Once Again There Are Calls for Gun Control, but How are England/Wales Doing With Gun Control?

For years we have had this argument, and those who are "pro-gun control" have been claiming that "with time gun crimes in England would get better", but have they?

Thursday 20 July 2017 07.49 EDT

Crime rise is biggest in a decade, ONS figures show

Police record 10% rise in crime in England and Wales, with 18% increase in violent crime and significant rise in murder rate.

olice-recorded crime has risen by 10% across England and Wales – the largest annual rise for a decade – according to the Office for National Statistics.

The latest crime figures for the 12 months to March also show an 18% rise in violent crime, including a 20% surge in gun and knife crime. The official figures also show a 26% rise to 723 in the homicide rate, which includes the 96 cases of manslaughter at Hillsborough in 1989.

More alarmingly, the statisticians say the rise in crime is accelerating, with a 3% increase recorded in the year to March 2015, followed by an 8% rise in the following year, and now a 10% increase in the 12 months to this March.
...

www.theguardian.com...

BTW, yes, that article also does say that the number of police officers has been decreasing. i guess it has nothing to do with the fact that in England and Wales, etc, criminals have more rights than the law abiding. People who have defended themselves with legal weapons in England have been sent to jail, and the same occurs in "democratic cities in the U.S. where criminals" have more rights than the law abiding citizens have.

There were claims such as this one, which to this day some people still claim.

Examining UK Gun Crime 15 Years After Firearms Act

Over a year ago

by Kecia Lynn


What's the Latest Development?

Last week marked 15 years since the enactment of the UK's Firearms Act, which prevents private citizens from owning most types of handguns and makes it much harder to purchase other types of guns, such as rifles and shotguns. The British parliament passed the law nine years after passing another gun control law that made semiautomatic weapons illegal. In the last 15 years, "more than 200,000 guns and 700 tons of ammunition have been taken off the streets" and although statistics show that the number of gun crimes increased at first, by 2005 a decline began that continues to this day thanks to strict enforcement and regular police sweeps.
...

bigthink.com...

The above type of claim is false, in fact gun crimes, and violence in total in England and Wales have kept increasing as you can see in the top article.

Other countries which have also passed strict gun control are fairing the same or worse. Some of the worse examples are Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, etc.

List of countries by firearm-related death rate

Gun control has never worked and will never work because criminals do not abide by laws. Only the law abiding are disarmed by gun control laws and it always leads to more crime.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

20% surge in gun and knife crime.

Liberal mindset-Time to outlaw knives.

And trucks, and bats, and machetes, and acid, and it never stops. Maybe we should just stop importing new criminals and deal with the ones here a reply to: seasonal

Yeah but we don't have a mass shooting every day so there is that.....

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

No just a 20% surge in gun and knife crime.

It would be nice to separate the gun from the knife crimes.

Both mass shootings and massive surges in gun/knife crime is bad.

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
Yeah but we don't have a mass shooting every day so there is that.....

They are actually more common in the US now than before a lot of the restrictions were put in place.

There is a noticeable increase after 1986 (which is when machineguns were moved onto a register and no new ones could be manufactured for civilian sale) and a significant increase starting about 10-12 years ago. Even setting aside the terror attacks, the numbers are on the way up, despite having tighter gun control than ever before.

To clarify, I'm not suggesting that correlation equals causation.

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
Yeah but we don't have a mass shooting every day so there is that.....

Frequent mass shootings occur in democrat cities the most such as New York, Chicago, New Orleans, etc...

Anyway, officials in England have claimed that 'there are more police officers armed". But here is an ex-Met officer, Peter Kirkham telling it how it is.



Here he is in another video talking about how the police force is decreasing and police officers are being burned out.



But that's just part of the problem. Guns are getting in the hands of criminals, and gun crime has continued to increase there despite the most strict gun control laws implemented there.

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse

originally posted by: OtherSideOfTheCoin
Yeah but we don't have a mass shooting every day so there is that.....

Frequent mass shootings occur in democrat cities the most such as New York, Chicago, New Orleans, etc...

It's an interesting phenomenon, that's for sure.

Link to Washington Times article

The vast majority of homicides occurred in just 5 percent of counties, and even there the murders were localized, with some neighborhoods untouched by the violence, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Crime Prevention Research Center.

“I just think most people have a real misunderstanding about how heavily concentrated murders are,” said John R. Lott Jr., the author of the study. “You have over half the murders in the United States taking place in 2 percent of the counties.”

...

Mr. Weisburd said that in his studies of larger cities, about 1 percent of the streets produce 25 percent of the crime and about 5 percent of the streets produce 50 percent of the crime.

...

One difference in the county-by-county numbers was that gun ownership was heaviest in rural and suburban areas where there were few murders, Mr. Lott said.

Here is another video which should shed some light of why there are less and less police officers in England and Wales.



That's apart from the cuts on police forces in the UK and Wales which started many years ago.



So, the law abiding citizens in England and Wales have been disarmed, there have been more and more cuts on front line forces, and there have been more and more complaints against officers which has led to moral loss in the police officers in the UK. Yet despite more laws restricting the use of guns/weapons there are more and more crimes with guns and more and more violence.

Here is another video, from 2011, about people in England talking about the police force cuts.



It almost sounds like authorities in England/Wales want more and more crime, they want their citizens not able to defend themselves and want to cut more and more the police forces in England and Wales.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Irrelevant that Im a licensed carrier in America...people will always find ways to kill other people. Kitchen knives, cars, hammers, gasoline etc, etc,etc.

Ban-Control all the above and anything else? Acid? Rat poison? Cain killed Abel in the Bible with a ROCK. Rock control?

**PS I am of Welsh-English and Irish descent

These statistics are a little dishonest.

A 13 percent increase in incidents was what, around 4800 to 5600 or so? And that's all incidents in which a firearm was reported. Not used. Just reported.


If you look at the firearm death rates, a different picture emerges.

In the Uk, 0.23 per 100,000, or 145 deaths. One of the lowest in the world.
In the US, 10.54 per 100,000, or 33,612 dead people.

Can people learn statistics before quoting them to make point. If I compare a change in crime rate for the same area such as a year on year on change then that has meaning. If you compare the same figure between countries it is totally meaningless because your base figure is different.

Country A has gun control and crime rises 10% last year
Country B has no gun control and crime rises 4% last year

Yahoo yahoo get rid of control.......erm no because you don't have the base figure:

Country A has 500 crimes and 10 deaths per 1,000,000 people increasing to 1100 crimes and 11 deaths
Country B has 25000 crimes and 500 deaths per 1,000,000 people increasing to 26000 crimes and 520 deaths

The INCREASE of 4% for country B is greater than the total crime of country A !

Per capita figures are often quite good. Percentages are normally a disaster misused and misunderstood most of the time as they have been above.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

...

Use of weapons reported. Not convictions.

I'm curious to know, do these statistics address only firearms and knife crime or do they include the use of air rifles and imitation firearms.
Offences involving the use of weapons

I keep seeing 2% used in this report.

Anyways more to the point, this report states this:

People aged between 15 and 34 made up a disproportionate number of those seriously or fatally injured from offences involving firearms (70% of the total, while constituting just 26% of the population).

Why do you think that is?

I won't accuse you of being disingenuous, but you are pushing a narrative, so I'll just say this...

Violent crime involving weapons, including firearms. Is not the result of over-policing, nor an unarmed populace. Like most problems relating to this group the issue is never addressed.

We have a problem with our youth. Focusing on "non-issues" in terms of English and Welsh peoples, fails to address this. Ultimately we push the youth away with our "out-of-touchness".

70% of victims are young people. I'd love to know the statistics of the perpetrators... I suspect it'll be around the same.

a reply to: seasonal

We're not that dumb...

Outlaw the youths

a reply to: yorkshirelad

Not only that but ther'e's a completely different method of gathering such data and classing crime. Plus it's an incredibly complex system with various feedback channels - the OP ignores all this to juke bad stats.

Here in the UK we don't seem to have mass shootings on a daily basis. Crime has risen here but its no where near the level of gun related crimes you seem to tolerate in the US with your cries of "but the second amendment!!". Criminals will always be criminals and use whatever weapon is available but mass shootings tend to be by people who have psychological problems and want to vent on the world, being able to restrict firearms from those types of people would save lives however you fell about your precious firearms.
How many mass shootings from unhinged people, how many accidental shootings by children because a person couldn't secure there firearm does it take before your country realises that Britain isn't going to invade again or that its not the wild west anymore!
The USA is meant to be the leader of the free world, an example to the rest of us, this is becoming a joke. The bile and hatred you seem to spew at each other for just your political views is bad enough let alone when gun control is brought up.
I do sound a bit angry here but after reading about and seeing on TV mass shooting after mass shooting by a "crazy" person. To then have Americans come onto ATS and defend there rights to firearms and make excuse after excuse is getting old and to now see some replies to this thread is just hysterical.

originally posted by: Kurokage


The USA is meant to be the leader of the free world, an example to the rest of us, this is becoming a joke. The bile and hatred you seem to spew at each other for just your political views is bad enough let alone when gun control is brought up.

Actually this is quite normal during culturally pressurizing transition periods. It historical all down through the ages. Rhetoric and sharp tone heats up. In this country for some time now the constitution has been under attack and those attacking and those defending are using stronger and stronger language by now.

Besides history old and late demonstrates many more thousands if not millions of the unarmed that have died at the hands of tyrants than can be demonstrated otherwise thus demonstrating that the 2nd is indeed a current and justified tool of those holding rights self evident.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin

And you have to worry about walking across a bridge .. so there's that

a reply to: Logarock

The claim that the second amendment is to stop a tyrannical leader is outdated in this day and age, just look what happened at a pipe line. If anyone had come out firing that would have been the end of that demonstration. No body tried to stop Bush from dragging you into a never ending war in the middle east.
Your police force is more like a military force and is almost shot first ask questions later deal, more so if you are black.
I've said before in other threads that its to late and to embedded in your culture to try and do away with your firearms but making sure that if you have "mental" issues or even on the no fly list that you can't get a gun just seems like common sense to me.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

The UK and the USA have much in common.
There are also many differences in our respective societies and culture.
Gun ownership is sort of engrained in the American psyche in a way many non-Americans will ever be able to understand.
In the UK and many other countries gun ownership is not viewed in such a manner. Here gun ownership is permitted if it is for a legitimate purpose - many people own guns of various descriptions. However, there are certain restrictions and requirements that must be met in order to allow ownership.

Despite what some may lead you to believe, the vast majority of criminal don't possess guns here in the UK. The difference in sentencing if carrying out a crime whilst in possession of a firearm far exceeds the sentence if performing the same crime without a gun.

Some may lead you to believe that its easy to buy an illegal gun - it isn't. The vast majority of ordinary people wouldn't have a clue where to go to obtain one. Neither would most criminals.
But on the off chance that you can get a gun you then have a much harder problem - obtaining ammunition. I know it may be hard to believe for American where ammunition is easily available in abundance in most or many states but its rare as rocking horse # over here and getting it in any significant quantities is exceptionally hard.

All that aside, we simply don't want any relaxation in our gun control laws - we aren't brainwashed, downtrodden or brow beaten, at present in the opinion of the vast majority of UK citizens any relaxation will only result in more gun related incidents and we don't want that.

Now I'm a realist and I recognise that we are living in an ever changing world and what's right today may not be right tomorrow.
I'm fairly confident that if the time should ever come when our gun control laws need relaxing then they will be.

Sometime comparing the UK and USA is like comparing apples and oranges.

As for our police force; the serial slicing of police budgets is in itself a criminal act and those responsible should treated accordingly.
But a higher percentage of police officers in most counties have training in armed response than ever before.

Of course I have my own personal opinions but its not for me to comment on the rights and wrongs of The Second Amendment, only Americans know what's best for their country.
And exactly the same applies for this country!