(Is this is going to turn into a Gun Thread?
Please don't let it turn into a Gun Thread. But while I'm addressing that...)
When there's so few legal weapons, there's little
1 chance of an otherwise legal weapon being used accidentally/illegally or being lost to criminals so that they (without their own 'legal' weapons) get to use them for crime, and the police don't feel the need to carry guns (outside of specialist units), so petty criminals don't tend feel the need to carry guns (when a knife will 'do'), and so Joe Public doesn't tend to feel the need to get a gun (legally or illegally), thus keeping the whole thing very calm... relatively.
In a country with many, many,
many legal weapons, babies can shoot their parents, children can shoot each other, genuinely well-intentioned people can shoot people they
think are a threat to them (which may be logical, given the chance of said 'threat' having a gun themselves), criminals can use guns they got whilst not criminal, or stole from others, or bought from others who really aren't concerned about who buys their guns, or get from people who
do care because it means more profit to themselves. And police know that people have guns so are more likely to shoot first in all kinds of situations.
Or so it works in some countries. One is held to believe that Switzerland is far from that, etc, but you can prove
anything with statistics, if you try hard enough. (Except for the truth.)
But it's why I appreciate the UK approach to Gun Control, but know that you couldn't just shut down other gun-heavy countries the same way, overnight. (Not without some pretty ingenious manner of ensuring
all the heretofor legal guns get decommissioned rather than 'accidentally' find themselves in a suddenly inflated black market.) What you want over there is a Militia Control, because it's only in a well-regulated militia that you're supposed to be bearing arms, anyway... (Yeah, I know the Supreme Court said otherwise, but it's been wrong before.)
You know,
someone was shot in the UK, the other day. Roughly equivalent to 20% the population of the whole United States and we can say some
one was shot
the other day. There were probably others (gang-on-gang), that never made the news. I'd say that over any given period we learn about more than five times the number of deaths-by-shooting
from the United States than we hear about such things in the UK. And that's from abroad. In a country where shooting deaths are an accepted way of life. Vs. 'local' (certainly on a continental scale) in a country where shootings are exceptions, not the rule... (A few weeks ago some probably gang-related shooting injuries were reported. The partner and child of someone who might or might not have been/still be in a gang were shot, but not killed, on their doorstep. That made news.)
And I see it said (consider this a fakeedit) that the Netherlands frequency for gun crime news is "once every few weeks", even with their disadvantage, as stated...
There
will be AK47s in the UK, you know. But even the criminals involved in their movement will consider them serious business, not just an 'upgrade'. Our terrorists use home-made bombs, vehicles, blades. *touch wood*, they're going to find it harder to 'just get some AK47s' without some red flag going up. Either within the security/customs services or within the current home-grown criminal networks, who probably aren't that sympathetic towards any ethnic group that hasn't already been assimilated as thoroughly as the Huguenots. Never say never, and I'd rather not eat my words, but I have faith (in a secular way) in that kind of organised crime that they'd never stand for any of that funny business.
Two people
died in a steelworks explosion. And we hardly have any steelworks anymore! (Less than we have legal guns, certainly. Probably also less steelworkers than legal gun-owners, certainly if you include farmers and shotguns, but I'd really have to double-check that.) All the mentioned deaths are tragedies, of course.
And the main tragedy is that this is a thread about Paris. I shouldn't be listening to your agenda nor pointing out my own impressions regarding guns. Terrorists-are-gonna-terror. Without access to guns they'd be doing more with homemade bombs, no doubt. Let's talk about the commonalities between these situations, not start going all Constitutional...
(And another 6 new replies.)
1 Not 'no', because it happens... rarely.