Summations Only

Fairly recently, in Chester in England, it was legal to shoot a Welshman with a bow and arrow within the City walls after midnight. It was an old piece of legislation dating back to when the English and Welsh used to fight each other.We decided to get with the times and repeal it though.

Hi Crash,You said above: Wouldn't it be equally valid to say, that in a hypothetical world, where America had decided to ban the ownership of guns, that whenever someone (who didn't own a gun) was shot by a criminal, you would have to accept that bad things can happen to people ?And if that is the case, doesn't it then simply become a case of society weighing up the overall statisitcs, and determining whether gun control results in a likelihood of greater or fewer deaths by guns for society overall ?

If you want to legitimately include that in the tally for a country that has made the private ownership of guns largely illegal, then you don't include deaths where gun ownership "might" have saved your life - you include deaths where gun ownership "would" have saved your life.This does introduce a hypothetical element into the statisitics, but as we know from the recent tragedy (and every other such tragedy, and every other instance where innocent people are killed by a criminal shooting), the fact that the victim (or their parents) could, or even did, own a gun which "might" have saved their life, does not mean that it would have. In my opinion, the inclusion of those deaths which would have been prevented by gun ownership would not begin to make an appreciable dent in the gulf between the statistics for gun deaths in the US and gun deaths in a country which bans general gun ownership.

Faith, it's been pointed out to you twice now that the statistics in question include the crime of illegal possession of a firearm. If a ban on firearm ownership is introduced, then any statistics which include the new crime of illegally possessing a firearm will peak for a while after the new laws are introduced and enforced by the police. Surely you can see that ?

Crash, the recent debate with Faith has been about whether the firearm ban in the UK was followed by an increase or decrease in violent crimes/murders using guns. Faith was claiming an increase, by pointing at data which include non-violent crimes. The data have to be relevant - they cannot include irrelevant elements.

Wow Tangle !! We have some astonishing burglars over here in Blighty !The FBI tells us that 60% of burglaries in the US are occupied burglaries and Crash tells us that our rate of occupied burglaries is 4 times that rate ! Our burglars are managing to burgle occupied houses 240% of the time !We're superhuman over here !

Seriously ?

Just to clarify, though, Crash, before I have a go at digging up the statistics, you are going to stick with your statement that the rate of occupied burglaries in the UK is 4 times that of the rate of occupied burglaries in the US ?I just want to be clear on your claim, before I research the point.

I think that you're attributing far too much journalistic integrity to news channels. If in the initial chaos and activity of a huge breaking story they report a detail which subsequently proves untrue, there's not much incentive to subsequently correct it (unless they've slandered someone). They're there to fill airtime and sell advertising space, and there's no mileage for them in broadcasting the fact that they make mistakes sometimes.

Yep."Guns don't kill people - people kill people.But guns make it a whoooole lot easier."

I must have misunderstood what Faith and Crash and other pro-gun advocates were saying - I thought you'd been saying that home owners having guns actually prevented burglaries because the criminals were too terrified to burgle an armed household. Now you're telling me that burgling an armed household is so common that it accounts for fully 84% of illegal guns owned in the US.Which way do you want it ?

I think it's so that, after the other cheek has been turned, they can still blow the muther away.

Hi GDR - there's some data here from 1999, relating to children's accidental deaths from guns Gun Safety and Children | CS Mott Children's Hospital | Michigan Medicine

Spot on, GDR. Thomas Jefferson seemed quite visionary about this point himself - have a look at his letter here, to James Madison: Page not found | Teaching American History(You can speed read through the slightly obsessive reasoning on generational ages and national debts. The three paragraphs starting "On similar ground" are the heart of what he was saying).

Oh the point which GDR and I are making in these two posts is an extremely discrete and specific one - that a two hundred year old constitution should not be a barrier in the way of a current and relevant debate by a people as to how they should govern themselves today.That current and relevant debate can certainly include passionate opposition to different views, but that passion and that intellectual struggle should not be influenced (at least not unduly influenced) by the thoughts of a generation long since dead.I think that Thomas Jefferson exhibited some great perception.