Interesting discussion about arming police in England.

[NINEX19]

I was quite surprised that the majority of the people (or at least the liberals the frequent that board) think the way they do.

I don't think I have seen as many "sheeple" in one place at one time that can not even make a logical, well thought out comment in addition to having every other word an expletive, as the ones who post to this board.

Arming British Police

[MuzzleBlast]

Looks like a chat between drunk teenagers.

[Salt]

This is a good example of socialist Britain. What used to be a nation of world conquerers has decayed into a nation of hippie welfare recipients.

Someday the Pakistani's and other immigrants will take over that land as the British will vanish. Just look at the negative birth rate of the British and compare it to the fecundity of the Third World immigrants. A Darwin Award goes to an entire people!!!

[Steel]

That is some way screwed up crap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[FLM]

It's sad. Great Britain was once the greatest nation in the world. The sun never set on the British empire. Now it's a 3rd rate nation of sheep.

[Stainless]

Different culture now, yes.

But conversations between drunk teenagers usually involve sex.

[Paul K]

Different culture now, yes.

But conversations between drunk teenagers usually involve sex.

haha

[UltimaThule]

Let's see, don't they have these strict gun laws to eliminate crime? And then they need to arm the police?

My country, Norway, may not have the most liberal (in the real meaning of the word) gun laws in Europe, but I do believe we have more guns per capita than any other European country (including Switzerland). Our police are not armed. They do of course have access to guns if the need should arise, but there are no permanently armed "response units" like in Britain.

I'm not sure if there is some logic or moral or whatever in this, but some of you may find it amusing...

[crash12bandit]

Hi....

I'm from england, I also post on the Urban75 boards

I just thought I might pop in and add my bit on the disscusion.

Firstly, I think that the attitude "Salt" has taken on the U75 board is one of imaturity and gutless attack. I do not wish to return the favour, however, I would like to "fill you in", on the gun situation in the UK.

Secondly... I'm sorry, I don't like guns... I've been shot before, and I didn't like it.. guns are a two way thing in my opinion; killing or getting killed.

The situation in The UK with guns is as follows:

A vast majority of the population, fear guns, and the damage they reak. The police are not fully armed, there are armed response units, that cater for events that require their service, as a second measure to reasoned debate. This course of action is a sad sad state of affairs, as we can all see the UK sliding down a slippery slope of gun terror in to the rotting mass of carnage that an affluent gun culture will breed. There shouldn't be a need to use guns, they should not need to be used in "self defence"... They are for killing, nobody has the right to kill another... As idealistic as it may seem, if you take away the guns, you take away the deaths, you take away the widows, you take away the kids with no parents, you take away the instutionalise racism, you take way the power that should never been placed in the hands of humans. You take away the guns, you take away the violence that make streets unsafe.

I know as well as you lot do.. this isn't going to happen, But hey, a safe place to live is what every body wants isn't it?? The discusions on the U75 boards have centred around the fact that we don't trust our current law enforcement agency to cary weapons of mass destuction. They are under paid and over worked, like all of our social services. (nothing I can do about that one I'm affraid) There is too much corruption in our police force. Nobody thinks that you can tackle gun crime with a truncheon. That's being stupid!

I hope I haven't jaded your views on the british public, however you must understand that our system is very different from yours, and we don't want to increase the gun crime in our country.

[Nightcrawler]

Safe place to live? No such thing. You're mortal. You're going to die one way or another.

A FREE place to live is nice, though, but you probably wouldn't understand.

If taking away the guns takes away the crime, then there should be no gun crime in england, because guns are banned.

How do you explain the gun crime, then?

If you wanted to learn something about this, though, you've come to the right place. Got get 'em, TFL!

heh heh heh...

[UltimaThule]

Hey, crash12bandit, as a non-American I sometimes feel a bit "different" from the majority around here, but in this case I think I can speak on behalf of most TFL'ers and say that we disagree with you. But at least we're talking, that's a start.

I think you have a couple of things wrong here. First, you demonize guns, as if they were responsible for violence and racism (?!). Guns are just tools. Murders are committed by a lot of other means. Just because Agatha Christie used to "kill" people with arsenic isn't a reason to ban rat poison, is it?

Second, you believe a "gun culture" will lead to carnage. I believe it is the other way around. When people know and respect guns, they are less likely to abuse them. Look at my post above. Look at places like Norway and Switzerland and the US outside of the big cities, the amount of gun related crime is actually quite low. And I believe DC, the American "murder capital" has even stricter gun laws than Britain. You are confusing "gun culture" with "crime culture" - they are two very different things.

And there are arguments for or against arming/disarming the police that have nothing to do with the above. You mention lack of trust in your law enforcement, if that is true, I'm sorry. (BTW, weapons of mass destruction would be nuclear and chemical/bacteriological weapons - I wouldn't trust most police officers with those, either )

Our police are unarmed by choice, not (just) because the politicians say so. Most officers actually prefer to be unarmed, even in a society that most foreigners would consider "armed to the teeth".

[crash12bandit]

"Safe place to live? No such thing" (OK.. Pretty pesermistic why don't you go and shoot yourself?)

"A FREE place to live is nice, though".... so why wouldn't I understand?

the gun crime is a result of illegal arms being trafficed into the country. As I said... our forces are underpaid, and underachieving. please read this short article It isn't extensive, but goes some way in proving my previous point.

[free spirit]

UK: 42 gun murders in 1999 (pop 56,000,000)

US: 30,708 gun deaths in 1998 (pop 286,743,739)

spot the difference?

Nightcrawler, yes there is still a very tiny amount of gun crime in the UK, but look at the difference.

[crash12bandit]

I'm with you on the Murderers don't need guns to murder point Ultima... but at the end of the day guns have killed more people than Biotech weapons et al.. so I think the titlle "weapons of destrution" is valid. RE the learning to respect guns bit.. This will take forever to become a safe institution, and a government like the one we have over here hasn't the inclination to fund the introduction of arms safely into our particularly neglected society. My point is that guns are not safe... Man invented the crash helmet... this was to protect himself (I'll try to use the correct terminology with out being sexist) against the dangers of things hitting His head with great force. Gun crime is a social force, and the only helmet we've got over here is weak gun laws, and underfunded police services. We can't cope with more guns.. there would be no end of deaths, from petty shoplifters to family feudes

See my point ??

[Vladimir_Berkov]

The amount of gun deaths is not relavent to discussions of the relative benefits of gun availability or gun laws. Most of the places with low gun deaths also have a low rate of violant crime in general. Additionaly, many places have high rates of death (especially suicide) even though almost no guns are available. Japan comes to mind here.

The problem with Britain is not crime, but freedom. A disarmed populace is never truly free. I would rather live in a country with lots of crime, but where I could keep and bear arms, than one with very little crime but where only the government can possess firearms.

People try to confuse crime with guns, when the two are really quite separate. Crime existed before guns, and will exist after they become obsolete. Getting rid of guns may reduce gun deaths, but it will also reduce the freedom that citizens of a country enjoy, and will also violate their rights. In addition, because there will always be crime, even without guns, a disarmed populace is much more helpless againt criminals.

America has a different culture than the UK, and people from the UK who try to blame American crime on guns are deluding themselves, just as the Americans who blame crime in the UK on the absence of guns.

[agricola]

we do have much less gun crime than you, by any stretch of the imagination or using any statistics that you choose to present. i would also point out that the vast majority of firearms that are in this country are either converted (a la the brocock) ones imported from Europe or real ones brought from sunny Florida; so what problems we do have are largely a byproduct of yours anyway.

the current level of firearms use by the british police is correct.

[Elizabeth Petersen]

Ahhh...

I love the smell of Napalm in the morning...



this should be interesting.

[crash12bandit]

As I have said before.. I just don't agree with guns.. i have been shot, I know what it's like to shoot a gun. I don't agree with your pro-arment stance. Crime and guns fall naturaly into the same catagory: Crime is the aspiration of power, a gun is the vessle. Drink driving is the same... you give the human race a big lump of metal that goes 80mph in under 15 secinds, and fill them full of poision.. the results are bound to be catastrophic! Give a human a pistol, that can fire a small amount of metal at an alarming rate, with barely any restictions on the sanity of that individual or their intent, and once again, you have a bloody mess on your hands. I'm sorry.. I'm gonna have to wait untill tomorrow, I can only just see the screen (it's 4:23 in the morning) Good night

[ajw]

Crash, I think the analogy of drinking and driving contradicts what you are trying to prove. If it is your intention to equate guns with cars and drunk drivers to criminals then is that also to imply that the solution to reduce drunk driving related deaths is to forbid the posession of cars? How can you so readily pass the responsibility off the driver or criminal and onto an inanimate object?

Society has not done away with cars but it has been codified that inebriated people should not drive because it presents a danger to other members of society as well as the driver. It would follow then that we should not do away with firearms, but we should prevent people who are obviously prone to criminal behavior from posessing them.

The desire and ability to take human lives will always be available to the people who seek it whether in the form of a car, baseball bat, or a glass bottle. By blaming the tools you are taking responsibility away from people and their actions. I step behind the wheel of my over powered car every morning, drive to work, and don't kill anyone. When I go to the firing range and run through a couple boxes of ammunition, again, no one gets hurt. How can this be? Because I didn't run anyone over in my car nor shoot anyone with my gun. It is that simple.

It is the most liberal and elitest of ideas to believe that, like the drunk driver "poisoned" with alchohol, people are inherently good and is outside influences that turn them to do wrong. It is then up to the "enlightened people" to protect the common rabble from themselves and the evils that influence them.

Anyway, here's a thought for your statistical evidence gathering. I live in Boston, MA where over the past year some of the most restrictive gun laws in the US went into effect. As you might guess, firearm related deaths dropped significantly. However, stabbings and other deaths from edged instruments more than tripled. The overall number of homicides and assaults actually increased over the previous year.

I hear crime of all sorts is skyrocketing in the UK....

[Modifiedbrowning]

So, you want to disarm law abiding people, denying them self defense and make them rely on your "underpaid and overworked" police?

No thanks.

[Thairlar]

The discusions[sic] on the U75 boards have centred around the fact that we don't trust our current law enforcement agency to cary[sic] weapons of mass destuction.
(Emphasis added.)

Please explain to me how a gun is a weapon of mass destruction. You can only aim at one target at once and standard small arms ammunition doesn't have an area effect. Weapons of mass destruction include large bombs such as those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc. If you believe one gun is a weapon of mass destruction because guns in general are used irresponsibly by criminals to cause death, then you must also call automobiles and swimming pools weapons of mass destruction.

I can understand how being shot wouldn't be a pleasant experience, but try to remember that guns are tools. They have no will of their own. Mine will sit locked up until I do something with them, and then they will only obey my will. Responsible people will use them responsibly. Irresponsible people will use them irresponsibly and won't generally be deterred from using them by laws. Just recently there was a woman in my state that defended herself from an intruder in her home with her gun, and it quite possibly could have saved her life. She wasn't charged with a crime, so a reasonable person in her place would have been in fear for their life or greivous bodily injury.

Also, take a lesson from history. In your country, there was a serious lack of guns in the 1930's. When threatened by war and possible German invasion, you had to appeal to US residents to send their guns to help defend yourselves. Being disarmed leaves you open to assault by those who are more aggressive and have less morals than you do with no means on your part to correct the situation.

Ask any number of the responsible gun owners here who carry. They will say it is more a calming influence than anything, and they never want to have to point it at another person and pull the trigger.

[OkieGentleman]

Why was a warning issued to travelers recently saying that England was a dangous place to visit.

Prior to getting rid of all of the legal guns in England it was one of the nicest places I ever visited. Now you have home invasions constantly. People are sleeping with bats and illegal firearms next to their beds due to fear. Muggers operate in the open without fear of their victims being able to defend themselves.

You think guns are evil? Ninety percent of the people that get shot survive, only ten percent of the people that are stabbed or cut survive. That cop shot a man with a knife, if the knife man got within 20 ft of the cop, the man with the knife was close enough to the cop to kill him in about 2 seconds.

From my signature you can tell I am from Oklahoma. Here you break into a mans home, your butt is bought and paid for. It is called the "Make My Day" law. We also have concealed weapons by permit. We have on a per capita basis fewer muggings, road rage injuries, home invasions and rapes than England. Do they happen? Yes, but percentage wise you are safer here in your home than you are in Washington D.C., New York, London, Essex or any other city in England.

By the way check your newest statistics on deaths and compare them to 1995 against 2002. If you can get any up to date ones, it seems the english police are fudging their figures to fit the new laws.

[k77/22rp]

If criminals are going to get guns regardless, then doesnt it make sense that law-abiding citizens should be armed to protect themselves and there families against the criminals?

Here in Michigan it has been 1 year since shall issue CCW was passed, and believe it or not there has been no increase in crime, nor murder and rape. They have gone down, that is because the criminal does not know who is armed and who is not.

[free spirit]

damn, I'd spent half an hour writing a reply, but somehow just lost it... sorry the napalm will have to wait till later it is now way too early/late in the morning for me.

[LawDog]

This course of action is a sad sad state of affairs, as we can all see the UK sliding down a slippery slope of gun terror in to the rotting mass of carnage that an affluent gun culture will breed.

Horsefeathers. Texas has an 'affluent gun culture' as does the rest of the American South and Southwest, and I can assure you that neither place is a 'rotting mass of carnage'. Switzerland has a full-auto assault rifle in every home -- where's the 'gun terror' in that country?

Their are 80, 000, 000 (eighty million) gun owners in this country. 79, 999, 900 of them didn't kill anyone yesterday, the day before or the month before. Why should 79 million people pay for what a handful of critters did?

As idealistic as it may seem, if you take away the guns, you take away the deaths, you take away the widows, you take away the kids with no parents,

If you take away the airliners, no one will fly them into skyscrapers. If you take away the fertilizer, no one will blow up office buildings. If you take away kitchen knives, no one will be stabbed. If you take away fists no one will be beaten to death.

So where does it stop? If you want to protect your world from violence, why do you stop at guns?

Baseball bats and other impact weapons are used far more frequently than firearms in street crimes around the globe. What about the widows and orphans of machete/baseball bat/tire iron killings? Do they not count in your little recital?

you take way the power that should never been placed in the hands of humans.

Oh, please. That power has been in the hands of humans since man picked up the first rock and clunked someone else upside the head. Man uses rocks, sticks, spears, knives, baseball bats, broken glass, beer bottles, Boeing 767s, Fords, and can openers as the focus of that 'power' since three days after God made dirt. Do you intend to control all of those as well?

LawDog