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BBC correspondent discovers gun-owning America feels safe
The American Thinker ^ | 25 April 2008 | marktwain

Posted on 04/25/2008 4:17:09 AM PDT by marktwain

Justin Webb, BBC's North America editor, reports to UK listeners and readers on the "paradox" that America is less violent (and feels much safer) than Britain, where private hand gun ownership is banned.

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: banglist; crime; gun; uk
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America is generaly safe. It used to be much safer when guns were more available. I inserted the lines to differentiate the comments of the BBC correspondent from those of the author. I did not post the full article because I was not able to properly copy it to show when the correspondent was being quoted.
1 posted on 04/25/2008 4:17:09 AM PDT by marktwain
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To: marktwain

Keep in mind that this is an article by the BBC, which is as liberal as our MSM. Furthermore, New Jersey is one of the nation’s most liberal states and private firearms ownership is more difficult here than in most other states.


2 posted on 04/25/2008 4:24:57 AM PDT by Wallace T.
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To: marktwain
Does the media, including BBC, bear any responsibility for conveying such a misleading impression?

Most fallacies begin with the media.

3 posted on 04/25/2008 4:25:00 AM PDT by mtbopfuyn
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To: marktwain
Oops. Poor fella. Looks like one BBC correspondent will soon be recalled to the U.K. for heretical writings. Over the years I've met dozens of British expats who chose life in the US. Many of them upon attaining US citizenship, celebrated by visiting a local gun shop and purchasing their first firearm. Welcome to America.
4 posted on 04/25/2008 4:26:07 AM PDT by PowderMonkey (Will Work for Ammo)
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To: marktwain
DBD Security

Darn Big Dawgs

Early Warning and Alert system that allows the homeowner to arm himself before the threat makes it up to the front door.

Works at our house and we feel secure.

5 posted on 04/25/2008 4:34:54 AM PDT by PeteB570 (NRA - Life member and Black Rifle owner)
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To: PeteB570

My Early Warning Alert System: A 70 pound snarling, growling, snapping AM Bulldog. Of course, she is really a lap dog at heart, but don’t tell the neighbors. As a bonus, if someone came into the house and did manage to subdue her, their DNA would be spread all over the house and possibly a finger print from the jowls of the lapdog/ beast.


6 posted on 04/25/2008 4:40:06 AM PDT by momincombatboots (Not a journey for the feeble. (Added to the Non- sheeple list of those Not voting for Mccain))
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To: Wallace T.
New Jersey is one of the nation’s most liberal states and private firearms ownership is more difficult here than in most other states.

I'll attest to that! However, ownership is possible within the constraints of the State law and parts of our State are armed to the teeth.

You can't carry concealed here, but you can carry on your property or place of business. It's fun to freak out the liberal neighbors when they stop by to chat.

7 posted on 04/25/2008 4:41:46 AM PDT by paulcissa (The first requirement of Liberalism is to stand on your head and tell the world they're upside down)
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To: PeteB570
“BBC correspondent interviews bitter small town Americans!!!
8 posted on 04/25/2008 4:42:25 AM PDT by catman67
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To: PowderMonkey
If you go to the American Thinker article, there is a link to the BBC reporters report. I went and read his original report and he really doesn't connect the dots... He associates the peacefulness in America to alcohol drinking habits!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7359513.stm

"What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime.

Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken.

One reason - perhaps the overriding reason - is that there is no public drunkenness in polite America, simply none.

I have never seen a group of drunk young people in the entire six years I have lived here. I travel a lot and not always to the better parts of town."

9 posted on 04/25/2008 5:03:56 AM PDT by alligator (To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.)
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To: marktwain
America is generaly safe. It used to be much safer when guns were more available.

Thank goodness the Secret Police aren't the only ones with guns!


10 posted on 04/25/2008 5:18:32 AM PDT by archy (Et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno. [from Virgil's *Aeneid*.])
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To: marktwain

An armed society is a polite (and safe) society


11 posted on 04/25/2008 5:27:56 AM PDT by KosmicKitty (WARNING: Hormonally crazed woman ahead!!)
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To: marktwain

And by the same token, the UK is scary and I do not feel safe there any longer. Twenty years ago I felt I had perfect freedom to walk around London and the countryside of Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Kent; the police agreed with me that as long as I stayed out of dark London alleys after 10 p.m. I should be okay. Today, it’s dangerous in the extreme to go around much of London after dark, and crimes in the countryside are ignored. The police do nothing. My British friends, like the people in the article, are delighted when they come over here and would move here in a heartbeat if they could.


12 posted on 04/25/2008 5:43:16 AM PDT by ottbmare
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To: Wallace T.

I read about a pizza delivery kid in NJ who bought a used car and hadn’t cleaned it out thoroughly, when cops stopped him and searched the car. In the glovebox lint was a single .22 bullet someone had left there. Supposedly that is a serious crime in NJ.


13 posted on 04/25/2008 6:29:14 AM PDT by Sender ("Why is it that I can't just eat my waffle?" - Barack Hussein Obama)
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To: marktwain

Henry Adams famously said that no American ever dies in the land of his birth. He wasn’t referring to migration; he simply meant that America changes.

I’ve lived in Britain, and no older Briton today is living in the land of his (yes, or her) birth. Forget “Upstairs-Downstairs,” that’s long gone. Today “A Clockwork Orange” better describes the country. The Home Secretary - in charge of security - wears a bullet-proof vest when walking in her own neighborhood.


14 posted on 04/25/2008 6:32:47 AM PDT by Malesherbes
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To: Sender
I'm sure that many of New Jersey's older cities like Newark, Paterson, Camden, and Trenton, are pretty treacherous, sort of mini-Detroits. However, if cops fuss about a single .22 bullet, they do not have enough to do.
15 posted on 04/25/2008 6:35:00 AM PDT by Wallace T.
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To: marktwain

In fact, the crime rate across the US has been declining steadily. Some credit goes to enforcement, but a more telling statistic is the increase in the number of “shall issue” concealed carry permit laws being enacted. Something on the order of 75% of US states are shall issue states now. With the possibility of running into an armed “victim,” criminals are moving to different pickings.

“...personally owned weapons = homeland security!”


16 posted on 04/25/2008 6:44:20 AM PDT by petro45acp (NO good endeavor survives an excess of "adult supervision" (read bureaucracy)!)
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To: Malesherbes
What changed the situation in America around were two major elements: first, the political reaction to the massive crime wave increases in the 1960s and 1970s, and second, the greater militancy of gun owner groups, such as the NRA, against gun control schemes.

The George Wallace third party run in 1968 was the beginning of that reaction. Richard Nixon paid attention to the shift away from permissive treatment of criminals. His appointees to the Supreme Court, while by no means conservative, were generally opposed to the anti-prosecutor and criminal rights bent of the Warren Court. Mike Dukakis' liberal tendencies with respect to pardons seriously hurt his 1988 Presidential campaign. Defeats of liberal jurists and politicians on law and order issues, such as with Jerry Brown in California in 1982, Rose Bird's recall in 1986 in the Golden State, and Mario Cuomo in New York in 1994, were major blows to the permissive approach to criminals. As for gun control, almost all ballot measures proposing greater regulations were defeated in the 1980s and 1990s. The hostile reaction to the Brady Bill by gunowners was a major reason for the Democratic rout in the 1994 elections.

The lessons of the 1980s and 1990s became clear to liberals. Promoting lenient treatment of criminals and supporting gun control were political suicide outside of hard core Democrat areas like big cities, college towns, and elite suburbs.

However, as you point out, things change. The fact that New Jersey recently abolished the death penalty may indicate the pendulum is turning back to permissiveness here.

The only way the crime situation in Britain will turn around is if the British public becomes sufficiently angry and demands tough sentences for convicted criminals and permit law abiding citizens to be armed once again.

17 posted on 04/25/2008 6:56:19 AM PDT by Wallace T.
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To: PowderMonkey
"Many of them upon attaining US citizenship, celebrated by visiting a local gun shop and purchasing their first firearm. Welcome to America. "

It's sort of a right of passage....
18 posted on 04/25/2008 7:26:25 AM PDT by Old Teufel Hunden
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To: marktwain
This is New Jersey. Home of the Sopranos.

No old chap... Hollywood is the home of the Sopranos, not New Jersey.

With all the crap pouring out of tinsel town, it's no wonder the rest of the world is clueless about the United States.

19 posted on 04/25/2008 7:32:59 AM PDT by Ditto (Global Warming: The 21st Century's Snake Oil)
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To: PeteB570
Darn Big Dawgs

Doesn't even have to be a 'big' dog. Most any dog will let you know when something ain't right.

20 posted on 04/25/2008 7:36:10 AM PDT by Ditto (Global Warming: The 21st Century's Snake Oil)
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