Talk:Gun politics in the United Kingdom
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[edit] No consensus?
There is no political debate on gun control, which to me implies there is a consensus. After this misleading reference in the intro to a pro-gun lobby and a lack of a consensus, there is no mention in the article of any organisation that is pro-shooting, which also implies the title of "Gun politics in the UK" is an oxymoron. The purpose of the intro is to describe what is in the article. I have to admit to sympathy for pistol shooters who find it impossible to practice their sport but they could not be described as 'pro-shooting' in a way that people such as the Americans would recognise. There may be a handful who disagree with gun control but does there have to be 100% in favour for there to be a consensus? JMcC 18:18, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
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- While there is certainly no debate equivalent to that in the United States, firearms are still a major political issue, but largely restricted to their use in a criminal use; any discussion of legal use is firmly fixed in that context. Nick Cooper 08:41, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
- Pro-shooting organisations? Well, let's try http://www.basc.org.uk/ who are an active enthusists and lobbying group. It's also not hard to find those who want the UK gun laws to go further e.g. http://www.mothersagainstguns.net/. Neither site makes much headway in getting its voice repeated by the mass media. Perhaps people don't spend much time debating it because the general consensus is that it isn't too broken? Of course, that's an opinion; any such statement in the article would need to be sourced. Notinasnaid 12:04, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
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- We've probably reached a stage now where the public - if they consider it at all - consider that current restrictions are about as far as they can go without banning firearms outright. The MAG site seems long on hyperbole and selective use of statistics, and short on common sense or a sense of proportion. The bottom line is that the high-end figures usually bandied about are over-inflated by a) air weapons and replicas, and b) criminal damage; essentially offences that wouldn't have been reported even ten years ago. Nick Cooper 17:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] References
Regarding references I have an addition question about [12]. This is a link to the bbc website? It is an article about “How punishment affects crime rates”, the very last line of the article gives the quoted statistic. My question is where do we see the reference for the bbc stats? (Adamjohn12 12:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC))
- If you mean the 6%, it seems a slight underestimate. The Home Office report Violent Crime Overview, Homicide and Gun Crime 2004/2005 (26 January 2006) states that there were 77 fatal firearms crimes in 2004/05 out of 839 homicides, which is 9.2%. For the preceeding two years it was 7.6% and 7.9% respectively. Nick Cooper 14:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Gun crime
Legal firearms in private hands has almost no connection with gun crime in general. Yes you do get the rare nutcake with a regestered firearm who will kill a person or two, but almost all criminals aquire their firearms illegally, so there's no point in restricting most gun's because regestered shooters aren't the problem; it'll make no difference to gun crime other than making it worse. Reducing gun crime require's going after illegal fire-arms and having a liscencing and registration system in place, to seperate criminals from the innocent. Goldfishsoldier 03:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
- I very much agree, sir. However, banning handguns does make it possible for the police to act immediately, without having to discovered whether the person is licensed. While I'm in favour of sporting clubs being allowed, with restricted facilities, to have any type of firearm on site (if they can be safely kept and/or discharged), it does not take away from the fact that simply having a good registration isn't the only way one can deal with firearms use. I would make the conjecture, and it is only that, that most crimes involving firearms involve handguns, and while most of these would be illegal, you remove the entire issue by banning them. While I find this really quite irritating, it does assist the police. The real issue is whether it's a short-term solution only, as actual numbers of firearms in the UK have been rising since they banned handguns, and while the police have an 'easier time', it does not appear to have dramatically reduced the problem nor seems to be making things better anymore. Roche-Kerr 18:53, 30 December 2006 (UTC
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- I agree with you in alot of what you've said, but the fact remains that the laws have had no impact on gun crime. I find it quite sad that as a shooter myself, I feel I'm being used as a scapegoat in regards to gun crime. Goldfishsoldier 00:47, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
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- Guns weren't banned because of "gun crime". They were banned because of killing sprees carried out by gun fetishists (the kind of people who don't think owning a gun in peacetime is barbarous in the first place) while not directly pertaining to any other crime. And article talk pages are not an appropriate place for this kind of complaint anyway; wikipedia isn't a discussion forum. Chris Cunningham 01:29, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
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- Out of 22,789 "firearms crimes" in 2004/05, 11,825 (52%) involve air weapons. A further 3,333 (15%) were imitation firearms (including soft air weapons, BB guns, deactivated weapons, etc.). The figure for handguns was 4,347 (19%), although this is likely to be an overestimate, given that only weapons positively identified as air weapons or imitations are counted as such, otherwise they are recorded as "handguns," even though they're not. Nick Cooper 20:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
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- I'd like to point out that I just noticed this isn't the entirety of this conversation. What Goldfishsoldier said on 29th December was originally in the thread 'Relevance of lack of natural predators in the UK' in Archive 2, in response to my most recent comment, but Thumperward moved it into a new thread (this thread) just before he archived the previous conversation. The edit summary makes it seem like he somehow couldn't see the relevance of what Goldfishsoldier said to my comment, and decided that he must've meant to make a new thread for it in the first place. What we're left with here is a thread that seems to not be discussing improvements to the original article at all, when in it's original context it was merely part of a digression originating in Admbws' comment "Whatever you do, avoid making the assumption that more guns in private hands will give criminals easier access to guns" and my response to it. Should this whole thread be deleted along with everything from Admbws' comment onwards in the other thread, due to the digression? Should the digressive part of Admbws' comment be deleted and the rest after that moved to Admbws' user talk page, maybe with annotation or a preface explaining what happened? Or should the rest of the conversation just be brought back from archive 2?
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Thankyou. I was going to point that out myself, but I never got around to doing it. Sorry I'm a bit late in responding. Goldfishsoldier 04:18, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
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- In any case, I'd also very much like to thank Goldfishsoldier for his response. It seems I made a rather large error in my ignorance, although I'd still like to expand on what I said. Under the assumption that this thread won't be entirely deleted I'll continue here. Quite simply, if there are guns in large supply within a country, it is easier to acquire them for illegal sale or use. If the only guns coming into or being produced in a country legally are for use in the military or law enforcement, there's simply less of them to steal. Also, if guns are legal in general it opens the possibility of passing off illegal firearms as legal. In a country like Britain, when you see that someone has a gun you know that it's been acquired illegally.
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- There are many different ways to obtain a firearm illegally, and I don't really know much about the sources of illegal firearms in the USA, but if firearms are banned they can only be acquired either from stealing from the military or police, or from smuggling from outside the country. If guns are legal in general there are many more sources of illegal firearms. There are many new and more accessible places from which guns can be stolen, such as gun stores, gun suppliers or just someone else who already owns a gun. There may be legal gun distributors that make illegal dealings. I'd also think that if a licensing and registration system were in place, you'd run into many problems when people want to take their guns to a different country, or when people want to bring guns into the country legally. This might open opportunities for gun smugglers. Even if the restrictions on gun ownership are applied entirely effectively to people who want to bring a gun into the country, unless the proportion of illegal firearms obtained from sources other than smugglers is minute, my point still stands.
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- Basically, if guns are legal in general much more law enforcement and resources are required than if they are illegal entirely, and more opportunities exist for acquiring firearms illegally in general. Anyway, if the licensing and registration system is as effective as you say, maybe it should be mentioned in the article that in Britain there is currently very little discussion or comprehension of the possibilities of a licensing and registration system. By linking back to the topic of the article itself, did I just complicate the discussion about moving or deleting parts even further? For the record, I think you should be able to discuss the article's subject on the talk page because it can bring omissions of the article to attention. -- Haridan 02:12, 14 January 2006 (GMT/UTC)
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- Actually, I would contest that claim that here, "when you see that someone has a gun you know that it's been acquired illegally." As I stated above, out of 22,789 "firearms crimes" in 2004/05, imitations, deactivated firearms, BB guns and air weapons (virtually all of which are legal)accounted for 15,158, which is 67%. And even then this is an underestimate, since it's only the weapons possitively identified as such, either by being recovered by the police, or if the damage/injury they inflict is plainly or forensically shown to be from an air weapon pellet. Statistically, if you see someone with a gun in the UK, it's more likely not to be even a "real" firearm, let alone illegal. Nick Cooper 08:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
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- Well obviously, but you can usually tell whether it's real or not. There are laws against toys or otherwise looking like real guns. That's one reason they're usually a different colour. If you see someone with what looks like a real gun, it's most likely a real gun, and therefore illegal. -- Haridan 04:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
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- We're talking about replicas and air weapons, not "toys." Most people, for example, would not be able to tell the difference between an "illegal" Walther P88 and the "legal" CO2-powered air pistol version, even if they had it in their hands. In addition, most Airsoft guns are scale replicas of real weapons that would "fool" many people to a distance of a few feet. The reality now is that most British people are so unfamiliar with firearms that if they see someone other than a very young child with something that can be safely assumed to be a toy, anything that looks like a gun is usually taken to be one. Nick Cooper 08:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
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Now this is the point where I shut a lot of you gun-control pinko's down. I'd like to point out two examples: Switzerland and Finland. These two countries have some of the lowest crime rates in the world. And yet, there's something unique about them, both countries have about 2 million private gun owners, out of populations of 7 million and 5 million respectively, and yet gun crime is almost non existent. I mean Switzerland and Finland, two (Neutral) countries who are constantly advocating "we can all get along", and they've got one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world! Oh, the Irony. And Haridan, I looked at your profile and noticed you call yourself an expert gamer, what games do you consider yourself an expert in? Goldfishsoldier 04:30, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
- Switzerland has to seen in the context of a country in which virtually every adult male does military service and remains in the reserve/militia until middle-age, with their service weapon kept at home. Finland similarly relies heavily on conscripted reservists and, of course, is sparsely populated and has a longstanding hunting culture. Training and utility respectively are important factors. However, the simple reality seems to be that there really is no real corrolation between a counrty's level of firearms ownership per se and the use of firearms in crime in the same country, although elements on both sides of the debate continue to argue that there is, one way or the other, to further their case. Nick Cooper 10:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Exactly, because most people have under gone military training and have a thorough knowledge of firearms and I would think enjoy shooting, would go out and buy their own guns hence the high gun ownership and I don't think any criminal would be stupid enough to break to a home in Finland or Switzerland knowing the high gun ownership. Goldfishsoldier 22:12, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Article fails to recognise that debate exists.
Good start in this article, but as a Dem Colonial I feel I have seen quite a bit more discussion and controversy than this 'consensus' picture allows.
Where are the following: 1) Names or links to anti-shooting organisations, such as Gun Control Network which gets considerable press despite a closed membership of 7 or less?
2) Names or links to pro-shooting organisations such as BASC and Countryside Alliance?
3) Summaries of arguments for and against the present laws?
4) Journal articles which evaluate the history of gun laws in the UK (eg 'Boiling the Reasonable Frog' which covers it as an example of a slippery slope which came true rather than a rhetorical device.)
5) Discussion of role of the Home Office in framing policy;
6) Discussion of the individuals who have made major contributions to the debate, eg. Supt Colin Greenwood.
7) Discussion of any influence of the [Copycat Effect], in which media news reporting is thought to have contributed to many massacres, as it has been reliably shown to contribute to imitative suicides.
8) Referencing a review article with links to major white papers and independent research on the issues in the UK.
Check out [Gun Politics in Australia] where I contribute to see some additional viewpoints, also. All the best, ChrisPer 04:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
- On the other hand, the danger is that in striving to do that, it may create the impression that there is more debate on the issue in the UK, when the reality is that there is virtually none. Firearms ownership has always been so marginal and disparate that it would be like expecting there to be a debate on whether people should be allowed to be 'plane spotters or not. Just about the only exception is in rural areas, but the Countryside Alliance is far more vociferous on fox hunting than anything else, that any interest they have in firearms issues is fairly minimal, at least publicly. Likewise, the Gun Control Network might get the attention of those who are already interested or affected, but the vast majority of the population have probably never even heard of them. However, for balance, there should be links to both.
- Greenwood probably is the best authority on the issue, but is not widely known. It's probably a reflection of the level of public interest that his only book on the subject was published in 1972, and as far as I know was not even reprinted. It's a very useful work for events up to that point, but you have to ask why there has never been anything similar published in the UK since. Greenwood's submissions to Parliament, etc., are available, so I'll do a bit of reading and see if there's anything that can be included.
- I'm not sure how (7) can be reasonably justified here, since shooting massacres are hardly a common event in the UK. I'm not aware of anything that would come under (8), but I'll have a look. Nick Cooper 08:32, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
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- (7) Copycat effect operates across communication networks, especially media which operates worldwide. Potential perpetrators validate behaviour scripts against how the media presents a person, and this is more likely to click across related cultures - eg UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. At least two of Australia's massacres closely followed Hungerford (Hoddle St) and Dunblane (Port Arthur). There is an article on this at http://www.class.org.au/ideas_kill.htm, which lists sources at the end.
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- A useful article on and link to the official Home Office guideline to application of the law: http://www.shootinglaw.co.uk/article5.htm
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- Anyway, best wishes in your development of the article.ChrisPer 01:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Comparison with the United States
I removed the 'Comparison with the United States' section:
Between 1995 (calendar year) and 2005/06 (April to March financial year), violent crime in England & Wales fell by 43%.[1] In 2005/06 there were 765 homicides, including the 52 victims of the 7 July 2005 London bombings.[2] The population of England and Wales is 53,046,000 (out of the UK total - including Scotland and Northern Ireland of 59,835,000),[3] which translates as 1.4 homicides per 100,000 residents. By comparison, in 2000, police in the United States reported 5.5 murders for every 100,000 of population.[4] In addition, 70% of murders in the United States involve firearms (of which 75% used are illegally obtained) compared to 9.4% in the United Kingdom (77 out of 820 in 2004/05).[5] Both New York City and London have over 7 million residents, with New York reporting 6.9 murders per 100,000 people in 2004 to London's 2.4 per 100,000, also in 2004.[6]
As it contained no information on gun politics - Crosbiesmith 19:25, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
- That seems a strange and somewhat arbitrary judgement. The issue in the UK is very much framed within the context of the supposed levels of crime in general and firearms crime in particular, and comparisons with the US - while of debatable value - are common. I'm therefore reinstating it with a few tweaks on emphasis, but this is a temporary measure while I work on something more comprehensive and directly relevent. Nick Cooper 08:20, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
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- The section contains no information on gun politics. If the issue in the UK is framed in terms of crime levels, that could be explicitly stated. Similiarly, if U.S. comparisons were a determinant in current policies, that could also be noted.
- As it is, this section is just a collection of statistical statements. They are not placed in the context of the article.
- For starters, I'm removing the section about violent crime and homicides. The section itself says that 'Only a small number of homicides are commited with firearms'. - Crosbiesmith 09:20, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
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- I'm not sure I understand you reasoning that the section in question, "contains no information on gun politics." The issue of crime is implicit in gun politics, as is reflected in the preceeding paragraphs and in most of the other "Gun politics in..." pages, and it shouldn't be necessary to have to state as such in the section which specifically cites "relevent" crime figures.
- You seem to be suggesting that because firearms are used in so few homicides, it's not necessary to mention them. I would contend that they need to be included precisely to demonstrate how relatively low they are, and for the same reason there needs to be more on the use of firearms in crime in general, and specifically the types of weapons used and the crimes in which they are used. For example, the vast bulk of "firearms crime" in fact a) involves the use of unregulated air weapons or imitations, and b) is criminal damage.
- However, in your haste you removed the E&W homicide rate, while retaining that for the US. I've reinstated it and also included the more up-to-date figures for firearms homicides piublished on 25 January. Nick Cooper 11:13, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
- I removed too much. The statement about violent crime seemed out of place. I'm afraid I couldn't see beyond that. With that removed, I can see the remaining statements on homicide form a coherent whole. Thanks for taking the time to reply.- Crosbiesmith 12:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] NPOV
Is it just me or does the first sentence of this article sound a bit POV towards the pro-gun-control side? CeeWhy2 05:38, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not so sure. Maybe. In any case, I think it could stand a rework. —Thernlund (Talk | Contribs) 05:46, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
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- The opening sentence is misleading, since obviously the totality of "gun politics" encompasses views on all sides. The statement of, "places its main considerations on how best to ensure public safety and how deaths involving firearms can most effectively be prevented," can more accurately be attributed to the claimed motives successive governments, as obviously some pro-shooting elements dispute whether that is actually the end result of either past, current or suggested furture legislation. Nick Cooper 08:38, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Bad Sentance
"Although it is sometimes claimed that since Britain banned the private ownership of handguns, gun crime has steadily increased, there is no evidence of a causal link." I have never seen anti-gun control folk arguing that there should be a causal link. This would only make sense if guns were legal for self defence pre-1997 and were used to (theoretically) deter crimes. Rather they argue that the ban has doen nothing to prevent criminals from getting hold of guns. The structure of this sentance also seems to be trying to defuse the whole "UK Gun Crime Rampant" agument against gun control by being dismissive and incorrectly framing the way said argument is used.
I would take this sentance out myself, but it has a link to a reference and I don't know how to fiddle with those things without breaking them. Can an editor take a look? Thanks172.200.81.2 22:57, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
