Posted on 07/04/2015 8:28:15 AM PDT by rktman
1969, it was suspended in 65.
The UK police have overwhelmingly never been armed.
Simply no need for all armed force, esp historically, given the low UK rates of violent crime and murder. And murder of a police officer was almost non existant, even today it makes national news.
Even today, despite the myth coming from US hype, the UK rates are still low. See my post on that in this thread.
‘Dispelling The Myth – Why the UK is NOT more violent than the US
INTRODUCTION: ======================================
First and foremost, I want to say this isn’t a statement about American’s right to bear arms, or about what I think about that. This is not the argument at stake here, and I’m not even going to go there.
Do I disagree with the rights of civilians (not just American ones) to arm themselves? Yes, yes I do. But that is my opinion, everybody has one, they all stink, and opinions are not based on palpable, objective facts, but on subjective thoughts, emotions and prejudices and bias. Which is why I’m not even going to debate that.
But there is something I will debate, and fight, and argue against. The notion that the US is somehow, a safer country than the UK. On the 14th of December 2012, armed gunman Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 children in a sad and deplorable shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the United States. A notable consequence of this disaster was an episode of CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight show where the British journalist and television host made statements to the effect Britain is a safer country than the US because Britain has strict gun control laws vis-a-vis the United States. From these statements, a barrage of claims have been advanced by pro-gun advocates in particular (but not exclusively) quoting reports, surveys and statistics indicating that the United Kingdom has anywhere from 4 to five to 10 times more “violent crime” than the US does. One particular example is a segment of Fox’s WXIX affiliate in Cincinnati entitled “Reality Check” where presenter Ben Swann makes a series of statements and cites a number of “statistics” of the type mentioned above, indicating these prove the UK is not only five times more “violent” than the US, but also Europe’s second most violent country overall.
What shocks me the most about these statistics isn’t that they might be true, its how easily certain people cling to them, and the total, abject lack of any independent critical thinking or any interest in fact, of getting to the truth. Well, someone has to do it, and I have. It may have taken a few days, and more work, time and effort than I’ve probably dedicated to far more deserving University papers and academic work, but here it is. The reasons why, in short, bloggers, journalists, media outlets, armchair political scientists and opinionated fools are basically lying to you when they say the UK has a higher rate of “violent crime” than the US.
Has anybody stopped to even figure out why that may be? How that can be possible? How the UK defines violent crime? That what may constitute “rape” in the UK does not in the US and vice versa? Well, I have. And here are my findings.’
http://dispellingthemythukvsusguns.wordpress.com/
By the Numbers: Is the UK really 5 times more violent than the US?
The lesson is that Cultures differ... and if you run the numbers for the US for our Urban cultures vs our non-urban areas, most of the territory within our borders have gun violence rates close to that of England and Europe. It is the “urban youth” (and the wannabe’s) that make our numbers jump.
Good day scotman. Hope things are well across the pond. I kinda figured you’d weigh in when I posted this. Thanks for your thoughtful input. Some of us do value it.
I found the rates for urban core vs suburban (surrounding the metro cores) for 2001 and 2011... and not surprisingly, it is almost exactly triple the suburban figure each time. (I’m assuming rural areas will be even lower)
True, but then most US spree killers and serial killers (1400+ since 1970 acc to FBI) are white, so US violence cant be exclusively an ethnic problem. You are still burying the black victims of a white madman.
And remember (as many Americans don’t) that we can take black urban UK youth from our figures too. Not that white urban UK yoof aren’t as bad.
>> The lesson is that Cultures differ <<
Yep. Almost every citizen-occupied home in Switzerland has a firearm. High murder rate? Not.
In the area of South Carolina where I grew up in the fifties you would have had a hard time finding a home with zero firearms inside and most had multiple firearms if only a shotgun and a .22 rifle. There were very few shootings though, in fact when one did rarely occur it was the main topic of conversation for a month or more. It was NOT legal at that time to carry a handgun concealed or unconcealed unless you were going hunting or fishing. Nevertheless most of the shootings that did occur involved illegally carried handguns.
I will grant you that gun control can reduce the number of hand guns or guns in general in the possession of private citizens.
But question that puzzles me is how can gun control achieve the goal for which it is the proposed solution? That goal being the significant reduction in the number of homicides.
The simple answer is that it can’t.
Firearms are tools no different than hammers or axes. What changes a firearm, a hammer or an axe from a tool to a weapon is the purpose for which it used.
If you reduce the availability of firearms to the public desiring to commit a homicide more homicides will be committed with other weapons which I believe has occurred in Britain. If I am not mistaken the incidence of homicides committed with knives in Britain has been on the rise.
The point being that homicide happens and the tool used to commit that homicide is purely irrelevant to the problem of how to prevent the homicide.
Here’s where most pro-gun folks go off the rails.
We want to own guns because they are a more efficient way to protect ourselves and those we love.
Due to those exact same characteristics, they are also more effective ways for those intent on causing harm to inflict violence.
Sure, someone absolutely intent on committing murder can use poison, a knife, a hammer or even bare hands.
But a gun, by definition, makes it so easy. Something that is easy will, again by definition, happen more frequently.
I’m pro-gun, but I have the honesty to recognize that part of the price of being able to defend ourselves and protect our freedoms effectively is a much higher murder rate.
As you say, guns are tools, no different from any other tool. They’re simply more effective and less arduous methods of killing. Like any other took, they can be and will be used for good and evil. Their availability for the good uses means they will also be available for bad uses.
As for UK murder, it reached a high of almost 1100 in 2002, and has since fallen by almost 50%. A much steeper drop than in the US.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9411649/Graphic-how-the-murder-rate-has-fallen.html
Once in my life I used a pistol to prevent a home invasion. No one was hurt and no police were called. The home invaders simple left. Going down the steps I heard the big guy who had been in front grumbling to one of the others, “Why were you pushing me in the back when the man had a great big gun in my face?”
I don’t know what would have happened if I had answered the door without a pistol in my hand and these people had pushed their way on in, but I thank whatever gods there be that I had a pistol when I needed it.
I suspect that there are hundreds of thousands of cases such as I experienced.
I agree.
My dad used to say, “You don’t need a gun very often, but when you need a gun, you really, really need a gun.”
The only effective method for combating violent crime in the UK is for the intended victims to immediately begin badly-garbled recitations of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. Violent yobs will flee at the sound thereof.
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