The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S.

They don't want guns. Let 'em not have guns. I honestly can't wrap my mind around why somebody wouldn't want the best tool available for self defense, but hey... as long as they keep their gun control over there, they're welcome to it.

We here in the States have our own gun control to worry about.

Unless i missed something...

Then what makes us so violent?

Is it a genetic thing (unlikely considering our mixed culture), is it our social programing, our diet, our small island, our history or what?

Personally i think it's a mixture of the following factors.

Ignorance, xenophobia, class division, a lack of space (relatively small) and a very suffocating government (high taxes, CCTV, aggresive police, hypocrisy) and also the fact that on a day to day basis, the television, the newspapers etc make us feel stupid. Dumbing us down to petty materialism, racism and a hatred for free thought and expression.

Also it seems Uk citizens are becoming second class citizens in favour of immigration and cheaper employment for foreign workers. This makes some people angry.

Our politicians and bankers treat us like fools, and yet they blow OUR money on over priced crap, funded by our hard labour.

Uk citizens are treated as criminals now, with stop and search techniques by bored policemen, making us feel bad for walking home from a friends house late a night (for example)....

We also have a bit of a reputation around the world as being 'tough bastards' and i think in some ways, we try and live up to it.

Towns and cities and villages are losing their historical identities, as old houses and landmarks soon become faded history in favour of corporate consumerism, large supermarket chains are causing local (long held family) businesses to close down...

Soon every town will be identical....

YES we have a right to be angry, but we should vent it in a constructive way.... Instead of kicking seven bells out of each other, we should turn that anger into a tool and use of minds and sort out this giant mess.

But, on the flip side... I still love the Uk, i love the whit, the banter, the optimistic pessimism of our people and even the bloody weather....

Peace

I hate to say it, but (as someone who is American but over 50% English in descent), I think it's because England is a violent culture compared to many other countries.

Has nothing to do with the guns - might have to do with the justice system being so inconsistent though I do NOT think bringing back the death penalty would help.

Oh god, not this again.

1) Never use the Daily Fail as a source for your opinions on Britain. It is rightly regarded as a joke over here. The worst kind of sensationalist rag you could ever dare to read.

2) We've never really had guns. Handguns WERE banned after Dunblane, this is true, but the amount of people who had them (sports shooters) was miniscule. Farmers have shotguns (my dad still has his) but if you live in an urban area, you'll be amazed at this, you have to keep it in 2 halfs, locked in 2 seperate cabinets. One half is in our garage and one is in the attic. These are the terms and conditions for having a gun license and they are completely acceptable.

3) and this is the most important one; WE DO NOT WANT GUNS. Plain and simple. We don't want them, and we certainly dont want the Old Bill to have them. The right to bear arms is not something we have ever had, and not something we will ever want. It may work in your country, and best of luck to you, but we do things differently over here.

4) WE REALLY DONT WANT GUNS.

i think a lot has to do with our drink culture. A lot of violence is a direct result of alcohol. We've always been a nation of pretty heavy drinkers.

There does seem to be a lack of respect in this country and i mean respect for ones self. The amount of wallies I've seen walking round town with their shirts off recently. i feel like telling them to put a shirt on, but only from the safety of a fast moving vehicle

reply to post by merkaba93


Not sure; just wanted to check: did you actually read past the headline at all??

...violent crime sounds like a great all encompassing term to describe any bad or violent crime - turns out though it doesn't include any Burglary, Robbery or Homicide (amongst many other catagories) & when you look any further you see UK is a lot further down the lists in those other catagories.

Violent Crime: UK Number 1 (per 100,000 residents)
Burglary: UK Number 4 (per 100,000 residents)
Robbery: UK Number 5 (per 100,000 residents)
Homicide: UK Number 13 (per 100,000 residents)


Trust me - I live in the UK & there's no way it's as bad as this article makes out & historically we've just never had many guns & don't try to tell me any different by quoting anything cos at the end of the day I live in the UK & you don't.

Guns don't kill people - stupid people owning guns do (that gives us 2 choices - ban guns or ban stupid people)

Originally posted by CRB86
... the Daily Fail ...

haha! genius - sadly though it's true, yes folks it really is a sh*te source of news...not worth reading let alone believing anything the newspaper says..

reply to post by Silk


Not quite correct. We did have licensed handgun and semi-auto rifle ownership, for sporting purposes of course, not home defence. This was confined to the shooting sports community and was well regulated.
After a couple of rather questionable shooting events, by people using illegally held firearms, even those with legal firearms were portrayed by the media as being wannabe Rambo's, on a hair trigger and likely to unleash mass death upon the neighbourhood at any moment. It all looked like a well orchestrated witch hunt, then and now.
The position the police and government took at the time was that the complete ban on handguns and rifles would show a decrease in armed crime. Of course, they were talking out of their arses, and they knew it, and in fact the instances of armed crime have increased year upon year.
I am not saying we need to arm the citizens - I wouldn't trust people in my neighbourhood with a pointy stick, let alone the police - but those who owned and used firearms for sporting purposes were done a massive disservice by the government and press.

Originally posted by stumason
Gun ownership, even in the "glorious past" as you like to paint it, was never that big in the UK. We've never been a nation of gun fanatics,

Although, it would seem a lot of US posters think it's all Miss Marple, tea and scones, Pride and Prejudice nonsense....

Ok first off I as an American find this an interesting report. Second I'll try not to take the "Assumption" that every American gun owner is a "Fanatic" as a jab or personal insult. The Vast Majority of us Gun Owners are law abiding citizens.

IF You consider the vast amount of firearms here in the states then divide that by the population those gun death numbers are actually very low. The OPs linked talked about Violent crimes. Gun ownership really has nothing to do with the issue. The violence seems to be as you put it a cultural issue.




Edit to add.

If for some reason some day my cheese slid off it's cracker and I made the decision to "KILL" somebody a hammer would do just as nicely as a gun...


[edit on 4-7-2009 by SLAYER69]

Somebody previously mentioned our cultural predisposition towards violence, I think a lot of our youth are disenfranchised, bored and angry, without wishing to sound like a Daily Fail reader (lol), there seems to be a massive moral vacuum in this country. Lots of people don't see other people as being anything more than obstacles to things they want to achieve.

The main problem, whenever I see violence "in the flesh" as opposed to on tv, it's the same old thing (mostly), young blokes and girls brawling outside a nightclub or a kebab van. on a Friday or Saturday night.

If you watch (youtube) any UK police/documentary style show, almost all of the fights being shown are outside nightclubs in this style.

There's a nasty little trick that club/pub owners pull that makes this worse too, I got this off a landlady I used to know, she ran a busy town centre pub. To keep the drinks flowing, turn the music up it makes it too loud to talk, so people will keep returning to their drinks, make sure it's nice and warm, no airconditioning etc and keep them packed in. So people get really dehydrated and what does that do to the brain?

Originally posted by jokei
The main problem, whenever I see violence "in the flesh" as opposed to on tv, it's the same old thing (mostly), young blokes and girls brawling outside a nightclub or a kebab van. on a Friday or Saturday night.

Hit the nail on the head there, alcohol is the crux of this. Perhaps there is something more though.....

Why do we go out on every Saturday night, expending vast amounts of money, time, and energy. Emotional energy, sexual energy, stress and hormonal energy and putting ourselves in a brainwave state where we have no control? Working ourselves into a frenzy every single Saturday night like some sort of sick ritual?

Saturday - Saturn's Day - Satan's Day

Energy sapping ritual.

reply to post by Majestic23



That is British Society for you, or as the Torys put it a Broken Society. The Uk population have always had a problem with alcoholic related crimes. Years ago they would not have goten away with most what they get upto nowadays.

But who do you blamefor this? British Culture? British Goverment? Religion? Breakdown of the family and values.

Those figures are not clear enough to make any proper judgement on,and of course the Daily Mail is a Tory paper trying to score points.
One thing I assumed was the Britain would be tops for burglary and it only came fourth it says thirteenth for homicide,although I don't see any mention of Manslaughter,most Murders are by novel means,while knife related Murders are around 30% and guns 9%.
The USA has around 70% guns and 14% knives,or sharp instruments as murder weapons.

reply to post by Essan


Violent home invasions happen in England as well. You are fortunate you have not been a victim, but it is just chance you have not experienced crime.

Would it not be prudent to take the precaution of locking your doors at night?

Originally posted by pavil
Wow, I would have thought for sure the US had the UK beat by a mile in regards to violent crimes. I would have to see what the poll considers a violent crime. Must be all those drunk football fans. Just kidding, the UK's fans aren't any worse than other countries.

Nah I live in britian, I would say it mostly comes from knife crime, and RANDOM groups beating up random people walking by for no reason at all, also gang wars, where they beat up and stab each other.

And probably most of all thugs who rob you at knife point or group upper hand.

It's not just drunken crime, there is a lot of this other crime, I've seen some it myself.



[edit on 4-7-2009 by _Phoenix_]

Originally posted by Laurauk
reply to post by merkaba93

 

Funny how they dont Compare gun deaths between the US and the UK.

Think you would see that in the US there are more gun related deaths than there is in the UK. Still there should be no guns allowed what soever in the UK.

Of course there are more gun deaths in the US. Hard to have a gun death when you're not allowed to have guns. If overall violence statistics were to be compared, it might show a more equitable picture. Violent people will find a way to be violent, whether with a gun, or a knife, or what have you.

Personally, I think that if folks in the UK don't want guns, they shouldn't have them. It's their country to run, not mine, and folks have a right to pick their own method of poisoning.

I also think it should be an individual choice, but it's my understanding that most things European are no longer left up to individual choice. Again, that's their right to run their own countries as they see fit. If that's the way they want it, that's the way they get it.

But I do have to add, oks maybe certain parts of the UK, places are violent, but not every single city, town, village are violent. The report is misleading to say the least.

Certain parts of EVERYWHERE are violent places. It might surprise some here to find out that vast, large swaths of the US are actually PEACEFUL places.

We know why that is, and no one else has to worry about it.

Of course we have our violent places too, just like everywhere else. Those violent places have banned firearms for the most part (think Chicago, Washington DC, New York, etc.), and disarmed the victims so that they're easy pickings for the violent element that don't care about the law.

Edit: pesky spelling errors.

[edit on 2009/7/4 by nenothtu]

Originally posted by Next_Heap_With
Unless every-single crime was/is being committed with guns i won't bite your pro-gun bait...

you have to consider a lot of other factors like drugs, xenophobia, etc...

blaming it all on gun control is kind of ludicrous..

p.s - just because a bad gun control system doesn't work that does NOT mean GUN CONTROL will never work... we just need a better system..

Are you saying that British householders with guns would NOT defend themselves From miscreants from whatever source, be it drugs or whatever?
Or are you saying that a gun is ineffective against a drug-crazed or religion crazed Knife wielder?

If the former, then you're right, Brits don't need guns. It would just get them hurt with their own weapon.

If the latter, I'd beg to differ, as a firearm has significantly more range than a knife, to hold them at bay with.

I've met very few criminals that actually WANTED to be shot. Most just slink away.

Originally posted by Laurauk
But who do you blamefor this? British Culture? British Goverment? Religion? Breakdown of the family and values.

I was actually alluding, being that this centeres around Saturday (IE Saturns Day, the planet Saturn was worshipped in the ancient world, this is where our concept of Satan IE Lucifer the Light Bringer comes from) to the idea that it derives from a mystical ritual that is used by the powers that be to control reality and the minds goals dreams and aspirations of our people.

This is why people specifically Christians reffer to alcohol/spirits (spirits as a term for alcohol is derived from the altered perception IE insight into the immaterial world ghosts/spirits etc...) as the Devil. So all those things you mentioned are to blame and more as everything is interconnected.

What this means in terms of the OP is that most of the violence is indeed related to alcohol, in turn this is social engineering and ritual on a large scale.

I believe this is the case because we can see that alcohol in itself is not inherantly evil, other countries do not have the drink problem the Uk has and there is no benefit for a society to binge drink like we do other than to vent frustration and energy. We are no longer repressed enough as a people to account for the problem as anger displacement.

So why do we have this ritualistic behaviour on a large scale that causes way more negatives than posatives and it is accepted and encouraged in society? It would seem to me a manipulation of nature.

Originally posted by nenothtu

Originally posted by Next_Heap_With
Unless every-single crime was/is being committed with guns i won't bite your pro-gun bait...

you have to consider a lot of other factors like drugs, xenophobia, etc...

blaming it all on gun control is kind of ludicrous..

p.s - just because a bad gun control system doesn't work that does NOT mean GUN CONTROL will never work... we just need a better system..

Are you saying that British householders with guns would NOT defend themselves From miscreants from whatever source, be it drugs or whatever?
Or are you saying that a gun is ineffective against a drug-crazed or religion crazed Knife wielder?

If the former, then you're right, Brits don't need guns. It would just get them hurt with their own weapon.

If the latter, I'd beg to differ, as a firearm has significantly more range than a knife, to hold them at bay with.

I've met very few criminals that actually WANTED to be shot. Most just slink away.

Next clearly didnt even imply anything like what you are suggesting.

Take a chill out day Neno, a nice massage or herbal tea bath or something. We all know guns can kill criminals and most anything you point them at. We are talking about not having a load of guns everywhere, not how many criminals scum or hard up dudes that made the mistake of approaching your patch.

Originally posted by merkaba93
reply to post by Essan

 

Violent home invasions happen in England as well. You are fortunate you have not been a victim, but it is just chance you have not experienced crime.

Would it not be prudent to take the precaution of locking your doors at night?

Why? I'm more likely to be run over by a bus whilst crossing the road en route to work on Monday.

For most of us, outside of the big cities, such crime is simply not an issue. I could leave my front door unlocked all day without any worry. Though it does help that I know my neighbours.

Anyway, should someone break i whilst I'm at home I have an ice axe in readiness