About That Gun Control Thing
People in the UK live under what Wikipedia describes as “some of the strictest gun legislation in the world” yet according to an article in the Daily Express, last year there were “9,967 gun-related crimes, a rise of 373 on 2006″.
Yes folks, contrary to popular mythology there are guns in the UK, and simple math says 9,967/365 = 27 gun crimes a day — under “some of the strictest gun legislation in the world”
I’m not going to bother comparing those rates to this, or any other country in the world. I am going to say that according to an individual from England I was talking to in an IRC channel tonight the government has made it difficult enough to own a gun that only the criminals have easy access to them…. and the increase in gun crime there confirms that.
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Of course there are guns – haven’t you ever watched Snatch or Lock, Stock, and 2 Smoking Barrels?
It is my opinion, though, that the vast majority of gun-toting criminals in the UK are witty and humourous, handsome, and are usually good-natured people. At least according to those 2 films…
Interesting post SL
I know you said you didn’t want to compare rates, but the numbers you quote are meaningless unless you do. A little bit of digging found that the Canadian figure is 27.5 per 100000 people. The figure you quote puts the British number at 16.6 per 100000, quite a bit smaller than the Canadian figure. I found another statisitic for Britain at close to twice that (18500 in 06/07), so who knows? Maybe the real value is somewhere in the middle.
Anyways, it appears the Brits have stricter gun control and a slightly lower gun crime rate than we do in Canada. The point of gun control laws is to allow the police to prosecute criminals and keep them behind bars longer for having a gun. Normal people carrying guns will not deter criminals from crime, it will simply increase the amount of people who can shoot a gun. And who knows where that bullet will go.
Sorry, screwed up the links. Should be:
27.5 per 100000 people
statistics
I’m not sure what you’re trying to conclude, if anything. It’s kind of McMillan-esque: a couple of interesting data points put together in close proximity and vague enough so we can draw our own conclusions?
There’s always a few of us out here that need to be drawn a picture.
I’m kind of on Kevin’s side here, SL. I could almost write a “shorter Stageleft: when guns are criminalized, only criminals will have guns.”
What am I missing?
What? A leftist against gun control?
What’s next? A rightist against tax breaks for oil companies?
Not too far off at all Tim.
I realize that in the progressive side of the blogosphere it’s not a popular opinion but I make no secret of the fact that I do not believe that gun control stops people from killing people, it doesn’t even stop people from killing people with guns – the story I linked, IMO, shows that.
I suppose there are those who would speculate on what the numbers would be were there less gun control and more access to firearms, but then I would end up speculating that the stabbing and beating deaths would probably decrease and in the end the number of deaths might be just about the same.
Heck, I might even end up speculating that some of the people who were killed by guns, stabbing, or beatings, might not even have died at all.
The point of gun control is to assuage fear on the part of people who can’t come to terms with others owning and carrying firearms. We have a few decades worth of a “couple of data points” showing that whether people (other than habitual criminals) carry does nothing to significantly increase violent crime and suggesting that to the extent there is an effect on violent crime, it is tp decrease rates. People restrain themselves more in an armed environment than an unarmed one.
‘What? A leftist against gun control?”
Make that two “leftists” against gun control.
Now, a smart person would conclude that his definition of “leftist”, and his attribution of a single slate of views to the aforementioned, was flawed. But you HAVE been hanging out at Scenty’s for awhile.
Canuckguy
What’s next? A rightist against tax breaks for oil companies?
That would be me. And I’m a proud tool of big oil.
IrC
The point of gun control is to assuage fear on the part of people who can’t come to terms with others owning and carrying firearms.
It also allows liberal politicians to appear as if they’re doing something without accomplishing anything. The corner stone of all political policy. It’s more important to look good then to actually be good.
It’s like Chris Rock said – we don’t need gun control, we need bullet control! Make bullets cost $5,000, and you would see alot less gun crime.
I’m not sure how I feel about gun control. I have swayed back and forth between pro and anti. I’m on the fence here.
Just being facetious Balbul as you may have gathered.
I like to think I hold an sensible mixture of several political persusions. I take my stands based on facts and common sense regardless of what the Left, Right oe Center think. Each has their stereotypes with their sterotypical stances and axes to grind.
Sometimes I am dead wrong. IE: When a political aid to the Liberal Prime Minister of the day, a short time before the invasion of Iraq referred to Bush as a moron, I said off with her rude head. Man, she was so right.
Stageleft
I agree with your position on gun control and it particularly p#$ses me off when folks like David Miller call for a ban on handguns as a solution to gang bangers blowing each other and sundry bystanders away here in the big smoke.
As for the lefty righty thing, people tell me I am right wing.
When I tell them I’m in favour of say increasing minimum wages to something half decent or legalizing drugs they think I must be kidding them.
“Left” and “Right” as political descriptors are becoming more irrelevant each time they are used. It is not “the left” that favours gun control, it is the authoritarian-left who, like all authoritarians, are control freaks.
When discussing a completely separate discussion this this afternoon regarding individual rights I was told that my “inner-rightie” was being let loose more and more these days – in my opinion people simply do not know what the words mean anymore and only use them as arguments when they run out of talking points.
I hypothesize the “blur” is because more socially liberally people are becoming fiscally liberal, and vice versa. If more people are finding common ground in the classical liberal region of the political map, so much the better.
And which quadrant of the political compass would you place that “classical liberalism”?
A leftist supporting gun control
A rightist against tax breaks for big oil.
Gawd, pigs will fly!!!
Toward the “individualist” end of the individualism-collectivism axis, and the “rationalist” end of the rational-irrational axis. See: http://www.baen.com/chapters/axes.htm