Stopping Murders in the USA ?

[walle]

The founding fathers did not create one of the greatest documents in history during some kind of thoughtless five minute session! and I for one, would feel uncomfortable if the American citizens were to loose their right to bear arms.


Cheers.

[LAThierry]

When you live in/near a dangerous area......you've more to worry about than just guns. We need to deal with crime as a whole, not just hand-guns.

What's forcing you to stay in that neighborhood? Wouldn't it make sense, for your sake and your (future) children's , to move to a safer place, even if it means living in someone's rented out garage than an in apartment?

[jaganath]

When you live in/near a dangerous area......you've more to worry about than just guns. We need to deal with crime as a whole, not just hand-guns.

What's forcing you to stay in that neighborhood? Wouldn't it make sense, for your sake and your (future) children's , to move to a safer place, even if it means living in someone's rented out garage than an in apartment?

a) trying to push the emotional guilt-trip button with "your future children's safety" is pretty low, even if it is irrelevant in bluefront's case.

b) this is the exact mentality which has led to the huge white flight phenomenon in the US and elsewhere (much of Europe, Australia etc). frankly, abandoning the inner cities so they can be taken over by drug dealers, pimps and other lowlife scum doesn't exactly sound like a plan to me.

[LAThierry]

a) trying to push the emotional guilt-trip button with "your future children's safety" is pretty low, even if it is irrelevant in bluefront's case

Your interpretation. Mine is based purely on picking one neighborhood over another if it means the crime rate is lower, the schools are better, just as we pick cars and computer parts based on their specs. It's called comparison shopping, not an emotional guilt trip

b) this is the exact mentality which has led to the huge white flight phenomenon in the US and elsewhere (much of Europe, Australia etc). frankly, abandoning the inner cities so they can be taken over by drug dealers, pimps and other lowlife scum doesn't exactly sound like a plan to me.

Cities go through cycles. Some parts go bad, and eventually so bad that the politicians and the police finally decide to clean up the place. You're just the one that complains when people leaves just like there's another person down the block who complains of "gentrification" once more people re-enter the neighborhood.

[Bluefront]

LAThierry......my house is located south of the city, not within the city limits, in a mostly white area. The murder problem here......I think one murder in the last thirty years, in a population of about 50k. So I'm safe from being shot or stabbed, but only if I stay out of the city proper. I wouldn't live there either if I had kids, since the school system is in a shamble. St Louis used to be considered a nice, safe place to live, with a population slightly over one million.

Sometime in the '50s things started changing.....now the population is well below 500k, divided about 50/50 between black and white. Almost all the people who left were white. Figure it out....

I personally don't see things getting much better there any time soon. So I stay out as much as possible. That means no pro sport games, no St Louis night life, and an avoidance of anything in the city after dark. Just being careful......others not-so-careful are not with us any longer.

I still highly resent that the city I was born in, has been taken away from me by crime...... and nobody has a solution.

[Redzo]

In order to get a "carry" permit in this state, you must take training classes, and demonstrate your ability to use a gun. Since this state legalized this law, I'm not aware of a single instance where a legally carried handgun caused an injury, or was used to commit a crime. Doesn't happen....

But I frequently hear where a legally carried weapon prevents a crime. The most recent.....a pizza delivery guy legally carrying, killed a guy trying to rob him. Less than a month ago in St Louis.....

If you have to "carry" to be safe then it about time that you leave that country and move somewhere else...
Pick a country where ppl live unarmed and you are set

[laserred]

You also ignore where the Bible says "an eye for an eye" ?

http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/NewTestament.html

Read that for starters. "Ancient history" may not be as ancient, or as historical, as you may be lead to believe. But, I don't want to get started on religious arguments, because some fanatic (or multiples of them) will show up at my doorstep. While I'm not "religious", I totally support and respect other people's right to believe whatever they want. And for the record, in response to ALL of the useless bloodshed, not just Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm pretty sure when Jesus said "Love one another", he didn't really mean "Bomb the hell out of them in my name".

[Bluefront]

Tell you what....it doesn't look like The UK is a very safe place either, despite the ban on guns. Link

[jaganath]

Tell you what....it doesn't look like the UK is a very safe place either, despite the ban on guns. Link

some things to bear in mind:

1) nowhere is absolutely 100% safe.

2) large cities are generally more dangerous than small towns and rural areas (this is true all over the world).

3) the Metro is a London paper. so a news story about violent crime is not that unusual.

however, there have been a recent spate of knife attacks in the capital which are very concerning. I very much doubt, however, the survey at the bottom which says almost 1 in 3 London schoolchildren carry knives, that is a wild exaggeration if you ask me, I went to school in London not a million years ago and to my knowledge not a single one of my classmates carried a knife for self-defense.

with all that said, the UK is certainly not a particularly safe country compared to a lot of EU countries, Australia, New Zealand etc and that is probably one of the reasons why so many people emigrate each year.

[aristide1]

When you live in/near a dangerous area......you've more to worry about than just guns. We need to deal with crime as a whole, not just hand-guns.

What's forcing you to stay in that neighborhood? Wouldn't it make sense, for your sake and your (future) children's , to move to a safer place, even if it means living in someone's rented out garage than an in apartment?

Name a single instance anywhere, anytime, BF did something which amounted to anything more than complaining.

[qviri]

Tell you what....it doesn't look like The UK is a very safe place either, despite the ban on guns. Link

Let us know when you find an article in a real newspaper about someone getting killed. God knows that's unheard of in a metropolis of 12 million.

[aristide1]

Tell you what....it doesn't look like The UK is a very safe place either, despite the ban on guns. Link

Let us know when you find an article in a real newspaper about someone getting killed. God knows that's unheard of in a metropolis of 12 million.

That requires work. Good luck with that request.

[floffe]

Tell you what....it doesn't look like The UK is a very safe place either, despite the ban on guns. Link

Journalism

I think I'll wait until I can read the actual report.

[quikkie]

in April 2007 I posted this to another board I inhabit:

And as for gun control working: Has gun crime in the UK gone back up to the pre-dunblane (i.e. pre 1996) level yet? edit: After the Dunblane massacre there was more legislation enacted regarding hand guns
Thanks to google I can say that it has visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3112818.stm and down the links on the right hand side underneath "AT-A-GLANCE" is a link to the gun crime stats from 1982 to 2003.
The home office has the stats from 1998-2005 on page 72 of this document.
from the looks of the BBC graphic it took 3(?) years for gun crime figures to go back to the 1996 levels and now it's much higher.
How much of that is down to a difference through the years in what is described as gun crime I don't have enough information to be able to comment on.
-------

The only way gun control will work is if you can absolutely guarantee no more guns. Back in the real world you realise such a guarantee can never be given. You can reduce the amount of guns but I don't believe it possible to eliminate them entirely.

My other point is that gun control affects only the law abiding, the criminals don't care, so now the criminals know that the law abiding don't have a firearm...

Much as I'd like gun control to work, I know that it isn't currently and that it won't.

[Bluefront]

I posted the UK/knife link to illustrate the many ways people can hurt each other. The anti-gun people seem to dream that crime would stop if legal guns were removed.....forgetting about knives.

Of course they suggest no way to remove illegal guns that could be effective.

Imagine all guns vanished.....would the crime stop, would the drugs stop, would the murders stop? Of course not. There would be a modification of behavior, but not much else would change. The numbers might go down for a while.....but only until a new methods of criminality were perfected. As I said before, we need to deal with crime itself.

Harsher sentences, capitol punishment, elimination of lengthly appeals......modification of current law to allow corporal punishment, stripping down the current jails to just a concrete room with bread and water. There are plenty of ways to make law-breaking more of a risk.

Do something you say? How about the current gun buy-back program? You get $50 no-questions-asked for every gun turned in. How about a reward program for the names of people with illegal guns, if the information is true. That is a current policy here, but under-funded. If every anti-gun person would contribute, a large amount of legal/illegal guns could be removed. How about it......big-mouthed anti-gun people? Your $1000 would remove 20 guns.

Obviously the murderer who is the subject of this thread cared nothing about punishment....he knew he would die. But perhaps he would not have killed five people if he knew his wife and family would lose their house. There are ways to stop/slow-down crime.

[laserred]

I think sometimes people who believe that all murders, or all robberies, or all crime period, can be eliminated, forget that no matter what kind of behavior modifications are used, man is still a primal, wild animal that can never be underestimated. I don't care if the perpetrator doesn't have a weapon at all, there are plenty of ways to incapacitate a victim: see martial arts, fear, or just plain brute force. I didn't know the UK had eliminated "all" (ha ha) guns in 1996, just like Australia did. They've got a similar story, I read sometime around 2003 IIRC, that post-gun-ban, crime was up over 69%, and violent attacks were up over half that number as well. IMHO, if you look at the numbers in the United States, the states/areas with the highest concentrations of "legal" guns (either in-home or with gun carry permits) have the lowest crime levels versus their surrounding, less-gun-populated communities. For a criminal, just knowing that your target "might" have a handgun, shotgun, or rifle, and will not be afraid (Indiana just passed the "Castle Doctrine" where you no longer have to retreat from an attacker before shooting him when you have a right to be where you are at) to ventilate his sorry a$$ is usually enough to prevent the crime from ever happening in the first place. It's also a proven fact that licensed hand gun owners are MUCH more law abiding citizens than most... Gun control laws, as Bluefront pointed out, do nothing but keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. Criminals are not affected by laws, because by definition, they break the laws anyways. My personal opinion is that every person in this country that passes a psychological screening test and has not been convicted of a violent crime (murder, robbery, domestic battery, etc.) should have a gun to protect themselves from people who have committed violent crimes. To tell you how frickin retarded some states are, I just got a job in Illinois, right over the border from NW Indiana where I live. I currently have a LIFETIME CARRY PERMIT here in Indiana which I have held since 1999. I can carry anywhere I please except government buildings, but now once I travel to work in IL, I am completely stripped of my personal protection rights: IL does not allow ANYONE, even off-duty police officers, to carry a gun!! According to the Brady Center's statistics below, IL has a total crime rate of 541.6. Indiana, which has issued over 300,000 carry permits, has a rate of 314.8, which is a measly 42% lower. To top that off, IL even has communities that PROHIBIT owning a gun in your own house!! 2nd Amendment here, anyone?? Anyways, I guess my main point is that the only real way to reduce crime is to arm the masses. Either scare the criminals out of committing crimes, or shoot them dead in their attempt. Either way, crime levels will go down

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets ... spx?ID=126
http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets ... &issue=007

[djkest]

Personally I like the idea that Switzerland has. At least , I think they did this. Didn't they require every male age 18+ to keep and maintain a battle rifle and ammunition? That would be my ideal way to deal with crime and foreign threats. Some people though, don't think I'd trust 'em w/ guns. I'm sure their law is more complicated than that.

[floffe]

Tell you what....it doesn't look like The UK is a very safe place either, despite the ban on guns. Link

Journalism

I think I'll wait until I can read the actual report.

Yep, sensationalism strikes again.

First, we invited children and young people from different council areas and different sorts of services (such as children’s homes, residential special schools, boarding schools and foster care) to meet us at Thorpe Park theme park.

...

Most (156) children who filled in the cards told us where they were living. Seventy-six (almost half) were living in a children’s home, 38 (almost a quarter) were living in a foster home, and 19 (around one in eight) were living at home with their birth parents and getting help from children’s social care services. Of the others, 11 were living in a further education college, 11 were in a boarding school, and one was living with parents who were adopting them.

In short, these are mainly kids who are already in a tough environment, and probably not representative for the whole population of UK children. Specifically, they've excluded most kids with stable families and no problems.

[qviri]

I posted the UK/knife link to illustrate the many ways people can hurt each other. The anti-gun people seem to dream that crime would stop if legal guns were removed.....forgetting about knives.

Of course there are different ways to kill people, some more efficient than others. In the British case, I think the lack of a concrete example of a victim is telling.

Moving the British reality (criminals using knives instead of guns) into the courtroom example, how many people do you think would have died before the knife-armed attacker was stopped?

[LAThierry]

What do you mean "can" be lethal. OJ killed two people with a knife

So you found an example where one blade killed two people during the same event. I'm not terribly impressed. Here are a few events where one gunman killed many many more:
- Texas University tower sniper (16 murdered, 31 wounded)
- Luby Restaurant's massacre (23 murdered, 20 wounded)
- Virginia Tech shooting (32 murdered, 23 wounded)

In any of the above massacres, if the murderers had a blades instead of firearms, their deadliness would be greatly diminished. A crazy person with guns has the capability to be deadlier on a whole other level than a crazy person with blades. Why is it so difficult to hear a gun advocate admit that?

Futhermore, while you claim

Had the poor guy he stabbed been carrying, it would be "O.J. the dead attempted murderer".

I will respond by saying that Simpson surprised his two victims, so I doubt that Ron Goldman carrying a gun would have made any difference, similarly to what you indicated in the situation below:

All the gun laws in the world cannot stop a surprise attack on an armed policeman, who then can have his gun stolen.

And to reiterate that I don't trust weapons in the hands of the average citizen, today on the news I heard about a 10 year old boy grabbing his dad's shotgun, loading a shell and shooting his sister in the face because she wouldn't share her bag of chips... The girl is alive but had to undergo emergency facial plastic surgery.

For all their talk of responsibility, do you think the gun advocates will yank the dad and the son's ability to have weapons after both have been shown to be irresponsible around firearms. <NRA lawyer crying like a baby> "Oh noes, but that would be trampling on our clients' 2nd amendment's right to bear arms!"

[NeilBlanchard]

Greetings,

I don't trust weapons in the hands of the average citizen

Hear, hear, hear! I could not have said it better myself.

The constitution and laws are all about balancing the rights of each and every person -- so, I'm pretty sure that all the death and injury is more important than an individual's right to own guns.

The Second Amendment is about militias and States; not individuals.

[Bluefront]

Neil....you are making a common mistake, when you consider the words of the Second Amendment. You have to keep in mind the year and the times, when you try to apply the words to a modern setting.

Everybody had guns in those times, used for hunting food. Hunting-gun ownership was taken for granted. Probably not a single one of the founding fathers could envision a time when the population did not use a gun for hunting. The right to own a gun for hunting went without saying.

Also.....in those days there were few strictly military weapons, maybe none. When you went to war, you used your hunting rifle. The British were defeated with squirrel guns.....basically.

The second amendment guarantees everyone's right to own a gun, and it doesn't differentiate one gun from another. The intent of the Second Amendment was to give the private citizen....the "regulated militia" as it was called..... the right, the responsibility, to own a gun with which to defend the nation, if necessary.

Gun ownership has been called "the talons of freedom"...... I agree.

[Bluefront]

As far as the OJ murders are concerned...... OJ had the knife to his wife's throat when Ron Goldman approached. Goldman attempted to save the woman by his bare hands.....unsuccessfully. A gun in his pocket could have saved both of them, and ended the life of a soon-to-be murderer. All speculation of course, but a gun normally beats a knife in a show-down.

[laserred]

In a knife fight, there's a chance that feet beats knife (running like hell). In a gun fight, your only hope is that you're the one holding it, or are faster and more accurate than your attacker. To say gun companies are liable for the murders committed with their wares is just as looney to say Ford is responsible for some jackass who was driving drunk and killed a family of four. Assign blame and enforce consequences on the real problem- the actual end user, not the middle men in between.

[NeilBlanchard]

From Wikipedia's entry on the 2nd Amendment:

[quote]The Second Amendment, as passed by the House and Senate, reads:
[quote]“ A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. â€

[nick705]

Oh, look, yet another one...

US university gunman kills five

I guess he'd easily have managed an equal kill rate if he'd been armed with a bread knife or a car.

Out of interest, what explanation do you gun fetishists have for the USA having a murder rate more than four times that of the UK? (still waiting for djkest's "information" about alleged misreporting of UK murder rates BTW)...

[Bluefront]

nick705......you imply that gun owners accept murderous acts as a normal part of life. We don't. But we do demand the right to defend ourselves with the most useful tools, and a gun is the best defense against another gun. That's it.

For the last 40/50 years we have not been serious about murder. It's about time we changed our outlook. Bleeding-heart Liberals are to blame....IMHO.

[NeilBlanchard]

Hello,

I demand the right not to be shot by a person with a gun. And no, I do not want to have to carry a gun myself to try and prevent them from doing that -- besides, what if I lose my senses?

You see, guns are machines designed to kill, and if you spread them all around society -- guess what? A certain number of people will lose their good sense and use their killing machines on other people. It becomes a regular occurrence whether you expect it or not.

But, if the guns were locked up in the local armory, they would serve their constitutional purpose of defending against a dictatorial government, and it would be a lot harder for vengeful person from making a deadly mistake.

In addition to the 6 dead people (plus the shooter himself), there are 15 wounded -- 2 of them are in critical condition. I hope they all heal all their wounds, physical and otherwise. By all accounts, it was a hellish scene.

[Edited for the news update -- apparently one of the 16 wounded people has now died.]

[Bluefront]

And Neil....guns are also designed to protect our society from enemies, both foreign and domestic. That's what the Second Amendment is all about.

It's the bad guys that use guns in their criminal activity. If not guns it would be something else....you're well aware of that. It's the crime that needs to be stopped, since the guns cannot be removed from criminal hands.

[nick705]

nick705......you imply that gun owners accept murderous acts as a normal part of life. We don't.

lol... that's *exactly* what you do, by accepting (and worse, glorifying) the possession of killing machines as a necessary and "normal" part of everyday life.

I'm sure gun ownership is too deeply entrenched in the American psyche to be given up any time soon (not to mention the powerful vested interests doing all they can to keep it that way), so I wouldn't worry too much about "bleeding-heart liberals" overturning your precious Second Amendment.

guns are also designed to protect our society from enemies, both foreign and domestic. That's what the Second Amendment is all about.

Not doing a very good job on the domestic front, is it?