Firearms, knives, police and fellons

[IAN 2411]

As a UK citizen I have noticed over the last few years the amount of people being shot; has I think escalated. I have also noticed that a lot of domestic kills, meaning wife and child murders are being carried out with the aid of firearms. I know from programs on TV that it is easy to get guns through our borders via the channel tunnel, if illegal aliens can get in that way, then a thing as small as a gun would have no trouble.

The UK police force have also been using firearms more since the terror campaign by shall we say people of Middle East Origen. They have made a few mistakes, and in my eyes a few is too many. I have been wondering just lately if the growing amount of fire arms in crime might be due to the corresponding amount of police carrying firearms. The British police are now at the stage of paranoia, a case I remember on the news only a few months ago where a child of six was running around in his own garden with a plastic cap gun. He was reported to the police by a so called guardian of the peace, and within ten minutes of him being outside three police cars and a police helicopter were surrounding this child all armed to the teeth, talk about overkill. They took the plastic gun off of him and confiscated it, now it’s hard enough for a determined grown up to get a real gun over here, where the hell do they think a six year old is going to get one. The police inspector told sky news that they confiscated the weapon for the child safety, they obviously thought the boy would get plastic poisoning. But on a more sinister note, it might have been that they were worried that one of their trigger happy cops might shoot first and ask questions later.

Now the question I would like to ask, is do you think the escalation in gun crime has rose because of the few police being armed? Or is it because we are now in a more sophisticated world, and it gives them the slight edge.

At this moment a life in the UK is meaningless, because there has not been a weekend go by in the last two years where a killing due to knife crime has not taken place. You cannot blame all these deaths on the underprivileged and the unemployed; it must run far deeper, because at the moment the UK is a savage country. Why am I asking this? Well at the moment a person that I know very well was stabbed three times and is very lucky to be alive, yes the unrest and knife culture has now found its way to the small villages in the UK.

Regards ian 2411

[MMI]

I find the tale about the police confiscating a child's toy gun hard to credit unless there was more to the story than you have related. However, I do know that the Met are "trialling" the routine arming of policemen in at least one area of London, that the Greater Manchester Police have many armed response units on the streets and that Nottingham also has armed patrols in areas associated with drug crime. No doubt other cities have the same problem to a greater or lesser degree.

This in a country with the strictest gun laws in the world, I believe, although it seems to me that blades are still the weapon of choice, even though guns are easy to obtain if you want them badly enough. I like to think this makes us safer than in gun-worshiping countries where nutters go off the rails and try to go out in a blaze of gory (the "l" omitted intentionally) by killing as many innocents as possible in schools, universities and shopping malls. I think you will find that countries with little or no gun control have murder rates much higher than ours, even when looking at developed nations with stable governments and reliable police forces. However, gun controls do not solve the whole problem, and we are still a much more dangerous country to live in than a lot of others: our laws against the carrying of other weapons seem wholly ineffective.

It is my observation that the massacres mentioned above are generally carried out with guns that have been obtained legally, by people with no previous criminal records. Career criminals seem to keep their weapons out of harm's way until needed for a specific purpose, and they tend to be disposed of afterwards. In the UK, guns seem to be confined mostly to drug dealers and their associates, and Irish terrorists - Islamic radicals preferring bombs carried by brainwashed youngsters, and Turkish gangs having a predeliction for the knife.

I am tempted to believe that violence in this country is a class issue on the one hand and a youth issue on the other. There is a large underclass which has little or no contact with mainstream society and I believe that each class is tolerant of the use of violence against the other, whether through crime or crime prevention. Then there is working-class youth. There is a total lack of respect and understanding for society held by young males - white and black for different reasons - and they feel they have no roles to play in modern Britain. They may be, in fact, members of the underclass referred to above. Anyway, I feel that because they no longer have any purpose in life, and no respect for the society they live in, they have no qualms about sticking a knife into anyone they take a dislike to.

I would like to see the authorities make greater efforts to instill a civic spirit and a respect for society among the young through an effective education system which engages with our youth and gives them a purpose in life. I would also like to see real efforts made to reduce the attraction that carrying a weapon seems to have for the young, and further efforst made to prevent weapons crossingour borders. However, I realise that this is unlikely to happen. That means it is necessary for our police to be armed to protect us, but I do not think we have really reached the stage where all police constables should carry weapons routinely and I hope that day will never come.

Having said all this, I feel that most people in Britain are safe, need never face an armed robber and are unlikely to be killed by friends or family. By and large, this is a good place to live in. But not the best.

[Guera]

wow, the USA is something else. Not even sure what words to use.

[switch bitch]

Crime Statistics > Murders (most recent) by country

# 4 XXXXXXXXX: 21,553
anybody like to take a guess where i live ? ( clue the soccer world cup kicks off in June )

[switch bitch]

That makes it 59 a day (non leap year) or 2.4 an hour

[DuncanONeil]

I have some problems with SOME things in this reply. Lets start with:
The Small Arms Survey 2002 accurately observed that “The relief and development communities frequently generate inaccurate and inflated numbers, whether out of ignorance or intentionally, to justify programmatic interventions and to mobilize public opinion.”126 Some examples include bogus assertions that ninety percent of small arms casualties in war are civilians, and eighty percent of them are women and children.127
People around the world rely on the United Nations and the World Health Organization for reliable data about health issues. By extensively publicizing a figure of 500,000 annual deaths due to SALW, the UN and the WHO have not lived up to their duty to supply the public with transparent data.
Responsible researchers share their data with other researchers and explain the procedures they use to process these data. Only with such transparency can conclusions and policy implications be debated in a rational, objective manner.
Unfortunately, WHO’s violence data is quite opaque.128 It is not broken down country-by-country, or by instrumentality. No other details are accessible. The rationales for the extreme extrapolations are unjustifiably withheld from the public.

To be continued

I find the tale about the police confiscating a child's toy gun hard to credit unless there was more to the story than you have related. However, I do know that the Met are "trialling" the routine arming of policemen in at least one area of London, that the Greater Manchester Police have many armed response units on the streets and that Nottingham also has armed patrols in areas associated with drug crime. No doubt other cities have the same problem to a greater or lesser degree.

This in a country with the strictest gun laws in the world, I believe, although it seems to me that blades are still the weapon of choice, even though guns are easy to obtain if you want them badly enough. I like to think this makes us safer than in gun-worshiping countries where nutters go off the rails and try to go out in a blaze of gory (the "l" omitted intentionally) by killing as many innocents as possible in schools, universities and shopping malls. I think you will find that countries with little or no gun control have murder rates much higher than ours, even when looking at developed nations with stable governments and reliable police forces. However, gun controls do not solve the whole problem, and we are still a much more dangerous country to live in than a lot of others: our laws against the carrying of other weapons seem wholly ineffective.

It is my observation that the massacres mentioned above are generally carried out with guns that have been obtained legally, by people with no previous criminal records. Career criminals seem to keep their weapons out of harm's way until needed for a specific purpose, and they tend to be disposed of afterwards. In the UK, guns seem to be confined mostly to drug dealers and their associates, and Irish terrorists - Islamic radicals preferring bombs carried by brainwashed youngsters, and Turkish gangs having a predeliction for the knife.

I am tempted to believe that violence in this country is a class issue on the one hand and a youth issue on the other. There is a large underclass which has little or no contact with mainstream society and I believe that each class is tolerant of the use of violence against the other, whether through crime or crime prevention. Then there is working-class youth. There is a total lack of respect and understanding for society held by young males - white and black for different reasons - and they feel they have no roles to play in modern Britain. They may be, in fact, members of the underclass referred to above. Anyway, I feel that because they no longer have any purpose in life, and no respect for the society they live in, they have no qualms about sticking a knife into anyone they take a dislike to.

I would like to see the authorities make greater efforts to instill a civic spirit and a respect for society among the young through an effective education system which engages with our youth and gives them a purpose in life. I would also like to see real efforts made to reduce the attraction that carrying a weapon seems to have for the young, and further efforst made to prevent weapons crossingour borders. However, I realise that this is unlikely to happen. That means it is necessary for our police to be armed to protect us, but I do not think we have really reached the stage where all police constables should carry weapons routinely and I hope that day will never come.

Having said all this, I feel that most people in Britain are safe, need never face an armed robber and are unlikely to be killed by friends or family. By and large, this is a good place to live in. But not the best.

[DuncanONeil]

Continuation from message #6
Many governments of U.N. members have been affected by armed conflict.129 Many of those conflicts involved uprisings by oppressed civilians. It is easy to understand why the nondemocratic governments that comprise a majority of the General Assembly might wish to prevent forceful challenges to incumbent governments. Yet as Zwi points out: “there are occasions when such conflicts yield desirable social change, such as the anti-colonial struggles, or where they are necessary for protecting the victims of inequitable social and political processes.”130 The incessant repetition of the “500,000” factoid by the UN/WHO and their allied NGOs and academics ignores this essential moral point—a point that is crucial to resistance to tyranny, to deterrence of genocide, and to reduction of murder-by-police.
Currently available data support the claim that small arms in the hands of civilians do not cause 500,000 needless deaths each year. Moreover, firearms prohibition would prevent only a small fraction of deaths caused by civilian-owned firearms. Firearms prohibition would worsen the balance of power between oppressive governments and victim populations.

127 SMALL ARMS SURVEY 2002, supra note 1, at 158.
128 Global Burden of Disease 2001, World Health Organization, at http://www3.who.int/whosis/menu.cfm?...rden_estimates &language=English (last visited Feb. 12, 2003) (on file with author).
129 Anthony B. Zwi, Numbering the Dead: Counting the Casualties of War, in DEFINING VIOLENCE 99 (Hannah Bradby ed., 1998).
130 Id.

More can be said if needed!
(http://www.davekopel.com/2A/Foreign/...m-Firearms.pdf)

[DuncanONeil]

As for strict controls, I believe Japan has reason to claim that badge. Their Olympic shooting team can not practice in their own country!

I find the tale about the police confiscating a child's toy gun hard to credit unless there was more to the story than you have related. However, I do know that the Met are "trialling" the routine arming of policemen in at least one area of London, that the Greater Manchester Police have many armed response units on the streets and that Nottingham also has armed patrols in areas associated with drug crime. No doubt other cities have the same problem to a greater or lesser degree.

This in a country with the strictest gun laws in the world, I believe, although it seems to me that blades are still the weapon of choice, even though guns are easy to obtain if you want them badly enough. I like to think this makes us safer than in gun-worshiping countries where nutters go off the rails and try to go out in a blaze of gory (the "l" omitted intentionally) by killing as many innocents as possible in schools, universities and shopping malls. I think you will find that countries with little or no gun control have murder rates much higher than ours, even when looking at developed nations with stable governments and reliable police forces. However, gun controls do not solve the whole problem, and we are still a much more dangerous country to live in than a lot of others: our laws against the carrying of other weapons seem wholly ineffective.

It is my observation that the massacres mentioned above are generally carried out with guns that have been obtained legally, by people with no previous criminal records. Career criminals seem to keep their weapons out of harm's way until needed for a specific purpose, and they tend to be disposed of afterwards. In the UK, guns seem to be confined mostly to drug dealers and their associates, and Irish terrorists - Islamic radicals preferring bombs carried by brainwashed youngsters, and Turkish gangs having a predeliction for the knife.

I am tempted to believe that violence in this country is a class issue on the one hand and a youth issue on the other. There is a large underclass which has little or no contact with mainstream society and I believe that each class is tolerant of the use of violence against the other, whether through crime or crime prevention. Then there is working-class youth. There is a total lack of respect and understanding for society held by young males - white and black for different reasons - and they feel they have no roles to play in modern Britain. They may be, in fact, members of the underclass referred to above. Anyway, I feel that because they no longer have any purpose in life, and no respect for the society they live in, they have no qualms about sticking a knife into anyone they take a dislike to.

I would like to see the authorities make greater efforts to instill a civic spirit and a respect for society among the young through an effective education system which engages with our youth and gives them a purpose in life. I would also like to see real efforts made to reduce the attraction that carrying a weapon seems to have for the young, and further efforst made to prevent weapons crossingour borders. However, I realise that this is unlikely to happen. That means it is necessary for our police to be armed to protect us, but I do not think we have really reached the stage where all police constables should carry weapons routinely and I hope that day will never come.

Having said all this, I feel that most people in Britain are safe, need never face an armed robber and are unlikely to be killed by friends or family. By and large, this is a good place to live in. But not the best.

[DuncanONeil]

Not sure what you mean but if you are talking about gun fatalities the rates are comparablke to other countries!

wow, the USA is something else. Not even sure what words to use.

[Guera]

i was thinking that it would be like a dream to have the problems with gun violence that the UK has

[IAN 2411]

MMI
The story about the boy was true, and at the time i read the newspaper i sat in disbelief at the actions taken. However to put you on a the right track, you must remember the story about the man on the station with a table leg in a parcel, the police shot him dead thinking it was a gun, but i must admit they did appolagise for the mistake, big deal. I am not saying that the police shouldnt be armed in certain circumstanses, what i am saying that until it is second nature for the police to carry a loaded weapon there is always going to be paranoia. Knife culture is not a class issue, it is a cult, look at some of the blogs on face book with the idiots holding the knives. There is no statement written just a picture of a person [and they are not all black] holding a knife that is bigger than they are. the statement should read [look a me mum i have a big knife and i prepared to use it, just to show how hard i am, i am also a thick dick head that left his brain in school]. It is useualy those that are the ones that are knifed and killed, and come from good families and good backgrounds, they are doing what they do to conform with the other idiots. Knives and guns are gang related and it is not because they are bored and there is nothing else to do, if they are that bored instead of killing the innocent why dont they make a name for themselves in the middle pages of the press by commiting hari kari. I am not running the UK down, i am saying that is now tainted with a new breed of youths, and it does put us all in danger. I live about 16 miles from Brighton, and i can asure you that you would not find me on any of their streets after 7 in the evening, and especialy in the residential areas. We have a delapidated police force that can only just look after the bigger crimes, the policeman on the street has been replaced by a police comunity officer that is ruled by health and safety. the truth is the police in the UK are becoming more like the joke: -

A woman rings the police, hello i have just caught a thief trying to rob my house and is tied to a chair in the kitchen, i have to go shopping so would you please come and collect him.

Sorry madem there will be no one available for 5 hours, and the phone went dead.

Ten minutes later the woman phoned them once more, you can take your time now love the thief tried to escape so i shot him with my husbands shotgun.

Withinn ten minutes of putting the phone down, there was a helicopter hovering above and the farm was surounded by ten police cars, with the woman standing by the front door dressed up ready to go to town.

The chief of police asked where is the body madem?

She replied in the kitchen shouting that his bonds are to tight.

I thought you said you had just shot him the policeman replied.

The woman smiled and answered, i thought you said you had no one available to pick him up.

Regards ian2411

[fetishdj]

Knife crime: The laws in the UK banning juveniles from carrying knives are ridiculous and impotent because a) it prevents law abiding teenagers (i.e apprentice butchers or simply someone who needs to use a knife for cooking as some teenagers need to do) from acquiring necessary equipment and b) most criminals, including most kids who own knives for kicks, pay no attention to the law and carry them anyway (in fact, most carry them *because* it is illegal) and c) it is already illegal to attack someone with a deadly weapon and the possession law is more or less unenforced because the police do not have the manpower or resources to trawl every school yard and back ally for knife toting teenagers.

I think the same argument can apply to guns - possession laws are actually difficult to enforce and criminals always ignore the law, that is why they are criminals. The main reason why guns are rarer here is that it is more difficult to get them over a marine border (and as stated, the Channel Tunnel may make that easier now...). Not convinced that legalisation and regulation work either - read a report this morning about a young kid in Georgia who was shot by a stray round from an AK47 fired in the air 'up to 3km away' by someone using it to celebrate the new year. This was a legal firearm fired in what the owner clearly thought was a safe way (despite the fact that you can have the same effect with a perfectly safe blank firer that fires no pellet). Some of the regulations I have heard about in some states of America, for example, either invite the owner to break the law or be unable to use the gun for the purpose it was purchased (i.e. if you have to keep the firearm in a locked case with the ammunition in a seperate case such a weapon is no use for home defence so you have to break the law and keep it loaded in an unlocked case).

As for the police... It used to be the case in this country that the first time you saw a gun of any form was when you travelled abroad to somewhere like Spain where the police are armed as a matter of course - I remember being astounded at the age of 10 by Spainish police carrying pistols. The last time I went on holiday, I saw several police officers in the UK airport carrying machine guns (not sure what sort but they were similar to the ones carried by infantry) as well as pistols. This was not an unusual thing, either - it was not after a major terrorist attack (we travelled not long after the twin towers thing and there were a lot more armed police then) and as far as we knew there had been no alert - they were just normal police officers walking a beat inside an airport.

[IAN 2411]

reff: - fetishdj above,


I am not sure but if i remember correct by watching a CSI program if that person that fired the AK47 is found then he will be prosicuted for murder. It might have been a legal firearm, but any idiot knows that what goes up has to come down eventualy. He was not a responsible person and his idea of safe discharge begs belief, and he should have no rights to be near a firearm let alone own one

Regards ian2411.

[fetishdj]

Oh, I have no doubt that it comes somewhere in the many degrees of homicide under the American legal system (as opposed to our 2 level system of murder or manslaughter). Assuming, of course, they find out who did it which was part of the point of the article I read - gun owners in Georgia within a 3km radius of where he was at the time is, I imagine, a fairly large population to investigate... it is unlikely that they will find who is responsible, especially as the person responsible may not even know they are responsible. Apparently it is a common way to celebrate the new year in Georgia much as it is a common way to celebrate marriage in Afghanistan.

[denuseri]

<<didnt see anyone using a firearm to celebrate new years eve where I was.

[IAN 2411]

Oh, I have no doubt that it comes somewhere in the many degrees of homicide under the American legal system (as opposed to our 2 level system of murder or manslaughter). Assuming, of course, they find out who did it which was part of the point of the article I read - gun owners in Georgia within a 3km radius of where he was at the time is, I imagine, a fairly large population to investigate... it is unlikely that they will find who is responsible, especially as the person responsible may not even know they are responsible. Apparently it is a common way to celebrate the new year in Georgia much as it is a common way to celebrate marriage in Afghanistan.

Once an idiot always an idiot, anyone that does such a stupid act whether in a built up area or not, will more than likely do the same again. I would also hazaed a guess that not many American citizans own MK47s, and there is always that one person that holds a grudge against the person that fired the thing in the first place.

This is also getting away from the point of the thread and the question asked.

Regards ian2411

[IAN 2411]

As for the police... It used to be the case in this country that the first time you saw a gun of any form was when you travelled abroad to somewhere like Spain where the police are armed as a matter of course - I remember being astounded at the age of 10 by Spainish police carrying pistols. The last time I went on holiday, I saw several police officers in the UK airport carrying machine guns (not sure what sort but they were similar to the ones carried by infantry) as well as pistols. This was not an unusual thing, either - it was not after a major terrorist attack (we travelled not long after the twin towers thing and there were a lot more armed police then) and as far as we knew there had been no alert - they were just normal police officers walking a beat inside an airport.

One other point I would like to make about the British police carrying firearms; and it is that in the short time they have done so they have carried out far too many mistakes. There have been several times that more than one officer has fired at a supposed gunman, and when it has been one firearms expert there has been more than one shot fired, proving yet again overkill, and trigger happy police.

I was out in Belfast with the Special Forces; we were carrying at the time Belgian 7.62 FNs. They were more powerful than most assault rifles that the armies of the world have now. If you could see and aim that far with the naked eye, this weapon had the killing range of 5 miles. Put 6 people 6feet apart and with one shot you would kill them all, it would go through a half inch of steel at 100 yards and 6 feet of packed sand. I like others in my section and battalion kept my rifle loaded but ready at a seconds notice. We had no need to ask for permission to shoot, it was written in black on a yellow card for us to read, and it was in our pockets at all times. I cannot remember a time when we abused the card and fired the weapon without being fired at first, and the reason was, that weapon was part of us, we trained with it and we slept with it, and we respected the firepower we held in our hands.

The police however don’t have this luxury, and are a very unstable to be using a firearm, unless you have a certain mentality in the army, you will not get to hold a position of responsibility with a firearm.

Regards ian2411

[steelish]

<<didnt see anyone using a firearm to celebrate new years eve where I was.

Me neither!

[fetishdj]

Me neither!

Only going on what the article said: "Ballistic experts say it came from an AK47 assault rifle fired more than 3km (two miles) away from the church in Atlanta, Georgia. It is common for people there to fire guns in the air during New Year celebrations" was the exact quote.

And re-reading the article, I noticed it said 'more than' 3km not 'up to' as I originally said...

I am, of course, not discounting editorial bias or inaccurate reporting. It may also have been referring to a particular locality in Atlanta and not the entirity of Georgia.

[fetishdj]

One other point I would like to make about the British police carrying firearms; and it is that in the short time they have done so they have carried out far too many mistakes. There have been several times that more than one officer has fired at a supposed gunman, and when it has been one firearms expert there has been more than one shot fired, proving yet again overkill, and trigger happy police.

I was out in Belfast with the Special Forces; we were carrying at the time Belgian 7.62 FNs. They were more powerful than most assault rifles that the armies of the world have now. If you could see and aim that far with the naked eye, this weapon had the killing range of 5 miles. Put 6 people 6feet apart and with one shot you would kill them all, it would go through a half inch of steel at 100 yards and 6 feet of packed sand. I like others in my section and battalion kept my rifle loaded but ready at a seconds notice. We had no need to ask for permission to shoot, it was written in black on a yellow card for us to read, and it was in our pockets at all times. I cannot remember a time when we abused the card and fired the weapon without being fired at first, and the reason was, that weapon was part of us, we trained with it and we slept with it, and we respected the firepower we held in our hands.

The police however don’t have this luxury, and are a very unstable to be using a firearm, unless you have a certain mentality in the army, you will not get to hold a position of responsibility with a firearm.

Regards ian2411

[This is relevant.... just bear with me...] One of my essays subjects was on the inclusion of IT in schools and one journal article I read referred to the Labour government's IT education policy which was, in effect, to get computers and interactive whiteboards and all that sort of stuff in to every school. The article was looking at the effect of that policy 10 years after it was implemented and made the claim that while it had been successful in getting physical hardware into the schools a lot of it was lying about unused or not used to its full potential because there had not been a conconimant training budget to go with the hardware budget. Teachers were therefore either unwilling to use the computers or did not understand them enough to use them effectively. Can you see why this may be relevant?

I reckon that what may have happened is that the police have been given a massive budget for ballistic hardware - and the way these things tend to work, this money would have been specifically earmarked for that purpose only. So, every police force in the country has a surfeit of firearms. However, I wonder if there has been an adequete training budget to go with that?

[steelish]

I am, of course, not discounting editorial bias or inaccurate reporting. It may also have been referring to a particular locality in Atlanta and not the entirity of Georgia.

I bet it is something found only in a specific locale. You can be sure that if the whole of Georgia celebrated the 4th in such a way, most of America would have heard about it long ago. Something like that makes headlines everywhere.

[IAN 2411]

By fetishdj: -

I reckon that what may have happened is that the police have been given a massive budget for ballistic hardware - and the way these things tend to work, this money would have been specifically earmarked for that purpose only. So, every police force in the country has a surfeit of firearms. However, I wonder if there has been an adequete training budget to go with that?

__________________________________________________ ___________________

It is the point that i tried to make, that is shoddy if not a disgraceful atitude to be in by HM Government. You would not give an army recruit a rifle and say we haven't got enough cash to train you, so learn all about its value when you get to Afghanistan/Iraq, there is bound to be someone there thaty will show you what to do with it. Remember though dont point it at anyone if its loaded, unless you are thrown into a fire fight, then you can shoot anything that is in front of you unles its your mates. The excuse you gave fetishdj is a poor one, but having said that, you are more than likely correct.

Regards ian2411

[DuncanONeil]

i was thinking that it would be like a dream to have the problems with gun violence that the UK has

Really! The reports I read indicate that it is pretty bad in the UK.

[DuncanONeil]

Not intended to be anything other than information. The attempt to make guns "safe" in the US are kepp the firearm in a locked container, WITH TRIGGERLOCK INSTALLED. Ammo in a separate locked container. Yeah foolish. There are only two states in the US that prohibit citizens from carrying a handgun on their person in public, in a concealed fashion. In my state I can not carry a handgun concealed, but it is not illegal to carry it in an open holster. Although, I would not reccomend trying such!

Knife crime: The laws in the UK banning juveniles from carrying knives are ridiculous and impotent because a) it prevents law abiding teenagers (i.e apprentice butchers or simply someone who needs to use a knife for cooking as some teenagers need to do) from acquiring necessary equipment and b) most criminals, including most kids who own knives for kicks, pay no attention to the law and carry them anyway (in fact, most carry them *because* it is illegal) and c) it is already illegal to attack someone with a deadly weapon and the possession law is more or less unenforced because the police do not have the manpower or resources to trawl every school yard and back ally for knife toting teenagers.

I think the same argument can apply to guns - possession laws are actually difficult to enforce and criminals always ignore the law, that is why they are criminals. The main reason why guns are rarer here is that it is more difficult to get them over a marine border (and as stated, the Channel Tunnel may make that easier now...). Not convinced that legalisation and regulation work either - read a report this morning about a young kid in Georgia who was shot by a stray round from an AK47 fired in the air 'up to 3km away' by someone using it to celebrate the new year. This was a legal firearm fired in what the owner clearly thought was a safe way (despite the fact that you can have the same effect with a perfectly safe blank firer that fires no pellet). Some of the regulations I have heard about in some states of America, for example, either invite the owner to break the law or be unable to use the gun for the purpose it was purchased (i.e. if you have to keep the firearm in a locked case with the ammunition in a seperate case such a weapon is no use for home defence so you have to break the law and keep it loaded in an unlocked case).

As for the police... It used to be the case in this country that the first time you saw a gun of any form was when you travelled abroad to somewhere like Spain where the police are armed as a matter of course - I remember being astounded at the age of 10 by Spainish police carrying pistols. The last time I went on holiday, I saw several police officers in the UK airport carrying machine guns (not sure what sort but they were similar to the ones carried by infantry) as well as pistols. This was not an unusual thing, either - it was not after a major terrorist attack (we travelled not long after the twin towers thing and there were a lot more armed police then) and as far as we knew there had been no alert - they were just normal police officers walking a beat inside an airport.

[DuncanONeil]

Negligent Homicide!

reff: - fetishdj above,


I am not sure but if i remember correct by watching a CSI program if that person that fired the AK47 is found then he will be prosicuted for murder. It might have been a legal firearm, but any idiot knows that what goes up has to come down eventualy. He was not a responsible person and his idea of safe discharge begs belief, and he should have no rights to be near a firearm let alone own one

Regards ian2411.

[DuncanONeil]

It is unfair to make the comparisons that your are making. There is a quantum difference in the "rules" of use between the military and police. There are specific rules for the military and when those rules are in place action can be taken. And that action is shoot to kill.
It is not the same with police. Also all of the stories about "police error" never have all the information. We never hear about how long this situation went on and what the police did prior to shooting nor what the victim did or did not do. If the deceased had followed the instructions of the police there would have been no shooting. Police firing their weapon is in the same category of the country putting its military in harms way, last resort.

One other point I would like to make about the British police carrying firearms; and it is that in the short time they have done so they have carried out far too many mistakes. There have been several times that more than one officer has fired at a supposed gunman, and when it has been one firearms expert there has been more than one shot fired, proving yet again overkill, and trigger happy police.

I was out in Belfast with the Special Forces; we were carrying at the time Belgian 7.62 FNs. They were more powerful than most assault rifles that the armies of the world have now. If you could see and aim that far with the naked eye, this weapon had the killing range of 5 miles. Put 6 people 6feet apart and with one shot you would kill them all, it would go through a half inch of steel at 100 yards and 6 feet of packed sand. I like others in my section and battalion kept my rifle loaded but ready at a seconds notice. We had no need to ask for permission to shoot, it was written in black on a yellow card for us to read, and it was in our pockets at all times. I cannot remember a time when we abused the card and fired the weapon without being fired at first, and the reason was, that weapon was part of us, we trained with it and we slept with it, and we respected the firepower we held in our hands.

The police however don’t have this luxury, and are a very unstable to be using a firearm, unless you have a certain mentality in the army, you will not get to hold a position of responsibility with a firearm.

Regards ian2411

[DuncanONeil]

This is foolish! I had occasion, recently, to discuss with an officer the length of time a magazine can remain loaded before the spring begins to lose its effectiveness. His response was that it was not an issue. He was required to go through firearms training three to four times each year.
But then again in WWII it took 15,000 rounds to kill one enemy soldier, in Vietnam, 50,000. And now the estimate is 250,000. One could claim that the military is getting worse at its job!

[This is relevant.... just bear with me...] One of my essays subjects was on the inclusion of IT in schools and one journal article I read referred to the Labour government's IT education policy which was, in effect, to get computers and interactive whiteboards and all that sort of stuff in to every school. The article was looking at the effect of that policy 10 years after it was implemented and made the claim that while it had been successful in getting physical hardware into the schools a lot of it was lying about unused or not used to its full potential because there had not been a conconimant training budget to go with the hardware budget. Teachers were therefore either unwilling to use the computers or did not understand them enough to use them effectively. Can you see why this may be relevant?

I reckon that what may have happened is that the police have been given a massive budget for ballistic hardware - and the way these things tend to work, this money would have been specifically earmarked for that purpose only. So, every police force in the country has a surfeit of firearms. However, I wonder if there has been an adequete training budget to go with that?

[DuncanONeil]

I have heard reports over time in both Chicago and Milwaukee. It is possible that I even personally heard this activity for New Years.

I bet it is something found only in a specific locale. You can be sure that if the whole of Georgia celebrated the 4th in such a way, most of America would have heard about it long ago. Something like that makes headlines everywhere.

[IAN 2411]

It is unfair to make the comparisons that your are making. There is a quantum difference in the "rules" of use between the military and police. There are specific rules for the military and when those rules are in place action can be taken. And that action is shoot to kill.
It is not the same with police. Also all of the stories about "police error" never have all the information. We never hear about how long this situation went on and what the police did prior to shooting nor what the victim did or did not do. If the deceased had followed the instructions of the police there would have been no shooting. Police firing their weapon is in the same category of the country putting its military in harms way, last resort.

I would like to point out that two times that were talked about afterwards the supposed terrorist shot three times on the train in London, by the Met Police. They gave him no chance, and all because the idiots hadn't seen him leave the flat, they had not done their homework. The people in the train spoke against the police saying that there was no warning. Please for god sake dont come back and say well he could have been, it was safer to be sure than sorry. It is like hanging someone for murder, and then finding out the man had the right name but it was a different man with that name that carried out the crime.

The man on the station with the wrapped up table leg, the police shouted out, [now listen carefully] put the rifel on the floor and step away, second warning if you dont put the rifel doown i will open fire, Bang, one man dead carrying a wrapped up table leg. Now the reason for this is, if you are not carrying a rifle then there is not a lot of chance that you know what trigger happy plod is talking about. The police were only there because a member of the public said they thought he had a rifle.

The army over in Northern Ireland were on security roll and that of policing the province, at no time were the army on a war footing with them, we were nothing more than armed police.

Regards ian2411

[fetishdj]

There was a full (and much publicised) enquiry into the tube shooting and it was found that the police did not act appropriately and were therefore culpable. As for the table leg, I am not sure I agree with Ian on this so much. If the police are pointing guns at me, my response would be to drop everything (no matter what it is) and do what they say. You can discuss the specifics later and even take the police to court for mental anguish or similar but at least you CAN do that rather than having to rely on your bereaved family to do it.

Though there is always the panic... I did a personality test recently which said that I have the sort of personality which reacts well to crisis (thinking rationally rather than irrationally) so I am more likely to think clearly unlike some who may do something stupid and maybe the police need to think about those who react that way and take that into account.