You just have to follow the link, Lon, where you find that there were 14 INTENTIONAL murders with firearms according to the 2002 WHO statistics used in the stats. Go to here and you get a different figure for the amount of homicides (accidental AND intentional) than the stats shown by SG.
Of course, that figure does not include Firearms Offences, which are a different kettle of fish altogether
I guess no country has a monoply on looney tunes who would be happy to randomly murder people. Sad to see this kind of thing happening anywhere in the world.
There are some countries where having access to a gun can be life saving though but agree that gun ownership should be qualified and controlled. The Swiss seem to get this right.
Well, caco, although there can almost always be improvements to any system you do have to remember that there are an estimated 270 MILLION privately held legal firearms in the USA. So when you break down the statistics on how many homicides there are, and how much "gun crime" there is, and how much of this is committed with legally held firearms you realise that the level of gun crime carried out with legally held firearms is proportionally low. Also, do remember that many stats that involve "firearm related deaths" do include suicides in the same way that the UK justified the position of several speed cameras based on people committing suicide by jumping off bridges as they then became "road deaths" despite there being a low level of actual road accidents in the places concerned.
Oh, btw, you mention Switzerland. You might want to rethink that.
Last edited by hellsbrink; 21st Jul 2012 at 09:24.
One misapprehension that needs to be corrected is that the UK is a country where it is virtually impossible to own a lethal weapon. In fact the latest figures I have been able to get hold of (2010) show that there were currently 580,653 holders of shotgun certificates in England and Wales (I dont have the figures for Scotland, and Northern Ireland operates under different rules). These cover over 1,300,000 shotguns, so guns are by no means the rarity in this country that some might think.
It is a fact, though, that gun crime, whether using a legally or illegally held weapon, is still a comparative rarity in this country. Gun related homicide numbers in the UK are among the lowest in the world, around a twentieth of those for the USA (adjusted for population size) which, as has already been stated, is by no means the worst country in the world for gun homicides.
(Hellsbrink - any chance of re-sizing that table? It's screwed the page up and the mods won't like it )
Last edited by Tankertrashnav; 21st Jul 2012 at 09:11.
One misapprehension that needs to be corrected is that the UK is a country where it is virtually impossible to own a lethal weapon.
Yes. It's not difficult to get a shotgun licence. You need a couple of friends to sign a form saying "I've known this person for a couple of years and as far as I know they aren't mad", and not a lot else.
I refused to sign such a form for someone once ... because I'd known them for a few days less than the required length of time, and I didn't want to figure in the gun crime statistics myself for signing illegally!
Last edited by Gertrude the Wombat; 21st Jul 2012 at 09:29.
United Kingom 14 - Population 62.6m so the UK is very very low
So, making no distinction between legally and illegally held weapons it would seem that the UK policy on firearms has worked. Of course, considering the police's understandable reluctance to open fire on a presumed criminal ět would seem that that number could be reduced if people like Moat could be dropped earlier
Hmm those Swiss certainly keep that mortality rate quiet. Wonder if they have a high suicide rate?
Hmmm.
Swiss suicide rate is 16th in the world, 18 per 100,000 people (WHO 2007 report), and between 1996 and 2005 26-28% of those were by firearm.
But when you look at suicides then gun control doesn't matter as without the firearm these people would be likely to use another method.
When you look at the HOMICIDE rate, however, you see only Albania has a higher rate of homicide by firearm in Europe. That's why I suggested you reconsider using Switzerland as a "model that works".......
So, making no distinction between legally and illegally held weapons it would seem that the UK policy on firearms has worked. Of course, considering the police's understandable reluctance to open fire on a presumed criminal ět would seem that that number could be reduced if people like Moat could be dropped earlier
Not quite, Lon, for that is figures for only MURDER (i.e. intentional killing) in the UK from a time when the method used to collate the data was being changed (2002). If you look at the link I posted in the post where I replied to you you see the true number of firearm related deaths is higher, but may be skewed due to the changes in the way firearm related crime/deaths/injuries was changed in 2002.
You'll also find very few legally held firearms are used in the high number of gun crimes in SA. The burning question though, is what happened to a number of large arms caches our glorious leaders admitted to having, but refused to turn in?
undeed hells, the thing is Lon, with those statistics, the young girl recently cut down with an automatic while inside a KFC wouldn't be included as the intention wasnt to murder her, she was merely caught in the overspray.
same with people caught in the crossfire between gang shoot outs.
all the gun ban did was to take firearms out of the hand of responsible owners looking to comply with the law and leave them in the hands of those who do not.
I think it was Phil the Greek who summed up the ban quite well when he said something along the lines of
"What will they ban next, cricket bats?"
The bans were a knee jerk reaction to hide the real cause of the issue, a question that Central Police never answered. Why was someone like Thomas Hamilton, with all the complaints against him because of his unhealthy attitude to young boys, the questions about his sanity, his known interest in the effects of shooting someone, the known questions raised by gun club members about him, etc, allowed to keep a firearms licence and keep his weapons when even a cursory investigation, as well as all the times the police had investigated what he had been up to, would have shown him to be someone unfit to hold a firearms certificate of any kind.
In the 60 days leading up to the cinema attack, Mr Holmes legally bought four weapons at local gun shops - an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle, two .40-calibre Glock handguns and a 12-guage Remington shotgun.
Police said James Holmes had been wearing a gas mask, along with protective clothing and a helmet Chief Dan Oates of Aurora police said he also purchased more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition on the internet, including 3,000 rounds for the assault rifle, 3,000 for the Glocks and 300 for the shotgun
Worrying also is that a regular background check (if done) would have probably revealed nothing wrong about this nutcase wanting to buy weapons.
Did someone mentioned mental health control instead of guns control ?
Last edited by ehwatezedoing; 21st Jul 2012 at 12:49.
Worrying also is that a regular background check (if done) would have probably revealed nothing wrong about this nutcase wanting to buy weapons.
Checks were done, and the nutcase had no criminal record (apart from a minor traffic offence) so was not red flagged.
The buying of ammo over the internet is worrying, but anyone could do that if they really wanted to. But making multiple visits to different gun stores should have been flagged, imo, and there is one thing they can tighten up on if they wish. But, of course, local, state and federal records be kept up to date and be accurate, and that is another issue that can make the checks a joke.
Ultimately, however, like in the UK, you'll never stop people getting firearms if they truly want them.
A friend of mine, now sadly dead, was, before retirement, a very senior officer in Norfolk. On the subject of gun control, he told me: 'We had over 270,000 registered firearms in Norfolk. In seven years, not one crime was committed with any of them. So banning guns makes an insigificant difference to crime'.
I suspect that's very much the case in the US. I also suspect that there are a number of crimes avoided in the US because people have guns - remember that young widow and her baby in Oklahoma where two druggies were breaking into her barricaded room? The state should have paid for shotgun cartridge, though, in view of the amount she saved them by not having the guy in jail.
Swiss suicide rate is 16th in the world, 18 per 100,000 people (WHO 2007 report), and between 1996 and 2005 26-28% of those were by firearm.
But when you look at suicides then gun control doesn't matter as without the firearm these people would be likely to use another method.
When you look at the HOMICIDE rate, however, you see only Albania has a higher rate of homicide by firearm in Europe. That's why I suggested you reconsider using Switzerland as a "model that works".......
In Switzerland every male is put into the armed forces on school leaving. They are given a gun, trained a bit and then sent home with their gun. Every year or so they do a couple of weeks retraining and they take their gun for this. At 35 or so they are demobbed but they get to keep their gun.
In the 30s/40s/50s this made sense having a standing militia ready to leap out from behind their toblerones to make battle with the enemy. Today it makes no sense at all. Recently the Swiss military admitted they had no idea where many 10s of thousands of army-issued weapons were.
These government issued weapons are then used to strengthen the already high suicide, infanticide and parricide rates. One nutter took his gun and took out a number of the members of the Zug parliament.
There are moves afoot to have the weapons stored in armouries rather than at home. In Geneva Canton this is now the law.
Still Switzerland is NOT a model that works, on this subject.
I don't understand how the average citizen of the USA cannot match the fact that some nutter can go out and buy an a shop full of weaponry plus thousands of rounds of ammo to the fact that the same nutter then goes out and massacres some of their fellow citizens now and then.
It may not be guns that kill people, but people WITH guns that kill people, but the fact that folks can easily go out and buy body armour, automatic weapons, tear gas etc etc etc........
I'm afraid I have to agree with the original poster.
A saddened Doc C
Last edited by Doctor Cruces; 21st Jul 2012 at 16:26.
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