the site you just linked me to says that the Australian 96 gun laws/buyback had little perceivable effect?

I tried holding my ear close to my computer but you know I think stats actually have to be read. I think that reading is an inherently subjective thing requiring the engagement of the reader and that it relies upon the reader’s awareness of the subject under discussion along with the concepts being used to discuss it. That as such stats do not speak for themselves but simply fit into a much larger theoretical framework, and that the opinion to the contrary is one expressed by people who’ve simply never bothered to make a study of statistics to justify their ignorance.

Re: It was clearly the right thing to do...
 

jackripped, also keep in mind that saying gun bans lower gun crime is sorta like saying a dam is supposed to hold water. It's an oversimplification and it doesn't tell you if the society has become less violent, it's just focusing on the specific thing banned. If I was to ban Toyotas in my state to combat pollution, and then ten years later released a report talking about how few Toyotas there were in my state, does that then mean that overall the pollution has gone down?

Re: It was clearly the right thing to do...
 

What you guys are missing though, and it probably should be stressed more is thats the percentage of homes and people with actual gun possession is lower, and the stats show us overall death rates are down.
The difference on the street is in australia you dont have guns in every street , ends up in a punch up not a shoot out.
l dont think you guys honestly realise the damage your slack gun laws really do to your society.

Does the bill of rights actually say you can carry a gun, or does it say you can bear arms ?
Whats the actual wording ?

Re: It was clearly the right thing to do...
 

That comment seemed well beneath someone of your stature.

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