OT: Road Rage / UK firearms policy

Ah, I didn't say she'd agreed as such, just that she was less violently opposed to the idea... This meant I could walk again within a couple of hours this time...

To her credit, she did say something like "I'd have to look for a job in London" - which wasn't a clear 'no', in my opinion. I could be wrong though, as my tears were still flowing at the time...

I've also had to agree to keep Poggle Wood - in case it all goes wrong and living on a WW2 army camp doesn't turn out to be Utopia... :-)

Martyn

Sorry for being pedantic... :-)

The eye has absolutely no bearing on this at all. The brain can take up to 4 seconds to re-interpret the information given to it by the eye. The length of time the brain can hold any one focus is measured in milliseconds and is heavily influenced by a number other factors.

Only about 10 percent of what we 'see', is as a result of what the 'eye' shows us :-)

Martyn

"Mother" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com

Pedantic means...?

It's even worse than the books and my experiences try to tell me then? Point is, if you are aiming a gun, olympic style, and the shot has'nt been fired whithin those 4 seconds, your eye (or your brain, whatever) starts to focus back and forth between the sights of the gun and the target. This effectively blurs the vision on the sights of the gun, which are the ones to look at when firing. You do *not* look at the target. You hit the target simply due to the correctness of you position. This is not the case in the kind of shooting you get to see on TV, of course.

Especially late at night in the pubs, with a certain number of beers consumed... :-)

Simply not true and the figures prove it. Either that or Americans are just far more excitable and liable to homicide than we are.

It solves the problem in so far as it makes people statistacally far less likely to have quick access to gun when they do blow a fuse. It does not of course stop gun crime per se.

Interestingly, I believe that before the last change in the law, shooting sports as a whole constituted the second largest participatory sport (after angling).

I doubt that it is now.

Nick

Unfortunately some gun club member in Dunblane went and got his unloaded gun from its locker at his gun club and loaded it with bullets from another location and then proceeded to shoot many schoolchildren. Now I would be the first person to say that the many should not be punished for the misdeeds of a few, but our situation here in the UK is different from yours. The vast majority of police are unarmed. They cannot be expected to police a country thus unless it has very strict gun laws as ours does, or they must be armed. I do not want to see an armed militia police force, I like ours the way it is and if that stops some people shooting guns for fun then so be it.

How about Australia - in 1997 they introduced what were considered draconian gun control laws. In the first year gun related homicide dropped 26%, between '97 and '98 by 38% and comparing 1988 with 1998 saw it drop a staggering 55% Similarly Canada introduced gun control in 1977 and in 1997 gun related deaths were 40% lower than '77.

It is too late for the US, there are more guns than people and a medium sized town shoot each other every year. We can still stop ourselves getting to that point. And I do speak as a gun owner.

Then why are our figures in Britain a fraction of those in the US? Are we just more reasonable and more level headed?

Hehe - how true.

But I tend to use the following page for US stats as it lets you sort them very carefully to exclude garbage:

You Brits most certainly are.

|| || Unfortunately some gun club member in Dunblane went and got his || unloaded gun from its locker at his gun club and loaded it with || bullets from another location and then proceeded to shoot many || schoolchildren.

As I recall, all of the guns he owned were unlicensed. He had exhibited significant instability and his gun licences had been revoked. If the fault for these killings lies anywhere (apart from the man involved, obviously) it is with the authorities for not taking seriously many warnings from members of the public and even his own gun club that he was dangerous. But the Govt of the day reacted to a high-profile hysterical media campaign and banned all handguns. Easier than addressing the real problem. As another poster has said, all this did was to remove legally-held firearms (to the great distress of many *very* law-abiding people) so that the only guns around were in the hands of the crims.

From another, very different, context, "hard cases make bad law."

"Exit" schreef in bericht news:GNghb.88018$ snipped-for-privacy@news-lhr.blueyonder.co.uk

On the Dunblane tragedy: there will always be fruitcakes like that. And they'll manage to kill, no matter how strict the gun laws are. It's in a way unfortunate this guy was a sports-shooter. If he hadn't been, who says he would'nt have got his hands on an illegal gun?

I'm in favor of VERY strict rules on owning, storing, transporting and handling guns. Nobody needs a loaded gun on the streets, as is possible in the USA. In the US every single nutcase can walk into a shop and walk back out again with a loaded .44 Mag. Strict gun laws generate positive effect; not everybody is granted to own one, for a start. On that I totally agree. But a total gun-ban is of no effect to what any govt. wants to accomplish with it. The guns simply dissapear into the illegal circuit. And those are speciffically the guns you *don't* want to be around. Those illegal guns make out the numbers in your statistics.

We must educate the townsfolk! Let's find out which one it's going to be next year and do a leafletting campaign.

I think it's just the sort of places you frequent, Martyn

Alex

Not true. As the Cullen report into the massacre reveals, DS Paul Hughes the former head of Scotlands child protection unit wrote a report in 1991 recommending that his (Hamiltons) gun licences be revoked but they never were because Douglas McMurdo the deputy chief constable said he had not been convicted of any crimes, only suspicions existed.

If the fault for these killings lies anywhere (apart from

Agreed.

But the Govt of the day

What is the real problem? Surely it is that some people will shoot people if they can get a gun when they are angry or lose control. As it is virtually impossible to act before the fact in these cases, the only answer is to make guns hard to get, particularly small concealable guns with magazines of up to 14 rounds and a quick reload time?

As another

As stated in my other post, most gun crimes are committed by law-abiding people, not criminals.

Indeed, but better than effectively no law as in the US.

No one, but it probably would have taken him longer, he wouldn't have been so proficient with it and wouldn't have had so much ammo.

You will never stop illegal guns, but you greatly limit the total number of guns available and thus you limit the supply source. Criminals in this country do not expect to meet a gun-armed victim or policeman so they are far less likely to carry a gun when it guarantees an absolute minimum doubling of their sentence if caught. The more law-abiding members of society and policemen carry guns, the more guns will be carried by criminals.

Perhaps we could just nominate them for the Darwin awards? :)

LOL - OK, bad point on my part! :)

You are now the third person to make such a comment today, but the first brave enough to do it publicly ;-)

Martyn