I don't have to carry a gun. I live in the UK.

[sibelian]

There's basically no guns. Well, there are some, but not in anything like significant numbers.

I suppose I just take it for granted that I can wander about without thinking "has that guy got a gun" or "oh no, another gun massacre".



Nobody where I live is bothered about protecting themselves. There's nothing in particular to protect ourselves against, really. Apart from the occasional drunken moron.

[Skittles]

1. paranoia is rampant in the "home of the brave"

it's a sad, pathetic reality

[sibelian]

3. I think there's a genuine justification for the paranoia.

i.e. - lots of people have guns.

Unfortunately the widely perceived solution to the problem - lots of guns - contributes to the problem as well as "solving" it. And it's a little difficult to see how it "solves" it.

[Skittles]

5. but that is exactly what the NRA wants

EVERYONE to be armed and paranoid but hey, not all of us fall for that garbage

[sibelian]

6. I don't know much about them

Are gun manufacturing interests involved in that group?

[BlueMTexpat]

21. Check for yourself and see what you think.

They have undue influence on our legislators at all levels. http://home.nra.org/

http://www.nationalmemo.com/nras-top-5-gun-industry-donors/

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000082

As yet, those of us who advocate reasonable limits on gun ownership do not have an umbrella organization with anywhere near the same lobbying power. It is indeed all about the money and keeping the nation as paranoid as possible.

[NickB79]

23. Not really. Crime rates in the US have fallen precipitously

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/181998015/rate-of-u-s-gun-violence-has-fallen-since-1993-study-says

We've added literally a hundred million guns to the country in the past 30 years, but the crime rate has fallen to levels we haven't seen since the 1960's. However, too many idiots who don't really need a gun for defense, get a permit to carry one because they mistakenly believe the country is getting more, not less, violent.

Fuck, I actually HAD to pull a gun once in self-defense, and even I don't want to carry one on me 24/7. The hunting rifles I own stay locked up and unloaded when not in use.

[Lizzie Poppet]

44. It's not just that others have guns.

It's that we have lots of people willing to commit violent crimes in general. Some have guns, some don't...but if you don't happen to be physically capable of overcoming a young(ish) male (statistically by far most likely perpetrator of violent crimes), then their lack of a gun isn't much of a bar to them harming you. You're less likely to be killed if they have no gun, but that's only a certain degree of comfort to someone badly beaten or raped.

It all depends on where you live, of course. Violent crime in the US (and in most countries, I suspect) is not evenly distributed. Huge swaths of this country are no more dangerous than most any other developed nation. I suspect this is true in your case, if you feel that safe (given that the UK actually has a higher rate of assault and rape than the US...).

[Gravitycollapse]

2. What's more, your police don't have guns either.

At least not the beat cops.

[sibelian]

4. No, although some of them want them.

They tried to give our cops guns a while back (can't remember when) and substantial perecentages of the police all said "no way!" I don't have figures but I think it was about 50% against, which was enough to put the State off.

I can't remember the last time a policeman died here as a result of gunfire. I'm sure it's not as long ago as all that, but I don't remember it at all.

It might be an unfair comparison, my nation is much smaller than the US.

[Gravitycollapse]

7. It's not an unfair comparison. I do not give as much credit to the size of a nation as others do.

If we can wage war so spectacularly, we can wage peace just as well. The only thing we need is motivation.

[sibelian]

9. 'K.

I find it difficult to choose the dog to have in the fight with US gun stuff. I feel slightly embarassed saying anything about it because I don't live there.

I suppose it seems to me that if my little nation can manage without them after centuries of chopping people's heads off and hanging them and burning them at the stake and things, well nice big, comfy, well-off nations like the US could, probably, also.

But then, the UK would have no way of getting rid of it's own Hitler should such an event arise. Which is ludicrously unlikely, I think, but...

Seems to me that would be the only reason for guns.

[immoderate]

8. Tut, tut. Don't give away the scaling excuse.

It may have some validity, but I wouldn't presume it's true. If the per capitas are similar, I would look to other causes first.

--imm

[muriel_volestrangler]

42. The last 2 were exactly a year ago today, in Manchester

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_police_officers_killed_in_the_line_of_duty

A nutter on the run for a (non-police) murder made a hoax call to get police to come to a house, and he shot them both (he had a grenade as well as a hand gun). 6 in the past 10 years; 2 in the decade before that.

[sibelian]

57. Very sad.

Impossible to prevent...? With guns or vests?

Difficult.

[PorridgeGun]

11. We have ARU's (Armed Response Units) on regular patrol in most places now

The ARU cars stand out for being silver rather than white, and with black tinted windows. I live in a smallish town in semi-rural Hertfordshire and I see ours out every once in a while. They tend not to have much to do, though. And another commenter was right about most police not wanting guns. I dated a police sgt. for a while and when asked about it she said she didn't think they were necessary and didn't particularly want to shoot people anyway.

What you also might find interesting are the sort of guns available here. Most guns used in crime here are actually illegally converted starter pistols and other low powered, jury rigged junk - or perhaps a stolen side by side bird gun at best.

Also, the police here would never, ever get away with gunning innocent people down or using firearms overly aggressively in cases where they were clearly other alternatives. Both incidences in recent memory have resulted first in riots, and then long drawn out public inquiries into any police misconduct.

[cali]

10. I don't have to carry a gun. I live in Vermont. I don't have to lock my house

and there are guns here, Nobody where I live is bothered at all about protecting themselves. the crime rate here is very low.

[sibelian]

12. Then it's a little difficult to blame guns.

I know I'm going to get my head chomped for this, but if Vermont can handle guns, why can't LA? (correct my assumptions about LA if I'm wrong)

Because, it seems to me that you're saying it really is a people problem? Am I misinterpreting you?

[cali]

15. Vermont is a rural place. just about the whole state

our largest city is 40,000 people.

[sibelian]

19. How does that affect things?

I'd have thought a small place, with presumably smaller police precincts, might make crime worse, not better. A lot fo the crime heavy places in the UK are rural.

[cali]

35. Vermont is a low violent crime state across the board

with some of the laxest gun laws in the country. Small rural police forces. Vermont is not the only rural state with a low violent crime rate. There are several others.

I don't know why this is so, but it is.

[sibelian]

38. That does somewhat spoil the story that guns are bad.

What I would hope is that it doesn't spoil the story of "Guns don't kill people, people kill people, but as we can't change people maybe we could change their access to guns."

[Lizzie Poppet]

46. Basically, there is no solid statistical correlation...

...between per-capita gun ownership and violent crime here in the US. Some areas with high ownership have low crime rates, others do not. The same is true for low-ownership-rate areas: they vary considerably in crime rates.

One fairly consistent factor seems to be poverty (and associated problems like unemployment, decaying infrastructure, prevalence of gang culture, etc.).

[PorridgeGun]

13. Sounds about the same as the neighbourhood my family moved to

when we emigrated there from the UK in 1985. It was a semi-rural part of upstate NY where guns were often left around openly (I came across my first one sitting in the back of a friends closet.. a pump action .20 gauge), and the sight of kids running around with .22/.410 over and unders wasn't uncommon. We lived very close to the Seneca river and most people were "outdoorsmen".. hunters, fishermen etc.. of one stripe or another.

Doors were usually left open, most peoples parents knew each other well, and the only person I remember having an alarm system was an indian kid with well off parents whose father had some gold and other valuables that warranted extra protection.

We also had the good fortune of living close to an indian reservation where you could buy the sort of fireworks that'd get you arrested for possessing an illegal destructive device today.

My early teenage years were quite huck finn-esque, come to think of it. No one stayed home. If school wasn't in were were out on the river, running around in the woods, off camping/fishing/hunting, or trying to pick the liquor cabinet lock in someone's parents basement.

It was all fun and games until the inevitable tragedy struck and we moved to California.

[sibelian]

18. I'm a little hesitant to ask... but...

What was the inevitable tragedy?

[PorridgeGun]

20. Moving to Calfiornia ;-)

[Le Taz Hot]

14. Well, believe it or not,

MOST Americans don't even own a gun. The gun-humpers skew the data that makes it seems like we're all packing when, in reality, the number of gun owners is far fewer. For some reason the gun fetishists find it necessary to own 15 semi-automatic weapons of mass killings in the apparent conclusion that more gunz means bigger penis size. Or something like that.

[sibelian]

17. I can't find any sensible statistics.

What's the proportion of owners to non-owners? All I can find are sites that count to total number of guns per resident, which is useless, as there are a huge number of gun hobbyists with multiple weapons.

[morningfog]

24. The gun humpers fight even sharing that data.

In their obscene paranoia, they think it would put them on a list or start a gun registry. Which of course is just one step away from despotism and the end of their world. They don't want anyone to know the extent of their arsenal, the depths of their paranoia, the obsessiveness of their fetish.

[sibelian]

31. HUH???

So, what, you're saying that the actual number of gun NON-owners is unclear???

Wuh...

If there's 80 mil gun owners on the states (apparently), that makes roughly 230 mil NON owners. But that's just me doing sums. I was hoping someone had made some proper stats.

hmf

[Bluenorthwest]

39. Best estimates are that about 30% of Americans own a gun, about half of them own

a handgun. This figure has been dropping for several decades now, it was 50% in the 70's.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/us/rate-of-gun-ownership-is-down-survey-shows.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[nadinbrzezinski]

50. Realize also most gun owners

Don't pack. And if going o the range (for target shooting) the gun is in the trunk, in a case, unloaded.

It is a minority of gun owners who are plain crazee

[sibelian]

59. Yes, that must of course be the case

Otherwise you're talking about 1/5th US population with fingers quivering near triggers all the time and you'd all be dead already....

[Le Taz Hot]

37. Not a clue.

Of all the people I've ever known, probably only a handful own guns and those were hunting rifles. But then again, I hang out with commie liberals so what do I know?

[Lizzie Poppet]

45. There are estimated to be a little over 50 million gun owners in the US

So about one in six...although I suspect that estimate is low but a fairly significant margin (not everyone tells the truth to pollsters and researchers...and when there is at least some movement to restrict a thing, people will often clam up about having that thing).

[etherealtruth]

16. I don't own a gun

I have never touched a gun.

[ananda]

29. I have touched a real gun several times and ...

... I shot a pistol once at some cans on a log in the country when
I was about twelve.

My dad kept his old navy gun, unloaded, in a box in his closet and
he showed it to us once. He and my brothers had rifles for hunting,
but I never did.

I have never owned a gun and never plan to.

I have great respect for guns. The ONLY thing they are designed
to do is kill.

[Duckhunter935]

34. Good at

killing paper targets and tin cans. I know how to secure and use them in a responsible manor. I have also been through several background checks and have had firearms training.

[etherealtruth]

49. Exactly

I am sure the reason I haven't touched them is that I come from a family where guns really weren't viewed as a good thing!

[Bigredhunk]

22. But Then People In The UK Just Kill Each Other With Knives

Or baseball bats, or broken beer bottles, or...

Those are common arguments by righties. OJ simpson killed people with a knife, so what good is it going to do to clamp down on guns??

Their reasoning is so moronic.

[sibelian]

25. Yes, I had a long one of those arguments on this very site once.

It was almost impossible to understand the position. Actual statistics didn't make a dent.

There was another where a gun fan spent an entire thread trying to make me feel embarassed about London having knife crime and assault. It was weird.

[Democracyinkind]

27. They don't like outside perspective, because that makes them look like the troglodytes tht they are.

The country I live in is often cited as an example that "guns don't kill people" (lots of guns, and as they view it, very few gun related deaths). I have tired to counter that view with some facts, statistics and some local perspectives, to no avail. They are not interested in anything that might shatter their stereotypes.

[sibelian]

30. Ah, are you Canadian?

If so, did you see the Mike Moore comparison in that gun movie he did? (forget the title). Was he talking crap, then? I thought his position was kind of compelling...

[Democracyinkind]

32. Even worse ;)

I live in Switzerland.

As to the movie, I'd have to guess - you're probably talking about the comparison between Detroit and Windsor in "Bowling for Columbine". While that part is comparing extremes, I do believe that it reflects a difference in facts and opinions about guns and security in general. Though Micheal Moore is known to stretch such comparisons at times... So all I have is this non-answer.

Also, I should add that there are some very responsible and sane gun owners posting on DU. "Troglodyte", as used in my previous post, pertains to the hardcore believers, of which there are only some on DU.

[sibelian]

33. Thank you, and props to Switzerland.

I sometimes think to myself "wouldn't the world be wonderful if everywhere was like Switzerland?"

Coudl you conquer us all? In a nice way?

[Democracyinkind]

36. It's wonderful, quite frankly.

Living here... is quite blissfull... sheltered from so many things... I love the kind of democracy we practice here... almost no crime, very high living standards, education for everyone, I could keep going on.... Many things worth emulating.

On the other hand, there is much amiss here too. The evils and idiocy of too much democracy, the insularity, the fear of big ideas and progress, corporate secrecy, a bloated, expensive military that has no purpose and even fails at having no purpose, absolutely ridiculous secrecy laws concerning donations to political causes...


Just some of the ups and downs of living in Switzerland. It is bliss, no doubt, but a closer look reveals many of the same problems that other countries are struggling with. It's just that the higher living standards cushion that very well.

Thank you for asking. I'm eager to read more from you in other threads.

[sibelian]

40. I;m amazed that there any problems in Switzerland at all.

It's always been presented to me as a place of super-niceness.

I shall endeavour to post sensibly! (<---wrong flag but there isn't a British one on this site)

[Logical]

43. Compare murder rates, get back to me! WTF! nt

[hack89]

26. Violent crime in America is geographically concentrated

Last edited Wed Sep 18, 2013, 09:01 AM - Edit history (1)

in poor, urban areas. The distribution of gun violence is not uniform.

Most of my state of RI is just as save as the UK with very low levels of violence crime and very few murders - with the exception of a handful neighborhoods in the Providence.

I live on an island with about 50,000 inhabitants - in the 13 years I have lived her there have been 3 murders.

[LeftishBrit]

28. Same here.

I generally stay out of the gun debates, as it's such a different culture here in this respect; but I have scarcely ever even seen a gun.

Most gun owners in the UK are farmers; or are connected with or employed by the huntin', shootin' and fishin' fraternity, who don't really make up a huge proportion of the population these days.

[liberal_at_heart]

41. It was a self fulfilling prophesy here in the US with the help of the NRA and the media.

We convinced ourselves with the NRA's and the media's help of course that there is a thief, murderer, or crazy person around every corner, and we convinced ourselves that we need to carry a gun to protect ourselves. We love to live on fear here in the US. Now between Tea Partiers, militias, and our health system not taking care of mental illness it has become a self fulfilling prophesy. There are a lot of crazies with guns out there.

[Courtesy Flush]

47. I live in the US and I don't worry either.

Even with the highest stats for gun-related crime, I don't think of myself as being in danger. I recently spent a week in New York city, and never fear gun violence on a personal level.

Yes, it's real, and it can happen to me. But statistically, I'm not in any grave danger. If I thought I was, I guess I'd buy a gun.

My point is that the problem lies in people who are scared to death of their neighbors, and are manipulated into thinking they're in danger every day. Because of their manufactured fear, they place themselves and the people around them at risk. These frightened little pisspants NRA types are at the highest risk, in my opinion.

[IronLionZion]

48. Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham have shown me

that Brits can be very violent and dangerous people. What do you guys do about your criminals?

[sibelian]

58. We arrest them and put them in prison and try to make them into nicer people.

A lot of the time it doesn't work.

[Bluenorthwest]

51. I live in Oregon, don't have a gun, don't ever think about those who do and our

murder rate is about the same as Norway's. It is odd that if the UK has nothing to protect themselves from they also feel the need to have a multitude of CCTV cameras watching the threat free environment, sullied only by the occasional tipsy moron. Those cameras would indicate that as a society, you guys have actually taken a huge bother about protecting yourselves. The cameras did not install themselves and they are not there as part of an art project. They are 'security'. The largest visual surveillance system on the planet in fact. Installed for millions of pounds because there is no threat of any kind at all.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

56. From bombs, not guns.

They have a serious history with bombings and the CCTV cameras were their response. I am not sure I agree with it but I do understand it.

[Squinch]

52. Kick

[Scootaloo]

53. I don't have to carry a gun, either; I'm not afraid

That's the root of lugging a gun around - you're afraid of SOMETHING. These people deny it of course, but everything they say oozes fear and insecurity.

I honestly suspect there's another problem that's jsut not looked at that much. I'm trying to put my finger on it, probably someone else here has already figured it out, though

[spin]

54. While you don't have to worry about gun violence, it does appear that your nation has ...

a problem with knife crime.

1,000 knife crime victims in London each month, shocking new figures show Published: 01 July 2013

Up to 1,000 people a month are victims of knife crime in London, according to alarming new statistics.

They show that around 400 a month are being injured in attacks — many of them seriously — while others are being threatened. In the first four months of the year, 11 people were murdered in knife attacks. Four teenagers have been stabbed to death so far this year.

The statistics, obtained after a Freedom of Information request, reveal that there were 1,038 victims of knife crime in London in January, of which 410 were injured and four killed. The remainder were threatened with knives.

The figures for February show there was a total of 818 victims, in March there were 993, and in April there were 892 victims. The number injured in attacks reached a peak of 420 in April, the equivalent of 14 people a day.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/1000-knife-crime-victims-in-london-each-month-shocking-new-figures-show-8681511.html

Still I will admit that Britain has a much lower homicide rate than the United States.

[Iggo]

55. Me, neither. I don't live in fear.