Changing attitudes about firearms

[British Red]

Breakdown those statistics BR and you will find that they are drug and gang related and the crimes are mostly confined within that culture. They do not impose on the rest of us beyond that.

I think the ban was necessary. It was necessary because the gun owning fraternity sat on their self appointed and self assured backsides and did not do anything to restrict the access to licences, despite severe misgivings and warnings by police and social agencies that some people were just not suitably stable enough to possess one.
Now they reap what they sowed.

Two more corrections for you Toddy

1) Since you accept gun crime is "drug and gang related" you can also see that banning people who are not part of those communities from owning guns will not affect gun crime

2) The gun community do not grant licences - any more than the car owning community do. They are granted by the police in line with legislation at the time. The gun community were not in any position to decide who held a licence. The correct approach to ensuring that they are correctly granted is to change the licencing requirements (for example covering medical disclosure of mental health issues). In the same way that a driving licence is restricted when health issues make it inadvisable. I don't think any responsible gun owner objects to license restrictions that keep guns out of the hands of the dangerous and unstable. Its the blanket approach to those who are both stable, responsible and law abiding that we mind.


I understand that you support the ban. Thats fine, you are entitled to your opinion. I have attempted merely to post even handed, factual rebuttals to mistakes made in posts where claims have been made about the ban reducing crime, making people safer, that statistics were previously rising etc.

These things are demonstrably untrue.

I don't mind when people are honest enough to say "ban guns because I don't like them" but, calmly and politely, it is important to ensure that people realise that it does not reduce crime or make people any safer. In fact the reverse is clearly true as I have shown

I'll leave it there.

Red

 

[xylaria]

The increase in gun related gang violence has nothing at all to do the ban on hand guns. It is the breakdown of the russian economy meant military weaponry was imported and caused an arms race with various british drug gangs. Also peace in NI meant some privately owned hardware was sold on rather than decommissioned. The import route for drugs is well established from the baltic states and RF, having a army officer who hasn't being paid by his government for 6 months throwing in a couple of boxes weapons to a container of ecstasy, keeps his family fed, and keeps the burger bar boyz in "gats".

 

[Toddy]

British Red you labour under the mistaken belief that I do not like guns.

I firmly believe that unless it can be demonstrated that there has been no change, that is, no increase in gun crime post the handgun ban, then there is no justification for restoring licences.

Not a decrease, since that would prove the ban was effective.
Not an increase since the apparant justification then for the restoration would be an American defence model........and we have never had that here, even during wartime we did not have an armed population. A legally armed population is not going to be approved.
Simple no change post ban is the only way that attitudes will change.

As I said, the gun lobby got it monumentally wrong, and appears to still be harping on the wrong tune.

I agree they are not the ones issuing licences, but the incidents in the UK that created a groundswell of public opinion so strong that the Home Secretary took the measures he did, were committed by gun club members............and the police had already raised concerns about their behaviour and the clubs did nothing. Thomas Hamilton stored the guns and ammunition he used to kill those infants in the club locker.

That's what the public sees, that's the opinion that would need to be changed to create a climate that would allow for any restoration of licences for handguns.

No increase in crime, education, re-establish the reputation of the gun clubs, create a system of checks and balances that would reassure public opinion that Dunblane, Hungerford and the rest could not happen again using legally owned firearms.
Otherwise, No Chance.

cheers,
Toddy




Mod Hat On
Thank you all who have shown such disciplined restraint on this thread. It was, and is, much appreciated.
I would like to say clearly though that allowing this one to run is not to be taken as a precedence.
I have had pms raising concerns and issues over the thread and it's contents.
Tbh I think we've really said it all, but I will leave the thread open for the present. If the pms increase though I will close the thread and let things lie as they are.
cheers,
M

 

[Armleywhite]

Leave it going mate. No need to close it, let it fade out in the normal way. It'll die on it's own with little maintenance I think. Just keep popping in and making sure all are playing nice..

(Manchester will always be smaller than Leeds)

 

[BigShot]

Toddy - it should be noted that Dunblaine could not have happened with legally owned firearms if the police had bothered to act on the information they had about Hamilton.
I quote from the document I linked to earlier...

Since the Dunblane massacre, the Central Scotland
Police have been criticised for failing to revoke Hamilton’s
firearms certificates, indeed for granting him more certificates,
in spite of written and oral representations from members of the
public who complained about his activities at boys’ clubs.

Had they acted on that information he would have had his licenses revoked, presumably would have had his membership to his cun club revoked, and most likely had his weapons siezed.
The answer is to disarm people like him, not to disarm every well balanced, responsible and law abiding citizen in the country.


As for "no change", Toddy.
It seems that you're asking for something wholly unreasonable. You're insisting that the ban can have had only two effects - 1, to decrease crime, or 2, no effect whatsoever. You're wrongly eliminating the 3rd option - the possibility that the ban had a direct, negative impact on crime. If the latter is the case we absolutely should reinstate licences.


You object to the American defence model, I wonder though, what is so objectionable about it?
Something I've mentioned time and time again in this thread, and only once has an incredibly weak response (that of having the gun taken by the attacker - a pretty much non-event in the real world) been mounted to it - it has otherwise been ignored.

What is the fundamental problem with allowing a 9 stone woman to carry the one and only tool that can reliably stop the 14 stone boxing champ dragging her into a park from raping her?
If she has any weapons whatsoever, ranging from clubs and knives to rape alarms and chemical weapons (CS, pepper) she is carrying something that at best might stop the attack, but is more likely to enrage her attacker and leave her injuries worse than if she had just gone "limp" and allowed herself to be raped.
If she has a gun, the moment he gets himself ready for the rape - she has a chance to take it from her bag and stop things there and then. She's unraped, and he's either arrested, killed or runs away - there's no negative anywhere in that scenario.
Again - what is the fundamental problem with allowing someone to take that specific defence?

 

[Toddy]

If the nine stone woman can have a pistol for defence then so can the 14 stone would be rapist.........no discriminations, and it simpy causes an escalation of aggression.

Toddy

 

[BigShot]

Now please reconcile that statement with the cold hard reality that when Orlando Florida gave concealed carry permits and handgun training to 2500 women, rape rates over the following year dropped by EIGHTY EIGHT PERCENT while remaining constant in the rest of the USA. The "shall issue" CCW permits came along after that success brought with it a corresponding drop in violent crime across the board.
Where's the escalation of violence? Violence DROPPED on all fronts.

Your fears about what would happen, while valid and real to you, have no grounding in the real world whatsoever.

I'll let the problem with disarming the law abiding to disarm the criminal fallacy slide there - if you've not taken the point in the previous 8 pages of debate you won't take it if I make it again.

 

[Pict]

I'd just like to say thanks for letting this thread run. This issue more than others tends to reveal a deep divide in the way Americans and Brits think about the role of government, the individual, rights, responsibilities etc and IMO helped me understand you all a bit better.

I live in a "shall issue" state when in the US with very low crime and a solid recognition of my right to self defense and access to those means in both legislation and case law. In Brazil I live under the strictest gun control in the western hemisphere and very different rules regarding my right to self defense. I spend 80% of my life there and 20% here in the US. I have to adapt accordingly and obey the law of the land. I also have to live with the consequences of my actions in both places. I would love to visit the UK someday and seriously don't want to run afoul of the law nor offend anyone there.

One final word and I'm done. When guns are banned keep in mind that it is only the most responsible citizens in any society that are affected. As I posted earlier according to Florida's experience (1st "shall issue" state) CCW holders are 840 times less likely to commit a gun crime than the average Floridian. I'm sure that similar numbers would be found in both Brazil and the UK. In fact US CCW holders have a lower rate of felonies than US Police officers. Based upon Florida's example and the verifiable results of their long standing law regarding CCW, 40 other states have enacted the same laws with the same results. This system is working for us over here and many of us don't want to see it changed to a model that isn't working in areas of the country that have much higher crime rates and far more restrictive gun laws. There is a night and day reality between my life experiences under severe gun control in Brazil and near total firearms freedom here in Pennsylvania. Firearms in the hands of responsible citizens have a positive impact on society. Mac

 

[gregorach]

Now please reconcile that statement with the cold hard reality that when Orlando Florida gave concealed carry permits and handgun training to 2500 women, rape rates over the following year dropped by EIGHTY EIGHT PERCENT while remaining constant in the rest of the USA.

You can't draw any conclusions from a single data point. You can't even demonstrate that the drop in question is statistically significant. That's blatant cherry-picking, the worst statistical sin of all. What is the p-value of that datum? What is its deviation from the mean of the preceding series? Does your proposed correlation hold for a larger dataset - say for the whole of Florida following the introduction of the "shall-issue" legislation? And haven't you previously criticised others for abuse of statistics?

 

[BigShot]

What part of "every state in the USA that has introduced "shall issue" legislation has experienced a corresponding drop in violent crime rates" makes mentioning that one incident cherry picking? I mention it because it was the first experiment of its kind and led to the raft of new laws in the USA with "shall issue" clauses. All those subsequent changes confirm the shift in violent crime rates was not unique to Orlando.

The correlation holds not only for Orlando and the rest of Florida, but for all 40 states that brought in similar legislation as a result of the success of the first "shall issue" CCW legislation in Florida.

Explain how this is cherry picking...
...Orlando has a long standing problem with rape...
...Orlando trains and arms 2500 women...
...Rape rates in Orlando drop by 88% immediately...
To any sensible person that's close enough to establish causality.

The repeated experiments and datasets from the other 39 "shall issue" states back up that conclusion.

Cherry picking?

My eye.


EDIT
Let me ask you a question...
If not the concealed carry of firearms... what did cause a sudden plummet in rape rates when the same crime remained constant in the rest of the country?
You'd have a job arguing that it was mere coincidence.

 

[Tadpole]

Now please reconcile that statement with the cold hard reality that when Orlando Florida gave concealed carry permits and handgun training to 2500 women, rape rates over the following year dropped by EIGHTY EIGHT PERCENT while remaining constant in the rest of the USA. The "shall issue" CCW permits came along after that success brought with it a corresponding drop in violent crime across the board.
Where's the escalation of violence? Violence DROPPED on all fronts.

Your fears about what would happen, while valid and real to you, have no grounding in the real world whatsoever.

I'll let the problem with disarming the law abiding to disarm the criminal fallacy slide there - if you've not taken the point in the previous 8 pages of debate you won't take it if I make it again.

I wouldn’t say it has been ignored, you have just chosen not to take any notice of the replies or have dismissed them as biased.

“A 1997 study in the New England Journal of Medicine that found that a gun kept at home is 22 times more likely to be used to kill a friend or family member than to stop an intruder. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that children in states with the highest rates of gun ownership were 16 times as likely to die from an accidental gunshot wound, nearly seven times as likely to commit suicide with a gun, and more than three times as likely to be murdered with a firearm.”

“In the USA in 2000 78% of violent assaults that required hospital treatment were carried out by family member or intimate friend.
Only 7% of violent injuries were as a result of being robbed or sexually assaulted and only 2% for rape.
Of the victims, 21.6% were younger than age 12 when they were first raped, and 32.4% were between the ages of 12 and 17. Just under a third were raped by a relative or close family member (7%). Half of all rapes happened to people not legally old enough to carry a gun.

Stranger danger is not the problem, and I’m pretty sure that having a hand gun would not have helped in most of the violent/sexual assaults where the person who is attacking is a brother, husband, close friend, or even fellow worker.”

According to the Bureau of Justice Website

Violent crime trends
Violent crime is down from 43 people per 100,000 population in 1973 to 21 people per 100,000 population in 2005
Rape is down from 2.5 people per 100,000 population in 1973 to 0.5 people per 100,000 population in 2005
Robbery is down from 6.7 people per 100,000 population in 1973 to 2.5 people per 100,000 population in 2005
Aggravated assault is down from 12.5 people per 100,000 population in 1973 to 4.3 people per 100,000 population in 2005

I'll let the problem with disarming the law abiding to disarm the criminal fallacy slide there - if you've not taken the point in the previous 8 pages of debate you won't take it if I make it again.

If you remove the hand gun from the house, then the criminal who breaks in to the house will not be able to steal it (most break in' s happen when the home is empty) 2004 there were nearly 400,000 firearm thefts reported. (many more go unreported) so your argument doesn't hold water. less guns to steal less gun in the hands of criminals

 

[gregorach]

Florida crime stats for 1960-2007 are here. You will note that following the introduction of "shall-issue" legislation in 1987, all categories of crime went up. Violent crime was up by 12%, property crime up by 7.6% - not that that proves anything, because I haven't demonstrated statistical significance. And I'm not about to, as it's more work than I can personally be bothered with, and I'm not trying to make any positive claim about any correlation between gun ownership, "shall-issue" legislation, and crime stats, in either direction. You want me to believe there's a correlation, the onus is on you to demonstrate statistical significance.

 

[gregorach]

Let me ask you a question...
If not the concealed carry of firearms... what did cause a sudden plummet in rape rates when the same crime remained constant in the rest of the country?
You'd have a job arguing that it was mere coincidence.

Without seeing the rest of the dataset, you cannot make any statement about whether it may or may not have been co-incidence, and if you think you can, you don't know the first thing about statistics. It could well have been simply reversion to the mean, or within the normal range of variation.

 

[BigShot]

This is starting to get really boring.

You quote my post and then say precisely nothing to address the main point in it.

Explain how your statement

If the nine stone woman can have a pistol for defence then so can the 14 stone would be rapist.........no discriminations, and it simpy causes an escalation of aggression.

Has any validity whatsoever when the fact of the matter is that it does NOT happen.

Orlando, FL trained and armed 2500 women.
Rape rates FELL by 88%.
This does not sit well with your claim that legal handguns causes an escalation in violence.
The rape rate DID drop as a DIRECT result of the arming of women - so your presumption of escalation is wrong.


Domestic violence is a separate issue and attempting to use it to address the issue of violent crime outside the home, regardless of how many times you say stranger danger is not the problem, is a classic bait-and-switch.


Address that issue and we can move on to the domestic issue.


Explain - in a way that doesn't attempt to change the real world events that are there for all to see - what the fundamental problem is with allowing a woman to posess the only weapon which can make her truly capable of fighting off a rapist far stonger and heavier than she.




GREG - it's an argument long held that those "crime statistics" are fundamentally flawed.
They, more often than not, include dead attackers as "victims of homicide" vastly skewing the data.
The page you posted has no bearing on the main issue I'm talking about which is the drop in rape stats in Orlando after the 1966/67 training and arming of 2500 women.

 

[Pict]

"If you remove the hand gun from the house, then the criminal who breaks in to the house will not be able to steal it (most break in' s happen when the home is empty) 2004 there were nearly 400,000 firearm thefts reported. (many more go unreported) so your argument doesn't hold water. less guns to steal less gun in the hands of criminals"

Brazil took that route and is pursuing it with all speed. It hasn't worked for the simple laws of supply and demand. in Brazil only about 8% of the population owns a legal firearm of any type (as opposed to over 40% in much of the US, in some areas it s nearly universal). Before Brazil enacted its draconian gun laws a gun on the street cost significantly less than a legally purchased firearm, less than half. Now the price on the street has doubled as the law abiding citizen is now purchasing arms on the street as well. This has made arms trafficing much more lucrative.

My point is that whenever you ban something that people regard as their right, an adequate means of self defense in the face of very real danger, then you don't control it totally, you lose control of it totally. The government has essentially opted out of controlling the legal use of firearms. Without a legal avenue to control the use of arms for those inclined to obey the law they have only created a new class of criminals.

For instance why, if I can't legally buy a legal .38 special revolver to defend my home would I limit myself to a wimpy gun like that if I am forced to buy one on the street? You can buy literally anything you want with a few phone calls in Brazil because there area a host of people willing to step into that legal void created by the Brazilian government. Brazil's experience with this has been a disaster but they will never admit it. Mac

 

[Grooveski]

A car is a car, too, but there are Bentley's and there are Yugo's.

I have the authority to carry a weapon professionally, and a license to carry a concealed handgun privately. We don't need licenses or permission to own and carry unconcealed weapons.

You must see the irony though? You've happily applied for permits for a certain aspect of your gun ownership just as folk over here happily apply for permits for their gun ownership.

You used a car analogy. I'm guessing you need a licence to drive over there just as we do and that no-one cares too much that that's the case? Folk are used to the system of learning to drive and passing a test before being deemed capable of careering onto the highways.
Folk here are just as used to the system for owning firearms and it really is no big deal. Just because it's different doesn't mean it's wrong, just means it's different.

 

[gregorach]

GREG - it's an argument long held that those "crime statistics" are fundamentally flawed.
They, more often than not, include dead attackers as "victims of homicide" vastly skewing the data.
The page you posted has no bearing on the main issue I'm talking about which is the drop in rape stats in Orlando after the 1966/67 training and arming of 2500 women.

Oh for pity's sake... You don't even know what the term "statistical significance" means do you? An argument based on a single data point cannot be demonstrated to have statistical significance. It is mathematically impossible.

And how, exactly, do you decide which crime stats are valid and which aren't?

 

[BigShot]

You may not agree with me - but I'm not an eejit.
Of course I know what statistical significance means - it's not exactly a difficult concept.

Bear with me - I'm rooting out the relevant stats for the period before and after the introduction of CCW for those 2500 women. Thought it was in my bookmarks, but apparently I chucked it out in my last clearout.

 

[BigShot]

All of this stats discussion does miss an important point though...
What right is it of yours (or anyone else's) to deny a woman the means to protect herself from rape?
What right is it of yours (or anyone else's) to deny anyone the means to protect themselves from violent crime and home invasion?

Considering at the very least gun control can not be demonstrated to have a positive impact on crime, and at worst a negative one, on what basis - other than your own personal dislike of guns and of people who are prepared to stand up for themselves instead of being an unarmed victim - do you deny their right?

That the right is denied - is sickening.

If a person doesn't want to go armed, they shouldn't - but for them to deny another person that right when doing so can not be shown to have any positive effect on society is just plain wrong.

 

[durulz]

This is starting to get really boring.

Then why don't you knock it on the head?
I think you're arguing just for the sake of it now. Just running round in circles, claiming you know all, refusing to listen, contradicting yourself.
You're clearly up for an argument for it's own value, not as a way of reaching a consensus.
You shout people down for not falling over and agreeing with you, as if you're some kind of all-knowing seer.
Give it a rest.