Date sent: Fri, 28 May 1999 16:19:31 +0100 From: Charlie Stross <charlie@antipope.org> To: extropians@extropy.com Subject: Re: Safe Gun-Free Britain (was Re: Guns [was Re: property Rights]) Send reply to: extropians@extropy.com
> On Fri, May 28, 1999 at 04:47:09AM -0700, mark@unicorn.com wrote:
> >
> > Typical anti-gunner nonsense. The reality is, there are very few legal guns
> > in Britain, and millions (police figures) of illegal guns.
>
> The police have a vested interest in exaggerating the problem of illegal
> firearms, just as they have an interest in exaggerating the value of
> seized drug hauls. Last figures I heard suggested 250,000 illegal guns
> at most, and probably a lot less, in the UK.
>
> > Very few people
> > get shot, but lots of people get their brains bashed out of their skulls
> > with blunt objects.
>
> Please quantify. IIRC, the murder rate per capita in the UK is about a
> tenth of the murder rate in the USA, although for lesser crimes the
> rates are generally similar.
>
This looks like a cold, hard fact to me.
>
> If widespread gun ownership deters crime, then one would expect the USA
> to be a crime-free zone compared to the UK -- or expect the UK to have
> much higher crime levels than Switzerland.
>
> Note that I am _not_ trying to make a case for banning guns; I deplore the
> UK's gun control regime. However, I believe that the issues surrounding
> violence in American society are orthogonal to the widespread ownership of
> guns; there are cultural influences at work here that bear investigation.
>
>
>
> -- Charlie
> (in Scotland)
>