Thursday, August 4, 2011

Too many legal guns in England and Wales? You'll feel better once you have some more.

Yet another virtuoso display of logical gymnastics from Mr Kevin Baker that must surely put him in firm contention for the US Olympic team. He cites the increase in the number of legally-owned weapons in England and Wales as 'evidence' of the foolishness of gun control. So just run this past me again - legalising more categories of weapon would decrease the number of legally-owned weapons? No, of course not. Even Baker himself would have to concede the blindingly-obvious - that whatever problems we may have now with an undesirably high number of legal weapons, that number would be much, much higher without legislative restrictions. So gun control does work to depress the number of legally-owned weapons. And why does that matter so much? Kevin, astoundingly, is rather keen to remind us of the reason himself -

"Forgotten Derrick Bird so soon?"

Er, no we haven't, Kevin. You, on the other hand, might wish to forget him rather urgently, because there must surely be a better advert for the legendary "responsibility of legal gun-owners" than the mass-murderer Mr Bird.

In a similar peculiar vein, Baker goes on to claim that gun control has somehow contributed to the problem of illegal weapons. Oh yes, of course it has, Kevin, it's well known that the UK has a much worse problem with illegal guns than countries with fewer legal restrictions on gun ownership, such as - to pluck an example out of thin air - the US.

He also makes bizarre reference to grenade attacks -

"There have been grenade attacks in the UK. In 2003 a 63 year-old woman lost a leg when a grenade was tossed into her Liverpool home, for example."

Are we supposed to conclude that "owning a gun for defensive purposes" would have given her premonitory powers that it was going to happen, enabling her to know exactly when to start firing wildly through her window?

Finally, if you're ever tempted to take one of Kevin's "rigorous statistical analyses" seriously ever again, you might want to consider this schoolboy howler -

"The population of England and Wales is a bit over 62 million"

No, it isn't, Kevin. That's the population of the whole United Kingdom, including Scotland and Northern Ireland. Just goes to confirm what I've always said - to hell with guns, America needs to invest in some damn good geography teachers.

UPDATE : Having thought about this some more, there's another point that baffles me. After the Cumbrian massacre, Kevin and his Fan Club assured us that the only problem was not that Derrick Bird obtained his weapons legally, but instead that there weren't a whole lot of other gun owners out there in a position to leap into action when needed and shoot Bird on sight (after all, "when there are only seconds to spare, the police are only ever minutes away").

And yet we now learn from Kevin that gun control has been an abject failure because this country is supposedly awash with guns anyway, of both the legal and illegal variety. So, according to his very own logic, it appears that widespread gun ownership isn't much use at 'protecting' the public from the likes of Derrick Bird after all. But between you and me, I think most of us had worked that out already.

19 comments:

  1. And I thought he said he was done?

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  2. I can't see why this man is so interested in UK legislation, or why anyone is interested in his opinion. Frankly, I'd be happy to see more, rather than less gun control in Britain - I can't really see why anyone in a city has any business having a firearm, and in the country, it's only folk who need a firearm for their work who should be allowed them. I really couldn't care less about how the US regulate these things - it's none of my business. Equally, I'm not remotely interested in Mr Baker's odd views on how life here should be conducted. He will continue to talk out of his 10 gallon hat for as long as he likes, but can we just ignore him, and discuss matters more relevant and close to home?

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  3. I appreciate what you're saying, Richard, although if nothing else Kevin can occasionally be useful on slow news days!

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  4. I have fired guns, of several types, and enjoy it as a skill, but I don't even own replicas any more, not after Dunblane

    I can see the point of firing ranges where you rented the guns, to exercise a skill, but at home, for some paranoid black helicopter watching fantasy, no

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  5. Hi James, from the other thread (that you closed because you presumably aren't that confident in the correctness of your own position):-

    "For starters they might help you remember that words actually do have meanings. Particularly the word "responsible".

    You see, the line you are studiously avoiding is this -

    "When (the shooter) began shooting, everyone ran.

    That last factor alone is responsible for almost all of the dead.""

    First of all, it's a bit rich of you to accuse anyone of 'studiously avoiding' anything WHEN YOU LEAVE OUT THE MOST SALIENT PART OF THE QUOTE.

    The full quote would be this:-

    "When (the shooter) began shooting, everyone ran.

    That last factor alone is responsible for almost all of the dead. A tight group of young men taught to run at danger instead of away from it could have overpowered him almost at once."

    Words do have meanings, and due to the subtleties of the English language a word may have more than one meaning depending on context. For instance 'responsible' (in the above quote) may indeed mean 'the victims are spineless cowards', as you are (dishonestly. Deliberately.) trying to tell us it does. Or 'responsible' could mean 'not fighting back - allowing the shooter complete control of the situation - is far from helpful'.

    Now this second interpretation is supported by the part of the quote that you studiously avoid (I'll repeat for the benefit of the audience), 'A tight group of young men taught to run at danger instead of away from it could have overpowered him almost at once.' So you see, you relying on the use of the word 'responsible' by itself is not sufficient to prove the victims are being blamed and smeared as cowards. If that's all you can do to try to 'prove' your point, you probably need to concede the point and withdraw your unsupported accusation.

    Now let's see what you do next, James. You've already sunk to closing comments threads because you're afraid of holes being picked in your fallacious reasoning. Are you going to go lower and close this thread? Or are you going to start BANNING people, not just for disagreeing with you, but for blowing sizable holes in your weak arguments against cherry-picked quotes?

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  6. "Hi James, from the other thread (that you closed because you presumably aren't that confident in the correctness of your own position)"

    No, mate, I closed the thread because you were being an utter buffoon. The signs are not terribly encouraging that you'll be behaving any differently on this thread.

    Unlike your hero Kevin, I have not banned people and have no plans to do so, but in the words of the sainted Kezia Dugdale MSP, this is my own little corner of the internet, and I reserve the right to moderate comments in any way I see fit. But for the record, in the three-and-a-quarter year history of this blog, I have only ever deleted three comments (all on the same thread) for reasons other than spam or bad language, and on that occasion I gave the people concerned more than fair warning what was likely to happen.

    Let me make this simple for you - I will not be responding to you again. I will not delete your comments for reasons other than bad language, spam or outright abusive behaviour, but I most certainly reserve the right to close any thread if it descends into a repeat of the other one - ie. you're the only person commenting, you're just repeating the same drivel over and over again, and showing no apparent sign of putting a sock in it.

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  7. Does the 'bonkers from arizona' lobby have a view on the new Swedish hobby of home-brewed atomic weapons? sounds right up their street!

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  8. So massively more illegally-possessed firearms than the number held by persons who filled out all the paperwork and had, at least, some kind of background check is a desireable thing?

    Registration schemes do not slow down crazies -- Derrick Bird and the recent lunatic in Norway being the easiest examples -- and they deter criminals not at all. The only people they prevent from having guns are the honest and the sane.

    End result, decent people are outgunned.

    While I am pleased to see the continuance of the old British Empire's stalwart faith that Good will prevail despite being outnumbered, I think it may be a little optimistic.

    But as you correctly point out, I don't live there. Good thing you're there and I'm here: neither of us would be happy the other way 'round!

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  9. "but instead that there weren't a whole lot of other gun owners out there in a position to leap into action when needed and shoot Bird on sight"

    You seem to be forgetting something James, and that's what would have happened to any lawful gun owner that did happen to be in a position to stop Derrick in his tracks, and that's the fact that THEY would have been arrested...and IMPRISONED...for either murder or manslaughter (regardless of how many people Derrick himself would have killed at that point) as well as for carrying an offensive weapon. Not 'instead of'. AS WELL AS.

    So unfortunately the knowledge that they'd be arrested and imprisoned for in effect, SAVING LIVES does tend to inhibit legal gun owners from being able and prepared to do so.

    Now locking people up for having saved others from being killed by the likes of Derrick - locking them up for murder/manslaughter no less - is no doubt something you wholeheartedly support, which makes your jeering at them for not risen up to stop Derrick hypocrisy in the extreme.

    Of course you can always say that you don't think any legal gun owners who used a gun to stop Derrick from killing people shouldn't face any charges of any kind, however I don't think that's very likely, do you? But, again, that just makes you a hypocrite.

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  10. "The only people they prevent from having guns are the honest and the sane."

    Roberta, if that was remotely true the rate of gun crime in this country would not be as comparatively low as it is. Your fellow travellers generally implicitly concede that point - their usual line is "but the weapon used by a criminal doesn't matter - a knife or fist is just as dangerous!".

    "While I am pleased to see the continuance of the old British Empire's stalwart faith that Good will prevail despite being outnumbered, I think it may be a little optimistic."

    Actually, as the statistical evidence confirms, it's considerably less optimistic than the idea that "guns for personal defence" will somehow offset the problems caused by vastly increasing the number of guns sloshing about for criminals to murder people with.

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  11. Statical evidence like this: http://gizmodo.com/5829119/sales-of-aluminium-baseball-bats-up-5000-on-amazon-after-uk-riots

    Seriously, the rate of violent crime is trending down in my country; it is trending up in the UK -- and we have looser standards for what constitutes a "violent crime" for reporting purposes.

    Your laws only disarm the law-abiding. If you're happy with them, then you are where you should be. And if most Crown subjects are happy with those laws, then you're getting what you want, as H.L. Mencken put it, "good and hard."

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  12. Oh, I'm so delighted you've trotted that quote out for the 579th time, Roberta - I was having withdrawal symptoms. I wonder what we should infer from the fact that the vocabulary of the US gun lobby is frequently so similar to the vocabulary of a porn film?

    "Your laws only disarm the law-abiding."

    I'm sure that piece of rhetoric (again, a rather familiar one) sounded great in your head, but it has the disadvantage of being demonstrably untrue. We have a murder rate three times lower than the United States. As you never tire of pointing out, we do however have a problem with other forms of violent crime. So plenty of violence, but which doesn't result in death anything like as often as in your part of the world.

    Doesn't that tell you something rather profound? It tells me that most violent criminals have indeed been successfully 'disarmed' of the most deadly weapons. I know it's a tad inconvenient for you, but it's a matter of record that the Norwegian mass-murderer Breivik attempted to obtain his weapons illegally - and failed. He then obtained them legally. In the circumstances, don't you think it would have been a very good thing if the law had prevented him from doing that? If not, why not?

    Oh, and things are depressing enough as it is without a baseball revival.

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  13. I think you are best left to the beatings you prefer, James. Me, I'd rather see those who initiate force stopped in the act, and get very little press from it.

    As for ABB, let's see, not clever or original enough to obtain arms illegally, he followed the paint-by-numbers formula to obtain a gun -- and exploited a "sporting purposes only," no-lawful-carry society by shooting unarmed victims. How sad the summer camp didn't have a little .22 range (with the guns all stored according to local law), so his victims would have had a chance to stop him. Sadder still he exploited trust in police by dressing as a policeman.

    You don't stop loonies and criminals with a harsh look or even a policeman's whistle. You can't ban everything they will use without hamstringing decent people's ability to stop malefactors. You certainly don't stop them with laws.

    ABB made and used bombs, too. Will you be after a ban on diesel fuel and fertilizer next? Perhaps petrol, glass bottles and rags should be outlawed as well. What comes after? Slingshots? Penknives? Baseball bats? (The uptick puzzled me, too, but a little thought shows cricket bats are more difficult to wield in self-defense; I really can't see any cricket-playing culture settling for baseball!)

    What actually comes after is mob rule, people huddling home for fear of yobs. Well, you've got that now and I'm not in the least pleased to see it.

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  14. I doubt any of us much like beatings Roberta, but it seems to me that, if I had to chose, I'd probably prefer a bit of a beating which I could fight off (and maybe even win), to a bullet in the head from a distance.

    We don't actually have any mob rule in Scotland. I think you'll find that, as of writing, that is a problem England is suffering. Of course it could migrate here, or perhaps to Paris, or Brussels, but it's unlikely.

    Under the Scottish government many of the things the English dispossessed are protesting against don't exist.

    That said, I don't like to see it in England any more than I would want to see it in our other neighbours, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Faeroe Islands.

    But just imagine all these disaffected Englishmen with guns... There would have been thousands of deaths; the troops would have had to be brought in, and England would be in a very much worse state than it is today.

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  15. Roberta : "As for ABB, let's see, not clever or original enough to obtain arms illegally, he followed the paint-by-numbers formula to obtain a gun -- and exploited a "sporting purposes only," no-lawful-carry society by shooting unarmed victims."

    Which is as an indirect a way as you could have found to concede the point that he did indeed obtain his weapons legally. You didn't answer the question - if the law had been strict enough to prevent him from doing so, would that have been a good thing? If not, why not?

    "You don't stop loonies and criminals with a harsh look or even a policeman's whistle."

    This is all true. What I'm intrigued to know is how the hell you propose to stop them by arming them with guns.

    "ABB made and used bombs, too. Will you be after a ban on diesel fuel and fertilizer next?"

    I'm certainly not proposing the legalisation of bombs. What about privately-owned anthrax spores - should they be legal? And the chap in Sweden who obtained nuclear material and tried to split atoms in his kitchen - I presume you're outraged he was arrested?

    "What actually comes after is mob rule, people huddling home for fear of yobs. Well, you've got that now and I'm not in the least pleased to see it."

    Again, what really frightens me is that it seems you would be more pleased if the people of England (not Scotland, as Tris correctly points out) were currently huddling in fear of their lives because the yobs were armed to the teeth with guns.

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  16. I don't think a law banning guns would have stopped ABB. Perhaps slowed him; but his type would have found a a way. If not a gun, a bomb; or a poison. See the "Unabomber," here in the U.S. for an example.

    You misread me completely on the intersection of mobs and guns -- take, as a countervailing example, Korean shopowners during the Los Angeles riots, who protected their homes and businesses using guns; and not by shooting rioters but by the powerful dissuasion. An interesting bit of trivia is that the time and effort (and, okay, expense) to get competent with a gun is not something most rioters and flash-mobbers are willing to invest.

    The Atomic Swede appears to be a bit of an idiot. Idiocy with radioactives is often (but not always) self-limiting. I'm no more outraged that he was arrested than I would be is someone in my urban neighborhood was arrested for backyard target practice without a proper backstop. (OTOH, I know of several people with private .22 ranges in their basement -- not all that hard to set up and not illegal here).

    Owning a gun, for a civilized person, means having the ability to say "No!" to barbarians and have them stop. (Since the latter term is so often taken as covertly racist, I will point out that England's latest crop run the entire gamut; savagery, like civilization, is a lifestyle choice that knows no skin color).

    I'm pleased to hear Scotland has, thus far, been spared England's riots. I'm not at all sure you can count on it always being the case.

    Darn it, you're not required to accept a curb-stomping as the price of being a decent person in a world gone half-mad. I worry about you guys. Half my ancestors hail from north of Hadrian's Wall (alas, probably kicked out for something gauche, irking the Crown or whatever).

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  17. "I don't think a law banning guns would have stopped ABB. Perhaps slowed him; but his type would have found a a way. If not a gun, a bomb; or a poison."

    No necessity for the word "perhaps" before "slowed him" - we've already established that he failed to obtain guns illegally. That fact is hugely problematical for this notion that any criminal can and will get their hands on guns illegally. And, as already noted, if that was really true it's very hard to see why the murder rate in this country is so much lower than in your own. Perhaps, you might counter, we simply have a less violent culture here - in that case why are you and your fellow travellers always going on about our high violent crime rate? The only way of explaining your way out of that contradiction is to suggest that British thugs are somehow innately programmed to beat people senseless, but to refrain - like noble savages - from actually killing anyone.

    In your heart of hearts, you know as well as I do how ludicrous that proposition is.

    "I'm pleased to hear Scotland has, thus far, been spared England's riots. I'm not at all sure you can count on it always being the case."

    Given that America has had riots more recently than Scotland, you might want to look to your own complacency first.

    "Darn it, you're not required to accept a curb-stomping as the price of being a decent person in a world gone half-mad."

    Roberta, didn't you tell me a couple of years ago that you'd been held up twice by criminals with guns? I'm certainly not saying that never happens to "decent" people here (it does), but it's considerably less common per head of population. Why should you have to put up with that level of risk? Why not learn from the example of countries which have successfully minimised that risk?

    "I worry about you guys."

    You live in a country with a murder rate three times higher than ours - and you worry about us?

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  18. Yes, I have been held up twice at gunpoint -- but I have never been beaten up, which is far more likely in London or Glasgow than Indianapolis. Nor have I ever suffered a "hot" robbery, also much more common there than here.

    I do worry about you; I know where murder is most likely to strike here and what the risk factors are (illegal drugs, dating men into drugs, living in certain neighborhoods -- I got robbed in areas I should have known better than to be in at the time of day I was in them). Your rate of violent crime is higher and it is more likely to strike outside of "high risk" zones.

    As for riots, given that the States are far larger than Scotland and much more diverse, it is not at all surprising "we" have had riots more recently. Culturally, you've a lot more in common with England and they've had riots even more recently. (Indianapolis, the last riot per se was over a decade ago, smallish and actually resulted in some resolution of the specific issue).

    As for ABB, he failed to obtain guns illegally *once.* He tried via legal means and succeeded. Do you really think if he had been stymied there, he would have folded his hands and said, "That's it for me, then"? I don't think just "any criminal" can lay hands of a gun in either of our countries (it helps to be a careerist instead of a whackjob); but I am sure that a determined one can. ABB had determination.

    You cannot get rid of guns. It's impossible; not even totalitarian states manage to do so. All you can do is reduce the law-abiding to a pool of helpless victims for any lunatic or predator.

    That is an unacceptable outcome.

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  19. This thread is now ten days old, so I've responded in a fresh post here.

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