IMPORTANT POINTS TO NOTE IN COMPARING CRIME IN THE US AND BRITAIN:
* The UK does not merely prevent its citizens from obtaining military guns, but any gun whatsoever (with very few exceptions), including the handguns with which Piers implies he has no quarrel.
* After the Dunblane massacre in Scotland in 1996, in which 16 schoolchildren and a teacher were killed (and 15 injured) by a man wielding only handguns, Britain’s already strict gun laws were enlarged to include them. The newspaper leading the call for this ban was the Daily Mirror — the editor? A certain Piers Morgan.
* Britain has relatively few gun DEATHS (true). But Piers Morgan fails to take account of GUN CRIME in the UK, only gun deaths. If he did, his argument would lose steam.
Since the gun ban in 1998, the total number of FIREARM OFFENCES in England and Wales has risen by 89%, and in some areas of the country has leapt by as much as 500%. Gang culture once never seen in the UK is now rife — disproving the notion that banning guns will weed out gang culture or the use of guns.
* Additionally, according to a study by UN affiliated European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control last year, it was found that Britain has higher robbery, assault, and burglary rates than America. When criminals know you are unlikely to have a gun, what is to stop them from robbing you, beating you up, or simply breaking into your house?
* Britain was not only the burglary and assault capital of Europe, it also had higher than average rates of car theft, robbery and sex offences, and came second only to Ireland in the overall crime league.
* In 2010, Derrick Bird went on a rampage around Cumbria with a shotgun and a rifle, killing 12 and injuring 11. His casual shooting-fest lasted nearly four hours as he drove around vast areas of land completely unopposed in this gun-free country. Thanks to British leftists like Piers Morgan, Bird knew that there was unlikely to be anyone armed to stop him. Only when armed police were dispatched did he commit suicide. Shocked socialists could only babble about how this proved that the country with some of the strictest gun laws in the world needed more gun control.
You left out the most important one. Don't bother doing it. It is immaterial. All these arguments comparing gun crime and gun deaths between the US and the UK are completely bogus.
In the first place you can argue the stats any way you like. For example, the number of firearm offences has risen by 89% in the UK, but against that you could say it is from a very small base. Anyway, you might argue that the rise may just simply be because the police are enforcing the laws more strictly. In my experience if the British police see you outside your own home with a firearm they will stop you and confiscate it as a matter of course, no matter what you are doing with it.
But the real reason is that the two nations attitudes to firearms are completely different. It is a cultural thing, and because of that it is just simply invalid to compare them on this issue, and Piers is being disingenous doing it.
These big massacres at schools in the US, or Derick Bird blasting people in my home county of Cumbria - they all have one thing in common. They are carried out by people who have basically "lost" it. They go on these shooting sprees because they have had a brain seizure moment and they are not in their right minds. Ergo, it doesn't matter whether the population has total access to firearms or very restricted access, because the problem is not the guns themselves. What matters is the willingness of people to pull triggers, and that's a cultural and (in the case of these mass murderers) a mental health issue.
There are people in America now screaming for massive government control of access to firearms (which is illegal as far as I can make out). There are others (especially on these boards) who think thats wrong and that gun ownership should be retained and even extended - that teachers should be armed in the classroom and so on. If you want to do that, fine, but IMO I don't think either policy would have any effect whatsoever on the incidence of gun deaths, or on the possibility of one of these "massacre of the innocents" happening again.
One last thing. Please do NOT sign the petition sending Piers back to Britain. We do NOT want him back. He is a git :)