LSherratt

iTrader: (1)

Believe it or not, I used to own this until I sold it last year as I didn't need it anymore.

Bond Arms .410 shot pistol


Authorised to me with no issues at all here in the UK. Bearing in mind I am just a normal 25 year old lad, not some 60 year old farmer .

Torquemada

That's the issue here, though. It's usually those who were 'normal, law abiding folk' who have committed the mass killings.

It's just common sense to have further regulation. Sure, there will be some inconvenience but it has been proven to be necessary and has been proven to work very well in Australia.

Now, I freakin' love guns and shooting and I'm in the right state of the USA for that but I'd be happier not to have the open and concealed carry people mingling around and driving on the highways with me, especially in Dallas, as the road rage here is insane, people can't drive for **** and they might be armed, to boot!!

People bang on about the 2nd Amendment, which is being misinterpreted wildly. Then they bang on about protection; seriously....Buy a stronger door and better locks then. You're more likely to have a gun turned on you, or you wont even be able to get to the gun if it's stored in a safe.

There is no good reason for everyone to have a gun under their pillows. How many young children need to be accidentally killed or need to accidentally kill their parents with guns lying around and how many mass shootings does there have to be for something to happen??

Oh but we wouldn't want to inconvenience the law abiders, oh no, it's far better to see schools shot to pieces by emo kids with Aspergers and a chip on their shoulder....

Paben

iTrader: (5)

All quite correct, although where strong regulation exists (UK as an example) it is established that a gun owner is a law abiding citizen before gun ownership is permitted, a significant difference to the situation in the USA.

In the USA anyone can own a gun, with only gun shop sales being subject to any sort of regulation, so gun ownership is not limited to the law abiding citizen, far from it. I don't think any right thinking person would dispute that regulation there is necessary but how the US might go about it is another matter.

neil-h

I think that's the crux of it, crop protection seems to be one of the best reasons to use and if you're a farmer then all the better (as presumably you already have permission from the land owner).

That being said the requirements for a shotgun licence really aren't particularly onerous at all. The biggest problem there is the amount of time the process can take.

hodgy0_2

totally correct - pretty much all mass killings are committed by (previously) law abiding citizens

LSherratt

iTrader: (1)

A bog standard shotgun license is remarkably easy to get yet you don't hear of people getting murdered in the UK by a madman with a shotgun on a monthly basis. You only need to live in the countryside and tell them that you want to shoot sporting clays and you'll be issued with a license.

Paben

iTrader: (5)

There's more to it than that. It's not so easy to get a shotgun license in the UK although you don't need a a reason to own a gun and there is no limit to the number that you own.

Regarding criminality, if you have served a prison sentence of less than three months then you should be clear to get a certificate. Over 3 months but less than 3 years you cannot have a license for 5 years following completion of the sentence. Over 3 years and you are banned from any connection with firearms for life.

Assuming no criminal record you have to prove satisfactory security before the police will grant the license. Your application also needs to be endorsed by 'an honest and upright member' of the community. This may not seem like much but it does help prevent the shady loner with no mates from getting a certificate.

Once you've got your certificate it's easy to lose it again. Convictions for dangerous or drink driving, family disturbances where police attend, serious disagreements with neighbours, a doctor's opinion that you are a depression sufferer; these and other reasons may be sufficient for the police to take certificate and guns away.

dpb

What we need here is more guns lol


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7093176.html

neil-h

It's such complete idiot logic. Who realistically is going to carry an AR for self defence.

GWJ

AR with a magazine of 30 rounds, that would be one hell of a shoot out with a burgler

neil-h

Not so good when your confronted by a crazy in a night club though.

Turbohot

Funny, isn't it, that a horrific incident has glorified the deadly weapon; overnight. As I say, the devil is more charismatic than the God. The world we live in.

Geezer

Of all the mass shooting in the US over the past few years, name one that was done by a criminal with an illegally owned gun.

Criminals tend to use guns against other criminals. They do use them as intimidation for robberies, but the instance of criminals killing members of the public are infantesimal.

Paben

iTrader: (5)

No names because you cannot illegally own a gun in the USA, thought you realised that.

dpb

I wonder how long it would take the whole good ole usa to shot each other dead wholesale , starting 1,2,3

Paben

iTrader: (5)

Although it's still massively too many, annually there are fewer than 3 people in 100,000 killed by firearms in the USA, this including accidental deaths and suicides. All fine unless you happen to be one of the 3 of course. And you stand a better chance (if that's the right word) of being killed by the police than by criminal activity.

dpb

So that's 3 people in a good sized town everyday , compared with Caracus sounds a very good deal

until you get a disgruntled nobody who wants exact revenge

why does anyone them need a firearm anyway

Geezer

See? I said you couldn't No, you are quite right, I accept that. I think really the point is that they were not committed by criminals, and as such would not have had easy access to guns if it was another country or the US didn't have such open gun ownership.

In the UK, they would have simply killed their wife/boss or whatever, but you wouldn't have a mass killing.

Less guns = less death from guns, it's not rocket science.

Paben

iTrader: (5)

Well we did have two major mass killings in the UK, in Hungerford and Dunblane, both committed by licensed gun owners. The police were culpable in both cases for issuing certificates where now those certificates would be refused or revoked. But they happened.

I agree there is no dispute that reducing gun ownership in the USA is a fine ambition and greatly to be desired. How it might be achieved is another matter as getting elected on that ticket is nigh on impossible.

Geezer

Indeed, and we haven't had a mass shooting since we heavily restricted access to guns.


I agree that the US position is somewhat more difficult to tackle, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle, and the gun lobby are extremely powerful.

Paben

iTrader: (5)

That's not quite true. There was the Cumbria event in 2010 where 12 people were killed and 11 others injured by Derrick Bird. Once again this was perpetrated by a licensed gun owner, who resorted to a shotgun and .22 rifle, both legally held. Of course this ignores the terrorist incidents that involved bombs and guns.

But the simple banning of weapons is a tricky path to walk. For instance when the 1997 UK handgun ban came in there were just over 2,500 annual handgun related incidents; 10 years later there were over 4,000. So was the ban a genuine attempt by the Tory government to make us all safer on the streets? Almost certainly not, more likely a feeble attempt to gain good public opinion in the lead up to a General Election. That it failed to garner the required support (the start of the Blair years) has probably done nothing to suggest to US politicians that gun control wins votes.

David Lock

Well I'm pleased to see that the Senate - or at least a few members - have smelt some coffee but hard to see if there will be any major shift in policy. I think if they did stamp down hard now then in a generation's time it might be socially unacceptable to carry a gun and very difficult to get hold of a mass killing weapon. Of course they would still be around but it might just prevent a sulky teenager getting one on a whim and shooting his classmates. Bit like drink driving over here. When I was a lad we didn't think twice about driving around half-p1ssed but 30 years later my kids wouldn't dream of it. I guess a lot will depend on Hilary's attitude when she is elected. David

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

Do you have a source for the highlighted part of your comment? I'm pretty sure the last time I looked into a similar claim on another forum, it turned out that the number of reported 'firearm' incidents had only appeared to go up in recent years, because of the stricter laws on imitation firearms introduced by New Labour, the end-result of which being that a post-office stick-up where the villain was in reality only brandishing a plastic toy would now be counted as such an incident.

Paben

iTrader: (5)

http://dvc.org.uk/dunblane/ssaagreenwood.html

Colin Greenwood was a former Police Superintendant and acknowledged firearms expert. He researched and wrote many articles on the subject.

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

Fair enough, those numbers do seem to exclude the artficial inflationary effect of imitation weapons on the statistics. I will still make the point though that Greenwood openly states he's not of the belief (as some are, yourself apparently included) that the 1997 ban led to an increase in gun crime, he merely thinks it had no significant impact one way or another. Hardly surprising really though, when you consider how much more stringent the licensing and storage regulations for handguns were in this country compared with the US, even before the ban.

Paben

iTrader: (5)

I don't believe he said that at all, and I quote:

'I would simply say that in 1997, pistols were used in 2648 crimes and in 2006/07 (the Home Office has changed the statistical recording figure from calendar to financial year), they were involved in 4175 crimes. Thus, the ban on pistols in the hands of law-abiding citizens has resulted in a doubling of their use by criminals.'

Quite what conclusion you might draw from that statistic I'm not sure. With the notable exceptions of Ryan, Hamilton and Bird there were actually very few firearms crimes committed by license holders either before or after 1997 but a sharp increase in criminal firearms activity. So removing handguns from legal ownership had exactly the opposite effect to that intended.

Unfortunately the ban also cost the UK upwards of £100 million to enact, a staggering amount for so little gain, or perhaps loss.

markjmd

iTrader: (11)

You need to go back and read the page again. He starts the sentence you've quoted there with the phrase "if I were a politician", and is quite clearly doing so because he's of the opinion that they're the kind of people to take a set of statistics and twist them to say what they want, however untrue it might be. His actual opinion, found further down is that "In Table 3, increases in the total robbery figure are much more marked and much more consistent and the firearms robbery figures tell us more about the impact of the handgun ban. Contrary to many claims, the use of firearms in robbery did not increase after the 1997 Act; it fell slightly from a six-year average of 4700 to 4100."

I'm not for one minute saying the ban wasn't mostly a total waste of time, but to pretend that it led to an increase in gun crime, or that Greenwood believes it did, is pure fantasy.

dpb

its the complete arrogance of the gun lobby as exhibited by the guy on channel 4 news interview that gets me

There just never was going to be a discussion with him

Paben

iTrader: (5)

He is actually referring to trends before and after 1997, which show a gradual rise in handgun crime that was not influenced by the handgun ban of 1997 but continued irrespective of it. This is not a denial of the rise in handgun crime but a statement that the 1997 ban had no effect on its gradual rise.

If we average out the total homicide figures for the six years before 1997 and the six years after (ignoring the Dr Shipman cases), we see that homicide has increased from an average of 706 to 825 and despite yearly fluctuations, the figure is steadily upwards. This is also so with homicide involving firearms, where the six-year average has grown from 61 to 72 and again with a steady upward trend. The use of shotguns, however, has fallen from an average of 20 down to 11 and sawn-off shotguns from 9 down to 5, but the use of pistols has increased from an average of 29 to 42. But in none of these cases does 1997 mark a watershed. Trends that began long before 1997 have continued entirely unchanged.

So no fantasy but that's not really the point. The fact is that bans on legal gun ownership have no effect whatsoever on criminal use. After all, as Colin Greenwood says; criminal are, by definition, those who do not obey the law.