I hate guns.

Buffalo, your argument smacks of desperation. You quote a fact;

"You are now six times more likely to be mugged in London than in New York."

What are the gun laws like in New York? Oh that's right, you aren't allowed to carry guns in New York, thus proving the point that removing guns lowers crime!

Do you comprehend what you paste ever?

Also, that list of countries you pasted, hardly comparable to the USA or UK, really. Apples to Oranges, and a straw man. Rather pathetic.

On your other stats, well, if 'gun defence' stats a la Kleck are to be believed, gun owning Americans use their guns to prevent crime 2.5 million times per year, which outstrips recorded crime, and puts America WAY above the uk for attempted robbery etc, meaning guns aren't keeping you safe, because you are victims more often than your unarmed British counterparts.

Sorry, but you just can't argue your way out of this one.

But your 20 more time likely to be Mugged in New York City than in my home town, and we have concealed carry.

And Great Britain has even stiffer gun control laws than New York, and your 6 time more likely to be mugged in London.

Again our crime rates are going down, across the board, Britians are going up.

And remember as you just pointed out:

Americans use their guns to prevent crime 2.5 million times per year,

And the reason we know that is because those are the reported incidents, with judical disposition.

How many victimes were able to defend thamselves in Great Britain? isn't that why they become victimes? They have no means of self defence, and when they do defend themselves they end up charged with a crime and sent to jail? and end up like this British subject?

In 1999 three men with a combined 110 arrests broke into his house. Martin used a shotgun to kill one of the attackers and wound another. Martin was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for defending himself. The conviction was later reduced to manslaughter. Four years later he is still in prison. Adding insult to injury, the British government has used taxpayer money to help the career criminals who attacked Martin sue him for civil damages.

We don't have a good Police Force anymore, we have a cheap one. This incident is the result of that in my opinion.
Chris, England

The burglar should never have been there in the first place. Your home is your castle and the only place of sanctity we can expect...if we can't defend that, then things really have got bad.
SK, UK

What Tony Martin did was only fair. I have been the victim of four crimes and each time it has been up to me to pick up the pieces and get on with life. People who break the law not only show no respect for their victim but also for the country as a whole.
Chris, England

Tony Martin should never have gone to prison. EVERYONE should have to right to protect their property.
Pam Knight, England


If Fearon can sue Tony Martin for the physical injury he received while breaking into this man's home, then why can't Tony Martin sue Fearon for the mental anguish he has suffered and will continue to suffer for the rest of his life - by being persistently burgled, and now, having come out of prison is unable to return to his home without being in constant fear of his life? No amount of hi-tec security or police presence will give this man total peace of mind. The police are aware of a contract that has been put out on Tony's life and that of his dog. Why don't they make more of an effort to track down the people responsible and bring them to book instead of turning Tony Martin's home into a fortress - which in my opinion will only last until the media frenzy dies down anyway. Sadly the public have lost faith in the police and justice system and radical changes need to be made to toughen up laws and prison sentences to reflect the views of the people. Blair and Blunkett take note!
Sue W, Westcliffe-on-Sea, U.K.


The statue of Justice blindfolded is meant to indicate that all will be treated equally under the law. Unfortunately, as recent events have all too clearly shown, her blindness appears to be limited to the needs of victims and decent, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens of this country whilst she appears to pander to the whims of every career criminal and freeloader that comes her way. What is this country coming to? Whatever happened to good old common sense, decency and 'doing the right thing'?
TR, UK

If you can't feel safe in your home then where? Of course most people, including Mr Martin wishes the result had not been the death of a 16 year old, but who allowed that 16 year old into the house? We are all responsible for our actions, one would hope that if you take the risk to terrorize someone else's life that you should be prepared for them to stand up for themselves. Having a burglar in my home left me unable to function for weeks and unable to sleep comfortably for years. If I were to be burglarized again, I would do all that I could to protect myself. I wouldn't wait to see if it was a friendly burglar or a dangerous one.
Rose, Canada

Now argue your way out of this:

http://gunowners.org/op0335.htm

Violent crime in the U.S. peaked in the late 1980s and started dropping in the 1990s. Many factors are involved, but here are a few that should be noted:

States in the late 1980s began enacting laws allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons. Concealed-carry raises the risk of criminal conduct, because a criminal can never know if his potential victim is armed. Thirty-five states now have "shall-issue" laws, which say any law-abiding citizen who applies shall receive permission to carry a firearm. Nine other states allow concealed-carry but with discretion given to police. Only six states -- Illinois among them -- totally ban concealed carry.

States in the 1980s also began enacting longer prison sentences, truth in sentencing, mandatory sentencing and similar judicial reforms. Over the past two decades, as America's crime rate has dropped, incarceration rates have more than tripled, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice.

A record 6.6 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year-end 2001. The more criminals in custody, the fewer crimes that are committed.

Contrast this with gun-controlling Europe. The joint study of crime in the U.S., England and Wales noted that prison sentences for criminals in England and Wales have grown more lenient. Sentences for murder were three years longer here than in England and Wales, four years longer for rape and robbery and almost three years longer for assault.

"We urgently need to re-examine our cozy assumptions about law and order," the London Sunday Times editorialized in 1998 in response to these findings.

England has done so. It has virtually disarmed its law-abiding citizens and become more sympathetic toward criminals. Consider the sad saga of Tony Martin, a farmer near Norfolk, England.

In 1999 three men with a combined 110 arrests broke into his house. Martin used a shotgun to kill one of the attackers and wound another. Martin was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison for defending himself. The conviction was later reduced to manslaughter. Four years later he is still in prison. Adding insult to injury, the British government has used taxpayer money to help the career criminals who attacked Martin sue him for civil damages.

Martin is hoping for parole, but last month British government lawyers opposed parole by arguing that burglars are citizens who must be protected from homeowners such as Martin, a man who had no criminal history.
 
What I am saying is that if their weren't any guns, bombs poison's etc. then there would be less people dying. Of course you cannot stop someone from fighting.
Right. Just like how in Rwanda not many people could die because they were using cheap machetes instead of guns. It's a damn good thing they didn't have guns, and that no one had guns to stop them! After all, Rwanda was only a few dead. Remember - without guns you couldn't kill that many people. Just like in Rwanda.
 
What Tony Martin did was only fair. I have been the victim of four crimes and each time it has been up to me to pick up the pieces and get on with life. People who break the law not only show no respect for their victim but also for the country as a whole.
Chris, England

Tony Martin should never have gone to prison. EVERYONE should have to right to protect their property.
Pam Knight, England .

Misguided comments from those people Buffalo. Tony Martin shot a burglar in the back using an illegally held shotgun. He pleaded his case down to 'diminished responsibility' to get a shorter sentence, this is effectively saying he wasn't of sound mind at the time he killed the kid.

So you have a mentally unstable man, using an illegally held firearm to kill someone, and you are lauding him?

On crime, we we might be more prone to burglaries, but in the USA rape and murder are far more prevalent (rape 13 times more prevalent than the UK, murder 4 times). Guns are not keeping you safe. IF gun defense stats were true, your nation is royally screwed. Why though, do people that carry gun report more gun defenses that non-gun owners are victims of crime? Paranoia, perhaps?

You say our crime rates are increasing, but that's just not true. It's dropping year on year since a peak in 1995. There are trends in crime, they fluctuate, so it' dishonest of you in the extreme to think that gun ownership is the major cause, or that since tighter restrictions were put in place on owning firearms in the UK crime has risen. That is fallacious in the extreme.

Until you can explain away the hideous number of rapes and murders, you can't defend gun ownership. It's clearly not preventing crime, but fuelling it.
 
Misguided comments from those people Buffalo. Tony Martin shot a burglar in the back using an illegally held shotgun. He pleaded his case down to 'diminished responsibility' to get a shorter sentence, this is effectively saying he wasn't of sound mind at the time he killed the kid.

So you have a mentally unstable man, using an illegally held firearm to kill someone, and you are lauding him?

There are a lot of things that I question in this, one of the major questions was the use of mental defect, as a defense, This I think was the Lawyer screwing up in the Defense of His client, let alone the Police and Judaical system failing to protect a Citizen from people with hundreds of crimes to their credit and not in jail for life.

The really sad fact is that the Police can't protect, the Criminal Part is that The Courts System didn't have the criminals in prison.


On crime, we we might be more prone to burglaries, but in the USA rape and murder are far more prevalent (rape 13 times more prevalent than the UK, murder 4 times). Guns are not keeping you safe. IF gun defense stats were true, your nation is royally screwed. Why though, do people that carry gun report more gun defenses that non-gun owners are victims of crime? Paranoia, perhaps?

What don't you understand that the reported defenses are part of the crime statistics?

What don't you want to understand that a lot of those reported defense use of guns, are gun owners protection other than themselves from criminals.

What don't you wish to understand that 48 out of 50 states now have Concealed Carry Rights for their citizens, and their crime rates are falling.

You say our crime rates are increasing, but that's just not true. It's dropping year on year since a peak in 1995. There are trends in crime, they fluctuate, so it' dishonest of you in the extreme to think that gun ownership is the major cause, or that since tighter restrictions were put in place on owning firearms in the UK crime has risen. That is fallacious in the extreme.

Just what are the Crime Rate's in Britain ? A crime is not reported in the Crime Statistics of Great Britain until it is adjudicated, so how many are still not adjudicated? or even solved? so are not reported as crimes in your vaunted legal system???????

Until you can explain away the hideous number of rapes and murders, you can't defend gun ownership. It's clearly not preventing crime, but fuelling it.

Every use of a gun in self defense keeps a intended victim safe, and the reason that our numbers are so high, compared to yours is that when a crime is committed, it is automatically added to the Crime Statistic, we don't wait for the crime to be solved and adjudicated before we allow the crime to be added to the National Crime Statistics, again how many unloved crimes are on the Books of Great Britain that are not part of you national crime statistics, and will never be part of your crime statistics because they will never be solved or adjudicated to reach the National Statistics?

Now in Great Britain lets ask some questions:

Where were the Police?

How many time were the criminal released to go right back to preying on innocent honest citizens?

How many other victims were victimized by this pair?

How many victims across Great Britain are at the mercy of criminal just like this?

I love one report, about a victim who called the Police to report a break in, in progress, and was told that there were no officers available to respond to the crime-----He called back a few minuets later to report that he had shot the criminals----in the next 5 minuets a whole shift of police officers descended on his residence, along with air support, in time to catch the burglars in progress-----I wonder just how long the criminal stayed in jail, or was he on bail even before the police finished the paper work?

Britain civilized? the British Vaunted Justice System? protect the criminal at the expense of the Honest Citizen, turn the Honest Citizen defending himself and His property into a criminal, and why? so the spurious claim can be made that Britain is Civilized?

Because the Police cannot and do not serve, protect, and defend, the Honest Citizen, in most cases they don't even respond until well after the fact.

How fast do the Police respond to a murder of a honest citizen?

I will tell you-----TO LATE!!!!!
 
Misguided comments from those people Buffalo. Tony Martin shot a burglar in the back using an illegally held shotgun. He pleaded his case down to 'diminished responsibility' to get a shorter sentence, this is effectively saying he wasn't of sound mind at the time he killed the kid.

So you have a mentally unstable man, using an illegally held firearm to kill someone, and you are lauding him?

On crime, we we might be more prone to burglaries, but in the USA rape and murder are far more prevalent (rape 13 times more prevalent than the UK, murder 4 times). Guns are not keeping you safe. IF gun defense stats were true, your nation is royally screwed. Why though, do people that carry gun report more gun defenses that non-gun owners are victims of crime? Paranoia, perhaps?

You say our crime rates are increasing, but that's just not true. It's dropping year on year since a peak in 1995. There are trends in crime, they fluctuate, so it' dishonest of you in the extreme to think that gun ownership is the major cause, or that since tighter restrictions were put in place on owning firearms in the UK crime has risen. That is fallacious in the extreme.

Until you can explain away the hideous number of rapes and murders, you can't defend gun ownership. It's clearly not preventing crime, but fuelling it.

Now can you explain this:

http://bnp.org.uk/2008/09/knife-and-gun-crime-have-been-under-reported-police-memo-admits/

Knife and Gun Crime Have Been Under Reported, Police Memo Admits
September 12, 2008 by BNP News
Filed under National News


Violent offences including gun crime and knife crime are far more common than official figures currently suggest, a leaked police memo has disclosed.

These two sorts of crime are particularly - but not exclusively - prevalent in immigrant communities, a fact which has made the report into the political hot potato that it is.

The internal memo, written by a senior officer, says there has been significant under reporting of serious crime and warns of “serious concerns” that confidence in the police and Government will be knocked when the true levels are revealed.

It was drawn up in response to a briefing paper given to the Metropolitan Police Authority outlining Home Office changes to the definition of crimes.

Under the changes, police have been told to classify all offences as gun or knife crime when there is a threat with a weapon. Previously, this did not happen if the weapons were hidden.

Similarly, more assaults are to be classified as grievous bodily harm rather than the less serious actual bodily harm when a victim is injured.

In the memo, Det Chief Superintendent Peter Barron said: “The potential increase could be a rise in recorded GBH of 58 per cent, a rise in gun crime of 20 per cent and a rise in knife crime of 15 per cent.”
Last year there were 22,151 recorded knife crimes in England and Wales and 9,803 firearm offences.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “The issue is about the impact of these changes to recording processes, required of all forces in England and Wales, and not about a rise in actual crime.

“For example, a robbery where a knife has been intimated only was previously recorded as a robbery. However, under the changes it is now recorded as a knife crime, and the use of sharp or pointed instruments has also been included in the knife crime definition.”

Yes phlogistician, what are the real statstics on crime in Great Britain? Hmmmmm?
“The potential increase could be a rise in recorded GBH of 58 per cent, a rise in gun crime of 20 per cent and a rise in knife crime of 15 per cent.”
 
Yes, phlogistician, explain the BCS:

In 2003/04 the number of robbery offences in England and Wales was for people aged 16 and over was around 283,000.

In 2004/05 the number of robbery offences in England and Wales, for people aged 16 and over was around 255,000.

The BCS does not measure robbery offences among victims under 16 years.

So victims under 16 don't count???

In 2007, it was reported that the BCS was underreporting crime by about 3 million incidents per year because it did not allow for a particular person to be victimized more than five times in a year. The error means that violent crime is actually at 4.4 million incidents per year, an 82% increase over the 2.4 million previously thought.

If you are a victim more than 5 time it don't count????

Yes, phlogistician, how honest are the numbers coming out of Great Britain??
Hmmmmmmmm????????????

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...issing-two-million-violent-crimes-454637.html

A former Home Office research expert said that across all types of crime, three million offences a year are excluded from the British Crime Survey (BCS).

The poll caps the number of times a victim can be targeted by an offender at five incidents a year.

If anyone interviewed for the survey says they have been targeted more than five times a year, the sixth incident and beyond are not included in the BCS.

The authors of a report by think-tank Civitas said the five-crimes limit is "truly bizarre" and "misleading".

Professor Graham Farrell of Loughborough University and the former acting head of the Home Office's Police Research Group, Professor Ken Pease, calculated that if the cap is ignored, the overall number of BCS crimes is more than 14 million rather than the current 11 million a year estimate.

Violent crime is 82 per cent higher at 4.4 million offences compared with 2.4 million in the BCS, the survey claims, including a 156 per cent rise in "acquaintance violence" from 817,000 incidents to 2.1 million.

Domestic violence is 140 per cent higher, up from 357,000 incidents a year to 857,000, the authors said, while there are nearly three million common assaults a year rather than the 1.5 million estimated by the BCS, a rise of 98 per cent.

Burglary is 20 per cent higher than currently estimated, at 877,000 a year, and vandalism is 24 per cent higher, the report calculated.

Robbery is 7 per cent up on the official estimates, or an extra 22,000 crimes bringing the yearly total to 333,000.

"If the people who say they suffered 10 incidents really did, it is capping the series at five that distorts the rate," the authors said.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The cap of five crimes for repeat victims has operated ever since the inception of the BCS in 1981.
 

I'm not going to respond to any article linked from the BNP web site Buffalo.

Do you know who they are? They are the political wing of the 'National Front', ie, a bunch of neo-Nazi hate mongers. Nothing they have to say interests me.

Please, for the sake of your own credibility, check your sources.

On the Tony Martin case, again, check your facts. He held the weapon he used to shoot that kid in the back illegally. Surely you do not advocate illegal gun ownership?

Also, instead of doing what normal householders do, fitting security lights, maintaining the doors and windows so they are secure, perhaps getting a guard dog, Martin did the opposite; He removed external doors, he removed downstairs lighting, and removed planks from his stairs so people would fall in the darkness. IE, he made his property look uninhabited, so curious kids and ne'er do wells would come and poke around, and when they did, he had his shotguns ready. He told the Police he would kill the next trespasser, so they revoked his firearms license, confiscated his guns, but he had one more than he admitted to, kept that, and used it for murder.

On crime stats, you can try and massage them any way you want, but reported crime, plus the bogus gun defense statistics really blow the argument 'an armed society is a polite society' out of the water. Put it this way, in the UK, when the Police pull a driver over, the driver does not get a gun pointed at them, at no point are they in any danger of being shot, because our Police are not routinely armed, nor in fear of motorists. See how fear of guns escalates on both sides, until something bad happens?
 
Yes, phlogistician, explain the BCS:

Google 'underreported crime USA' and you'll find similar stories. Crime stats aren't perfect, so what?

We can only work with the numbers we have, and in the USA you are four times more likely to be murdered, and 13 times more likely to be raped than in the UK. Men carry guns more often than women, but women are very often the victims, so the fear of crime, and the actual numbers don't add up.

On assault, things are half so bad as the tabloids make out. They are in the business of selling papers, not actually reporting facts, and the guesstimates about the cap in the BCS are just that, guesses. The BCS is not the sole source of crime statistics, btw, I prefer the Home Office publications.
 
On the other hand I'm pretty sure the Swiss have a lot of guns and low crime rate.

And, just in case you didn't notice my overwhelming sarcasm... Rwanda happened without many guns.
 
On the other hand I'm pretty sure the Swiss have a lot of guns and low crime rate.

FALLACY ALERT! The Swiss have a huge reserve army. They have to keep an assault rifle and ammunition as part of the reserve. They are trained army personnel, and each is accountable for their weapons and ammunition. This is why they have a lot of weapons and low crime; training and responsibility.

And, just in case you didn't notice my overwhelming sarcasm... Rwanda happened without many guns.

Apples to oranges. You can't realistically compare a 3rd world country to the USA.
 
FALLACY ALERT! The Swiss have a huge reserve army. They have to keep an assault rifle and ammunition as part of the reserve. They are trained army personnel, and each is accountable for their weapons and ammunition. This is why they have a lot of weapons and low crime; training and responsibility.



Apples to oranges. You can't realistically compare a 3rd world country to the USA.

Bull shit.
 
Google 'underreported crime USA' and you'll find similar stories. Crime stats aren't perfect, so what?

We can only work with the numbers we have, and in the USA you are four times more likely to be murdered, and 13 times more likely to be raped than in the UK. Men carry guns more often than women, but women are very often the victims, so the fear of crime, and the actual numbers don't add up.

On assault, things are half so bad as the tabloids make out. They are in the business of selling papers, not actually reporting facts, and the guesstimates about the cap in the BCS are just that, guesses. The BCS is not the sole source of crime statistics, btw, I prefer the Home Office publications.

But the reason the U.S. has a under report in our crime rate is because it isn't reported at all, it isn't because of the way the government records the crime statistics, like Great Britain, and the fact that after 5 reports by a individual, they stop including the reported crimes in the statistics.

Or that, Violent crime is 82 per cent higher at 4.4 million offences compared with 2.4 million in the BCS, the survey claims, including a 156 per cent rise in "acquaintance violence" from 817,000 incidents to 2.1 million.

These numbers aren't from BNP, and the fact is that the story from BMP is backed by other sources like:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk...es-454637.html,

So why can't you answer to it?

Because it shows that Britain's reported crime statistics are a British Government lie, and are about as useful as tits on a boar hog, for comparison to the actual state of affaires in the UK.

The British Government is treating the Subject like mushrooms, Keep them in the Dark, and feed them Bull Shit, and then cut them off at the roots when they need protection from the scum of the U.K.
 
But the reason the U.S. has a under report in our crime rate is because it isn't reported at all, it isn't because of the way the government records the crime statistics, like Great Britain, and the fact that after 5 reports by a individual, they stop including the reported crimes in the statistics.

The BCS is not the only source of crime figures. I already answered saying I prefer Home Office publications.

Also, who really suffers 5 crimes per reporting period? Is it that likely? I don't think so, unless, like I said that person is consorting with known criminals.

Britain is not crime ridden. Why, I managed to go into town yesterday evening for dinner, unarmed, and was not mugged, robbed, assaulted or murdered.

But if you insist Britain is crime ridden, you have to acknowledge something else too; That you are a coward for feeling you need a gun, when I don't.
 
The BCS is not the only source of crime figures. I already answered saying I prefer Home Office publications.

Also, who really suffers 5 crimes per reporting period? Is it that likely? I don't think so, unless, like I said that person is consorting with known criminals.

Britain is not crime ridden. Why, I managed to go into town yesterday evening for dinner, unarmed, and was not mugged, robbed, assaulted or murdered.

But if you insist Britain is crime ridden, you have to acknowledge something else too; That you are a coward for feeling you need a gun, when I don't.

The numbers are skewed, they are useless, no matter who publishes them, the Home Office uses the numbers from the BCS in making their publication, and reference, as the BCS numbers are the Official Government numbers, and as shown they are severely skewed.

So again the British Government has lied in it's reporting system, and the reported crime numbers, and the use of the reported numbers as a base line for any comparison is dishonest, and futile.
 

So how does this support your post:

FALLACY ALERT! The Swiss have a huge reserve army. They have to keep an assault rifle and ammunition as part of the reserve. They are trained army personnel, and each is accountable for their weapons and ammunition. This is why they have a lot of weapons and low crime; training and responsibility.

Apples to oranges. You can't realistically compare a 3rd world country to the USA.

The weapons are available and at hand, in every house in Switzerland.

Even when you reach retirement age in the Swiss Military, you still keep your weapon, and can draw a ammunition allotment at every Schützen Fest, held monthly in the Cantons.

I had the Honor of Attending and Shooting in them, on several occasions with thre Swiss, when I was stationed in Europe.

And it was a real sight watching the older shooters coming with their K-31's and shooting the pants off the Younger shooters and their wonder guns.
 
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The numbers are skewed, they are useless, no matter who publishes them, the Home Office uses the numbers from the BCS in making their publication, and reference, as the BCS numbers are the Official Government numbers, and as shown they are severely skewed.

So again the British Government has lied in it's reporting system, and the reported crime numbers, and the use of the reported numbers as a base line for any comparison is dishonest, and futile.

Our stats aren't perfect, neither are yours. So we have to work with what we have, but like I keep saying, the odds of people being serial victims over five times in a row in one accounting period is LOW.
 
So how does this support your post:



The weapons are available and at hand, in every house in Switzerland.

Training and accountability. I clearly stated that already. They have discipline wrt weapons, because they have been taught how to shoot. That is why their number of gun homicides is low despite the prevalence of firearms.

Now, contrast that to the USA where you can go buy a gun 2nd hand no questions asked, load it, and leave it laying around in a bedside cabinet for children to discover. Which system of gun ownership sounds like it's going to give rise to more fatalities?

Now stop using the Swiss fallacy as an argument. It doesn't work.
 
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