LOL *NSFW* *The new Demote thread*

ORLY? Where do you think those guns come from in the first place? Research shows that increased gun control reduces the availability of guns on the illegal market.

I can think of about three things wrong with the interpretation of those facts off the top of my head. "Lowest crime rate"? Is that reported crime (with the weakened hold of paramilitaries and greater willingness of people to report incidents to police, more cases may be coming to light which were previously hidden. University of Ulster lecturer in criminology Dr John Topping said: “People have been so concerned with the bigger conflict that normal crime has not been on the agenda")? Does that include sectarian violence or does that fall in a separate category? Is a reported difference of 14% vs 21% really a significant difference, especially taking into account differences in crime reporting?

Seriously dude. You're smarter than that.

 

I can tell you that my dad would have been a whole lot happier in Northern Ireland if there were a lot fewer civilians owning guns....

 

Any right-minded gun owner doesn't sell their gun to a criminal- most guns on the black market are smuggled in from abroad ( since no one in the UK has manufactured handguns for the UK market for decades, let alone sold to it ). And again, the amount of paperwork required to acquire a firearm makes a non-sense of any notion that criminals just acquire their weopons from any legal source ( breaking into a gun shop woudln't get you very far- no handguns to be found... ).

1) doesn't make any odds- you can skew or interpret the facts any way you like- the facts are facts.
2) doesn't have any relevance
3) crime is crime- if it's reported, it's a statistic. Unreported crime can envolve firearms, though more often than not it won't- firearms incidents only account for a very small percentage regardless
4) it could be 1% and it wouldn't matter.

You're a thinking person, Nexxo, I expect better of you too. Look at it this way; we all own knives at home ( kitchen, utility, hunting, multi-tools etc etc ), yet how many of us do you see running around like loonies stabbing people to death on killing sprees? You can't treat all gun owners like they are criminals, waiting for a chance to go out and slaughter the innocent. Most reported gun crime is as a result of illegally held weapons regardless- legal owners are a bit more level headed, accounting for only a fraction of a percent of all reported gun crime in the UK- that is a fact.

The USA is a different case, they like to live & die by the gun...

 

General crime rate, I imagine, includes all crime; including gun related incidents. Ergo, the statistic I posted is perfectly valid still- lovely bit of correlation there ( though correlation =/= causation, but it is what it is ).

Thanks for playing though

 

I can only imagine the civilation populus of NI would have been a lot happier if there were far fewer English soldiers patroling their streets armed with assault rifles.

:-/

 

When arguing that the majority of guns intended for use in crime come from illegal sources/black markets at least use a country without strict gun controls like the UK - that's the very reason that the vast majority of guns in the UK do come from black/illegal markets is because weapons are tightly controlled.

That is a ridiculous line of reasoning. Loads of mundane items could be used to kill people, but they all have another purpose. The only purpose for guns is ending life (or maiming) in one form or another - that is all. You don't hear anyone (sane) say "I'm just going to prepare this onion...with my pistol"

Thanks for the patronising tone.

It's comparing apples to oranges. One is specific, the other is not. My statistic proves that the higher availability of guns leads to more deaths caused by guns. All your statistic proves is that Northern Ireland has a lower crime rate than many other countries in Europe, and that gun ownership in Northern Ireland is at a higher level than many other countries in Europe.

As you say correlation != causation as has been seen so many times before.

 

I've been specifically talking about the UK- try to keep up chap...

That's a big pile of BS. You do know that pistol shooting is an Olympic sport, right? Target shooting =/= killing people. TRY TO KEEP UP. Knives are not mundane objects, and I think you'll find mundane items account for more deaths than fire arms do as it happens; oh sweet irony...

Your reasoning is so faulty I can't help but talk down to you- don't line 'em up, and I won't knock 'em down...

It's a weak statistic to use- 0.22 vs 0.5 deaths per 100,000 people.
We're talking about a difference of 1/4 of a person dying per 100,000! That's so small it's almost insignificant and within the region of statsical inaccuracy. Please try harder to make a convincing argument.

And oh yeah, your stastic doesn't prove anything either- there's nothing more than correlation, just like my stastic. You can't prove your point, especially given NIs recent and on-going cultural issues- we don't have the IRA in England holding onto a massive arsenal of weapons that can and do easily fall into the wrong hands, nor do we have ongoing tentions between two camps that results in constant bloodshed, or atleast, resulted in. That alone easily accounts for the tiny, tiny increase in deaths due to gun violence. Taking away the guns doesn't do anything to stop people killing eachother, they'll just use something else.

Thanks for playing though, again.

EDIT:

Some real stastics for you:




Source: http://crimepreventionresearchcente...and-homicide-rates-before-and-after-gun-bans/

A massive increase followed by a drop back down to the same level as before the ban. Geewiz, I wonder if it has anything to do with most of the murders being committed by illegally owned firearms maybe, hence not being affected by the ban and infact being helped by it.

This one is beautiful: http://www.citizensreportuk.org/reports/murders-fatal-violence-uk.html

The same is true in England & Wales as it states in the link. Turns out it's all you knife collecting maniacs who are the real danger, not us law abiding gun owners ( no paper work needed to buy a knife and kill someone with it ). Mmmm, tastey irony, om nom nom...

 

Aside from sport and pest control, which there are legalised and controlled channels to do so in the UK, what are the benefits of owning a gun? I don't really get why anyone would want to own one if they aren't shooting game, competitive target shooting or vermin? It's a very finite population who generally accept that it is a great privilege and thus the weapons get the respect they deserve.

As soon as you open that up to the public, the freedom of it reduces the concept that these objects are not normal - let's be perfectly honest, they throw a lump of lead at several hundred miles an hour and are really, really ****ing dangerous, and SO easy to make a mistake with.

To me the risk of a gun being stumbled across by a child who simply doesn't understand and there being an accident is enough reason to make their availability tightly controlled. If gun control prevents one death that would have otherwise happened, it's worth it in my view.

You can't compare it to drugs because the person that is directly harmed is almost always the user and ultimately has a choice in what the are doing. With a gun, it's a completely different story and the victim has zero method of defence or choice in the matter. Sure, guns don't kill people. People do. But guns make it unequivocally easy to kill - in a situation where someone in irrational rage might be throwing punches or even stabbing - they stand a fair chance of probably not killing. With a gun, they probably are.

 

All those knives at least solve a purpose - all the knives I have in the house are well used as they are used day to day to do stuff - if I had a gun in the house, what's the actual purpose of it? Like - what reason do I have it. Knives I have for jobs, tasks, basic food preparation - I can't think of a reason or need for a handgun or any gun really in my little basement flat. Which I think is why the "lots of knife owners" metric doesn't really work.

A little air pistol ? We can all go and buy a little air pistol. I don't think you can draw a comparison to olympic target shooting, with owning actual hand guns.

 

Nope: criminals steal guns from legal gun owners (who would have thought!). Turns out that the kind of people who buy guns like they were mobile phones also lose them in the same fashion.

Observations =! Facts =! Their interpretation.

Knives are trickier than guns --they require you to get up close and personal with your victim. But in answer to your query there are about 14000 stabbings per year --38 coming into A&E every day. Now imagine the fun if you can point something at someone from a distance and pull the trigger. As recent shooting sprees have shown, you can kill/hurt a lot more people in a shorter time with a gun than a knife.

And although there is arguably a legitimate practical purpose to most knives, there is none to guns. In a civilised society citizens don't need guns.

Guns have been normalised in the US. People think nothing of buying one, owning one, putting it in the glove compartment of their car where it gets stolen, in their bedside cabinet where little Johnnie can find it and blow his sibling's head off. They think nothing of using one to deal with interpersonal conflict. And what's more, it doesn't make them any safer. Quite the contrary.

Let's not normalise them here.

 

Do you think things would have been any better if the British Army weren't there?

 

...

 

Folks, can I suggest that a heated debate about gun control would be better suited to Serious?

That way we can all enjoy funny pictures and suchlike in this thread dedicated to funny pictures and suchlike.

 

Ahhhh, relief at last...

Please, more of the LoLs, life's serious enough most of the time. Thank goodness for the Russian driving videos I re-watched earlier, sad but funny too

Good idea to talk about/discuss guns, but as Shirty (rightly) said, elsewhere please

 

Well, since I missed this as it happened and no one has started a serious thread, and considering what I have to say relates directly to something posted here I'm just going to reply here (with brevity)

The reason NI has less crime is due to punishment beatings, not liberal gun control. The paramilitaries police their own communities, and have little respect for due process.
Also, why did the gun crime go up after the ban? Not all guns were handed in after the ban, and easily found their way in to the black market; For proof of this a month-long amnesty for handing in guns in 2003, some 6 years after the ban, gathered 1,485 firearms (including 2 rocket launchers) and 34,677 rounds of ammunition. It's evidenced in the chart you posted and it's called............lag. Oh, and to put some of these figures in perspective 162,000 guns where handed in after the ban, which sounds like a lot until you consider that NI, with a population of 1.5m, own 380,000 guns.

 

Shall I fetch the hammer?

 

Lol wut? No one's talking about gun ownership having benefits in that sense, I am talking about the way gun owners in general are treated and thought of. Most gun owners do indeed use them for sport, hunting, pest control etc. Not just because they want to own a gun for the sake of owning a gun.

It's not easy, unless you are imcompetent, in which case you'd quickly be singled out for not being a suitable candidate for owning a firearm. Also- ever heard of these things called cars? They hurtle a lump of steel around at a hundred miles an hour and account for far more deaths each year than fire arms ever do ( in the UK atleast )- maybe if we banned them we'd save loads of lives?

Fun bonus fact: more people die falling down stairs each year than do as a result of being shot- lets ban stairs too.

Only irresponcible people leave handguns lying around ( USA, I'm looking at you... ); I haven't heard of a single case of child accidently discharging a fire arm in the UK for as long as I can remember. By law they need to be locked up in a gun cabinet, so that's why you won't hear about it either- different culture and laws in the UK, we ain't trigger happy idiots...

Drug dealers provide the means for users to harm themselves- selling drugs is just as illegal as taking or posessing them; I can indeed compare it. Nut jobs going on rampages are extremely rare in the UK, and as I said before atleast one of those incidents would have been avoided if the police did their jobs properly and listened to people warning them. And again, far more people are killed by knives and bare hands ( fists ) than by guns so your argument falls totally flat.

You missed the point entirely. Firearms have plenty of perfectly good purposes that are legal and legally controlled- they can however be missused, just like knives or any other item that is used as a weapon. Just because your personal situtation procludes a valid or meaningful reason to own or use a firearm, doesn't mean it procludes everyone. You are allowing personal bias to cloud your reasoning.

Lol, fail & no. Who said anything about air pistols? I'm talking about fire arms. I guess you've never heard of Olympic pistol shooting- they use real handguns chap, try to keep up. Unfortunately, since handguns were banned in the UK, our Olympic shooters have to go overseas to train- that doesn't stop it being a sport.

Oh and yes, Air pistol and rifle shooting is also an Olympic sport, winning gold medals for the UK on several occasions. So there's that too. Your lack of knowledge and condescending attitude is blinding your reasoning, again.

True, but that is also very rare due to firearms being locked up in gun safes- usually, it's farmers shotguns that end up being stolen as they are stored poorly- something I've seen plenty of reports about in recent years. And again, you won't see any handguns being stolen, for obvious reasons...

True, but knives are a damned-sight cheaper and easier to get hold of, their miss-use is far more wide spread, and what are these recent killing sprees you talk about? I can think of about 4, in the last 20 years or so. The number of people killed by knives in that time is vastly higher- doesn't mean that peple killed by guns doesn't matter, but statistically speaking banning guns didn't make things better & you are far more likely to die by another unlawful means. So there's that.

BULL SH!T ( I'm not gonna keep repeating myself just because you guys can't be bothered to read previous replies ). Your personal bias and opinion is noted, thank you, come again.

Lol wut? I'm talkig about the UK, I've already been over ( and over and over... ) the culture issues with the USA that make firearms ownership a whole different can of worms. And no one said anything about 'normalising' them in the UK- me thinks you have no idea about the points I've made. Banning handguns made no difference to their illegal use, it in fact made it worse for several years, thus, the ban should be removed.

I'm sure I've said plenty of times that I'm in favour of gun control ( ergo, strict liscensing conditions ).

Besides the point ( I was playing devils advocate ). Then again, that's a political & religious issue between Westminster and Belfast- guns made no difference in that sense.

A voice of reason, thankyou.

I'm done now. Here are some funny pictures:

 

No, you're not. You conveniently ignored the one person in the thread from the region you invoked to support your argument.