RE: All Hail the Second Amendment
January 13, 2013 at 4:54 pm
(This post was last modified: January 13, 2013 at 5:13 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(January 13, 2013 at 10:28 am)Fidel_Castronaut Wrote: I agree, it is assault nevertheless, but the context of that assault is what I'm getting at. In the US, as a layman on US social convention and society per se, the issue appears to be a combination of poor social welfare structures combined with generally very easy access to guns and ammunition. This, I contend, is a problem across the board, whereas in the UK, its very much a localized issue in some (but not all) city wards and only on certain nights.
Making gun ownership illegal in the UK context is very much a logical decision as the types of assault are not the types of assault where having a gun would make any sense (one wold be more likely to be convicted of murdering someone in the crossfire).
There's also the issue of who is perpetrating these crimes,. I don't have stats to back it up, but I'm willing to bet that the overwhelming vast majority of recorded 'assaults' in the UK are committed by the same people and in the same locales. This links down to a re-offending rate that is pretty poor (50% in some cases), which again,Mather than use the word skews, creates an impression of the UK being violent when really, it isn't. Is actually pretty peaceful, and you'll rarely if ever be a victim of crime (from personal experience, I was born in one of the poorest east London constituencies [hackney], lived in some of the poorest areas of England's second city [Birmingham], which is where I still live, and have never been a victim of crime except for one burglary. Now this is just anecdote of course, but as far as I can recollect, none of my friends or acquaintances have been a victim of assault either, although I could be wrong).
On the note of the OP, I have never understood why introducing a gun to the situation would automatically make everything safer.
Similar situation here in the US on all counts. Crime as a statistic is condensed into relatively small areas, repeat offenses and career criminals shouldering a hefty portion of that overall pie. I could tell identical anecdotal stories all day long - but here's the reality about crime stats.
The stats you see are only those crimes investigated and prosecuted (sometime crimes reported - but not followed up make it in there as well). Every study you'll find on crime stats will always been with the disclaimer that the overall rates are - in all likelihood- much higher for a vast majority of crimes. The country you live in is not safer than the stats would imply, but more dangerous. That, of course, doesn't mean that it's more dangerous -for you- any more than the US is more dangerous -for me-.
(these similarities btw, are the very reasons that have led some to conclude that the trouble with -gun-violence- has less to do with the guns than it has to do with the social and economic status of those holding them. Consider, for example, that sparsely populated but very poor areas of the us account for the crushing majority of gun ownership - IE "rednecks with 30 guns each" .........but very little of the crime pie, even less of the "gun crime" pie.)
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