Posted on 09/24/2014 7:34:04 PM PDT by george76
Gun control in Britain passed in stages, beginning just after World War I and continuing in a reactionary fashion with increasing strictness through the 1990s.
When the final stage arrived in 1997, and virtually all handguns were banned via the Firearms Act, the promise was a reduction in crime and greater safety for the British people. But the result was the emergence of Britain as the "most violent country in Europe."
Britain began placing restrictions on gun ownership after World War I with the Firearms Act of 1920.
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The Firearms Act of 1920 did not ban guns. Rather, it required that citizens who wanted a gun had to first obtain a certificate from the government. We see this same stage taking place in various places in the United States now, where a person who wants a firearm has to get a Fire Owner Identification Card (Illinois) or has to be vetted by police (Massachusetts) or both.
Thirteen years after the passage of the Firearms Act, British Parliament passed the Firearms and Imitation Firearms Bill, making the possession of a replica gun or a real one equally punishable unless the owner of either could show the lawful purpose for which he had it. (Sounds like California?)
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In 2009, twelve years after the Firearms Act of 1997 was passed, Daily Mail Online reported that Britain was "the most violent country in Europe." They also reported that Britain's home figures showed "the UK [had] a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and South Africa."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
If a UK body has been murdered, its classed as a murder, either at the scene or after examination.
Not until conviction?. Nonsense. Where do all these myths about the UK start?. Is it the net, talk radio in the US?.
Its a rumour, it isn’t fact.
Per your link, the comparison is MUCH more complicated than there simply being fewer guns in UK.
What about the skyrocketing knife crime rate in England & Scotland? Murder doesn’t always involve a gun.
Despite the UK fondness for knife crime, murder rates are still low. Even in Scotland, whose fondness for violence is probably worst in the UK, not much over 100 people out of 5.5 million are murdered a year.
I got my myth of statistics from this notoriously unreliable source (lol),
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmhaff/95/95ap25.htm
35. Homicide statistics too vary widely. In some developing countries, the statistics are known to be far from complete. Figures for crimes labelled as homicide in various countries are simply not comparable. Since 1967, homicide figures for England and Wales have been adjusted to exclude any cases which do not result in conviction, or where the person is not prosecuted on grounds of self defence or otherwise. This reduces the apparent number of homicides by between 13 per cent and 15 per cent. The adjustment is made only in respect of figures shown in one part of the Annual Criminal Statistics. In another part relating to the use of firearms, no adjustment is made. A table of the number of homicides in which firearms were used in England and Wales will therefore differ according to which section of the annual statistics was used as its base. Similarly in statistics relating to the use of firearms, a homicide will be recorded where the firearm was used as a blunt instrument, but in the specific homicide statistics, that case will be shown under “blunt instrument”.
36. Many countries, including the United States, do not adjust their statistics down in that way and their figures include cases of self defence, killings by police and justifiable homicides. In Portugal, cases in which the cause of death is unknown are included in the homicide figures, inflating the apparent homicide rate very considerably.
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This source probably is less reliable but does have some good info (like details of the Middleton court decision),
http://rboatright.blogspot.com/2013/03/comparing-england-or-uk-murder-rates.html
“[I mentioned] that 657 number from the Home Office? The Coroners only called 229 of the cases they determined a cause of death on a homicide, and in 4400 cases they filed a “narrative verdict” describing the cause of death in a narrative manner without putting it in a category. If those 4400 cases are what we would normally call murders that would suggest that the correct number of “violent deaths of interest to the police” is on the order of 4700 for 2011, then the UK murder rate is 8.5 per 100,000 or about 177% of the US murder rate. Now, honestly, we don’t know what conclusion as to cause the coroner would have reached if they weren’t using It’s entirely possible that very few of them would have been classed as homicides. We don’t know. My point here isn’t that the English death rates should be quoted from the highest available but rather, no matter which source I attempt to use, I can’t actually get an apples to apples comparison. The data simply isn’t available. “
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Actually, according to the Parliament report, you are correct as far as Scotland goes. It’s England and Wales that modify the “murdered” number in a number of ways, complicated ways, apparently.
But still the rates are lower than in the USA for sure.
Thank you for pushing me into learning!
The chart numbers look absurdly high to me.
Compare to the USA in 2012...
Violent crimes: 1.214 million
US Population: 313 million
Violent Crime Rate: 388 Per 100,000
So, England has FIVE times more violent crime than the USA?
Canada has almost THREE times more than the USA?
Very hard to believe those numbers.
The important fact is that before the United Kingdom passed gun control laws, they had about the most lenient gun laws ever. At the same time their serious crime rates were a tiny fraction of what they are now.
For many years, the UK slanted their murder rates by always not counting Northern Ireland.
With all due respect, as one famous study here found out, the whole death rate for the NI terrorist murders 1969-94 was LESS than ONE YEAR’s murder in Detroit!.
Thilly boyth. How many times do we have to say it?
GUN CONTROL IS NOT ABOUT CRIME!
</off screaming to be heard>
It's about slavery.
Ping
This ‘Our gun crime, gun homicide rates are a fraction of the US. Our murder rate is a quarter of the US.’ is what proves the old adage about statistics ... you can make them say anything.
In the US the gun hating press and government count 18yr old’s as children to drive up the ‘child gun violence victim’ stats.
If the black on black gun violence is removed from the statistics The murder rate goes way down in the US.
Please don’t think I mean that non-blacks don’t do murder, they do of course. It is just that young black men (insert any number of reasons here) kill out of proportion to any other demographic.
In related news; the UK counts 10 dead people at a scene as one murder. There is no other way to push the stats down to placate the citizens of Britain so they meekly accept their servitude.
When I was in London in 1984 I did a little pub crawling in SOHO to see what the night life was like. I did not see any murders but luckily fell in with some locals who steered me away from the dangerous spots.
Knife crime was huge. I had an ordinary folding knife and it scared the people I was with, just because I had it in my pocket.
Bobbies would let you pass if you were a little scary looking (true story). I was told I could do literally anything I wanted because of my appearance. I thought I was pretty ordinary looking to tell the truth but fit. Many of the Brits were not.
No-one talked about gun crime.
Not So Great Britain is doing so badly, it makes the conditions in the U.S. look almost good.
Did you know that if you remove Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, and Los Angeles from the equation, the United States has the lowest homicide rate in the developed world? Do you know what those cities all have in common? Gun control.
Too bad we don’t have criminal control instead.
Sorry, but I have never read so much rubbish.
Firstly, this argument about removing black on black crime. Well, you cant. Its part of your country. And do you never think that WE can do the same?. And the UK’s already low murder numbers/gun crime numbers drop even further by some way.
Secondly, I don’t know where you get the idea that 10 dead people equals one murder, I have never read so much crap in my life about the UK. Utter rubbish. I would expect that from someone from Bumsville, Hick County, USA, who knows nothing about the UK, but you’ve been here!. I can assure you that it is not true and never has been.
Third, your 1984 visit. Believe me, don’t take Soho or London to mean the rest of the UK. There are parts of the UK, like Glasgow or some of the cities, where I could/could have taken you then and even a big guy like you would have been scared for your safety. Parts of Soho are our Greenwich Village, not exactly tough-guy central. Although ironically the gangsters who have famously run it are the hardest gangsters in Britain. And Soho as you said famously has its tougher parts.
I have no doubt people there were rather scared of you and the knife and a bit wimpy, a bit arty types, but people in 1984 in Glasgow, Liverpool, Mancehster etc, wouldnt have been fazed by you at all. Then nor now.
As to the police, our police may have been and may be more laid back and friendly, but don’t confuse that for being wimps or scared. And the UK police were a far harder bunch then. The old tough, hard as nails, no nonsense UK police many of the British public would love to see back. Instead of the too-PC, too-psuedo social worker police we have now.
So the idea they ‘let you pass’ and looked scared or would have have let you do what you want is nonsense. Believe me, I remember what the British police were like in 1984, and they were a hard bunch. I was the nephew of a crime reporter who worked in both London and Glasgow at the time and had done since the 50’s. Believe me, if you’d tried anything, you’d have been disabused of your notions of easy, laid back, weak British police.
Yeah, I don’t think so. This reason for the UK’s supposedly high figures keeps getting explained. And getting ignored.
And we British freepers keep also going through the major crimes and how the UK is still well behind the US in murder, gun crime, gun homicide, serial murder........
The idea that the UK is a more violent country than the US is just a ridiculous nonsense. Common sense and the figures do not support it.
Thanks for responding scotsman. I recommend a breath before typing.
Not in order but here goes; I did not say I was big; I did not say what kind of people I was with and I accurately reported what they said to me. That does not constitute a condemnation of all Bobbies in London, it is only what they said to me.
On the subject of murders in the UK, no doubt you would like to take northern Ireland out of the UK stats,but hey, who’s counting. They do more than double your stats though.
Speaking of stats the way ‘murders’ are counted in the UK is disingenuous since the earlier poster who mentioned that they only count it as a murder after the conviction was speaking correctly. Don’t want to prejudice the case as it were.
This site;
http://rboatright.blogspot.com/2013/03/comparing-england-or-uk-murder-rates.html
has some revealing data about comparing the rate of deaths between the UK and USA. The short version is that it cannot be done because of the aforementioned way of counting.
The short version, and I quote ‘The murder rate in the UK according to US standards is double or higher than their reported rate. It may be impossible to produce an actual apples to apples comparison number from official sources. It is not 15% of the US rate.’
It may seem an outrageous statement to you but if you read the page you will see that in fact he is being kind.
Off the high horse, sir. It is a Shetland.
The hits keep coming.
Here is another article from the wayback machine about how Britain counts crimes;
Quick quotes ‘ Not surprisingly to many observers, the violent crime rate has risen dramatically and steadily since gun bans have been instituted. That’s a trend seen wherever strict gun control laws have been implemented. And that’s the part of the story British officials have tried to keep under wraps.
A headline in the London Daily Telegraph back on April 1, 1996, said it all: “Crime Figures a Sham, Say Police.” The story noted that “pressure to convince the public that police were winning the fight against crime had resulted in a long list of ruses to ‘massage’ statistics,” and “the recorded crime level bore no resemblance to the actual amount of crime being committed.”
For example, where a series of homes were burgled, they were regularly recorded as one crime. If a burglar hit 15 or 20 flats, only one crime was added to the statistics. ‘
And more ‘”American homicide rates are based on initial data, but British homicide rates are based on the final disposition.” Suppose that three men kill a woman during an argument outside a bar. They are arrested for murder, but because of problems with identification (the main witness is dead), charges are eventually dropped. In American crime statistics, the event counts as a three-person homicide, but in British statistics it counts as nothing at all. “With such differences in reporting criteria, comparisons of U.S. homicide rates with British homicide rates is a sham,” the report concludes.’
And a little more ‘ So what’s a British politician to do when elections coincide with an out-of-control crime wave? Calling for “reasonable” gun laws is no longer an option. Handguns have been confiscated and long guns are very tightly restricted. So anti-gun demagoguery, while still popular, can’t carry the entire load.
Conversely, the government would not find it acceptable to allow its subjects to possess any type of gun (even a licensed, registered .22 rifle) for home protection. Defensive gun ownership is entirely illegal, and considered an insult to the government, because it implies that the government cannot keep the peace. Thus, in one recent notorious case, an elderly man who had been repeatedly burglarized and had received no meaningful assistance from the police, shot a pair of career burglars who had broken into his home. The man was sentenced to life in prison. ‘
And finally a real beauty ‘ So what’s the government going to do to make voters safer? One solution came from the Home Office in April 1999 in the form of “Anti-Social Behaviour Orders” – special court orders intended to deal with people who cannot be proven to have committed a crime, but whom the police want to restrict anyway. Behaviour Orders can, among other things, prohibit a person from visiting a particular street or premises, set a curfew, or lead to a person’s eviction from his home.
Violation of a Behaviour Order can carry a prison sentence of up to five years.
Prime Minister Tony Blair is now proposing that the government be allowed to confine people proactively, based on the fears of their potential danger to society. ‘
I am proud and glad to be an American and very grateful to not be a Brit.
1-—3000 people died in NI 1969-1994 (’The Troubles’). That’s LESS than the murder rate for one major US city for ONE YEAR!. Detroit for example. Or Chicago. So less people died over 25 yrs of a terrorist campaign in Britain than died in a year in a major American city. Yes, lets bring in the NI murders a year. Oh, lets do.
Thirty years later, the total amount of UK murders yearly is little over 800 people in a country of nearly 65 MILLION. Glasgow, one of Europe’s hardest cities, has less than 100 murders. London, a city of 8m, has just a couple of hundred murders. In 1984, the numbers would have been less.
2—Again, whilst your knife might have scared your colleagues, it wouldn’t have scared a 15 yr old in 1984 London, Glasgow or Liverpool. Let alone adults in other UK cities and towns. And again, the notion the police in 1984 would let you pass/act because they were fearful of you in some way is frankly utter nonsense. Again, I knew what Britain 1984 was like, what the crime was like, what the police and public were like.
Another thing just struck me. Remember that dry British humour, your friends may have made a comment you took as serious, they could easily have been making a jokey comment and you wouldn’t get it. Our remarks are very dry.
3-There is no way, even by twisting figures, that you can make the UK and US murder rates and numbers comparable. The UK simply murders a low number of people. As I said, barely 800 people or so a year, less than 1000 for a whole nation of 65m. We simply even today still have a low amount of murders.
4—I have already stated that the earlier poster’s assertion about ‘murder only after conviction’ is not true.
In ‘Rick’s Notes’, as blogger John Kramer said in the comments section, read page 32 of the very report you linked!. In fact read the comments by John Kramer and other British readers who have posted the real facts and frankly made Rick’s article a nonsense.
The report on pg 32 and other facts show that UK and US rates are counted the same. I repeat that, counted the same. So the above assertion is as I said nonsense.
Read p32 of the Home Office report that Rick linked and you’ll see that amongst the 636 recorded homicides there were 316 where the court decision was pending, 54 concluded without a verdict (for example murder/suicides), and 95 cases with no identified suspect.
If the UK really reported only murder convictions, then they would ACTUALLY ONLY have reported only 102 homicides in that year, or 171 if they included manslaughter convictions. But in fact they reported 636 because they use the same method as the US.
I have read the article and its rubbish. Your own link even points out that the ‘real’ figure even if we accepted the ‘Rick argument’ would be a little over 1000 murders and almost half the US rate!. So the UK would STILL be a far safer place than the UK. BUT the Rick evidence isn’t true.
I will dismount of my Clydesdale and give you a pair of reading glasses. Today’s word for today is link.
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