Guns weren't suddenly banned in 1996, we've had strict gun control long before that, and it hasn't been permissible to carry one for a long time. The 1996 legislation concerned handguns, and there hasn't been a shooting of the sort seen at Dunblane (which prompted the legislation) since then.

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“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist” - Helder Camara
“It is not the will of God for some to have everything and others to have nothing. This cannot be God” - Oscar Romero
"It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder" - Einstein
"We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him" - CS Lewis

Yet there have been other killings of school children and gang related murders. So ultimately the post-Dunblane scare legislation achieved nothing beneficial.

How many school shootings of the Dunblane magnitude were there before 1996? And what was the likelihood or something like Dunblane ever happening again to warrant such drastic measures?

Quite a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, no question about it.

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Taking away rights to stop criminals is like taking away chocolate chip cookies to stop cancer; it sounds good on paper, but doesn't work in the real world.

[QUOTE=Brady;363469]When I was a kid I did lots of things like playing with fire and torturing animals even though adults told me not to.[/QUOTE]
The admission of a sociopathic serial killer.

[QUOTE=Penfold;363126]No Personal attacks, insults, name calling, offensive generalizations, or labeling.[/QUOTE]
He should practice what he preaches.

Yeah I understand why you might want to spin it this way, but that was not the intended purpose. Here is another prospective.

Award winning anti-gun English Journalist Ian Bell came to fame after Scotland's Dunblane school shooting and all of his hard hitting articles and he was sometimes credited with the gun bans in England. The full article is linked in which, 11 years after, he admits the obvious.

Dunblane made us all think about gun control … so what went wrong? By Ian Bell August 24, 2007 Weapons sell for just £50 as suspects and victims grow ever younger

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"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel." -- Patrick Henry

How many Britons were killed with a gun last year? How many Americans?

__________________
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist” - Helder Camara
“It is not the will of God for some to have everything and others to have nothing. This cannot be God” - Oscar Romero
"It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder" - Einstein
"We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him" - CS Lewis

Irrelevant unless you can prove Britain had comparatively higher murder rates before 1997.

__________________
Taking away rights to stop criminals is like taking away chocolate chip cookies to stop cancer; it sounds good on paper, but doesn't work in the real world.

[QUOTE=Brady;363469]When I was a kid I did lots of things like playing with fire and torturing animals even though adults told me not to.[/QUOTE]
The admission of a sociopathic serial killer.

[QUOTE=Penfold;363126]No Personal attacks, insults, name calling, offensive generalizations, or labeling.[/QUOTE]
He should practice what he preaches.

Hardly, seeing as we had pretty tight control on guns before then. The rise in illegal guns didn't happen because of the measures put in place in 1997.

__________________
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist” - Helder Camara
“It is not the will of God for some to have everything and others to have nothing. This cannot be God” - Oscar Romero
"It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder" - Einstein
"We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him" - CS Lewis

When you get done goober, stoning and beheadings will look reasonable to ya

Oh, and don't forget to turn off the lights when you get done.

UK was glad to get arms in WWII. There hasn't been a war of the sort seen in the world since WWII.

There, that makes more sense!

So increasing control had little effect on gun crimes. Which is apparent seeing Britain already had an upward trend in such crimes several years before the 1997 Act and that trend has continued since. Britain just makes an excellent case of showing that criminals do not give a XXXX about handgun bans. See, problem is you are only looking at a very narrow statistic of gun related crime in England: those who are actually killed. Those who are mugged, robbed, and assaulted are much higher than the US. I was born in England, I still hold citizenship there, and there is no way I'd ever live there with the expectation that I am to be a neutered pacifist who must rely on a publicly funded group of similarly helpless individuals for protection.




Nice of you to state the blatantly obvious. Criminals don't care about measures put in place in 1997. As they didn't care in 1903, 1920, 1937, and 1968. Let's see, Prohibition Era US (another knee jerk piece of legislation) created a rise in illegal booze. The Firearms Act of 1997 effectively made all cartridge loading handguns illegal. By definition that was an instantaneous rise in illegal guns in Britain by several hundred thousand. Now the estimates are between 3M and 4M.

Yep, lying and twisting facts does not seem to be opposed of Jo's morals code as (he) claims to be highly religious and attempted to twist the scripture also. I wouldn't believe what he said if his tongue was notorized. Everything said originated in Rebecca Peters little red book of lies, he just tried to make it sound more palatable despite all facts to the contrary. (he) runs from the truth like a coon dog hot on the trail of a 'coon'.

Oh, and welcome aboard!

Glad to see somebody else with the same common sense to escape from the UK and come to America.

__________________
Taking away rights to stop criminals is like taking away chocolate chip cookies to stop cancer; it sounds good on paper, but doesn't work in the real world.

[QUOTE=Brady;363469]When I was a kid I did lots of things like playing with fire and torturing animals even though adults told me not to.[/QUOTE]
The admission of a sociopathic serial killer.

[QUOTE=Penfold;363126]No Personal attacks, insults, name calling, offensive generalizations, or labeling.[/QUOTE]
He should practice what he preaches.

First of all, I want to thank all of the UK for being our close friends and faithful allies! That is not at issue here.

I also want to say that you are more than free and welcome to create any society that suits you. I have less than ZERO to say about it. Less than ZERO!
However it is plain to see that it did not stop nor control it in any way. Drug dealers money is the problem. If they can get authorities to look the other way to allow the import of drugs, importing one more illegal product is no harder for them to accomplish. I blame them.

Australia is also an Island nation and has the same problem after their bans.

Here is an English study about this problem, done 10 years after your ban. Shotguns for £50: study reveals weapons culture Australian study done by the Australian FBI, also 10 years after their bans.
Weapons, drugs and crime Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC)

And a article about is in the report here.
Link Australian Institute of Criminology study -- Tough new weapons laws 'miss hard core of criminal underworld' My only point about gun control is that Gun control is NOT Crime control! They are criminals. That is just what they do.

Gun control only effects the law abiding, and the benefits of such laws are minimal at best, if they produce anything positive at all!

In 2000 to 2002 The CDC conducted a systematic review of scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of firearms laws in preventing violence, including violent crimes, suicide, and unintentional injury. The systematic review development team identified 51 studies that evaluated the effects of selected firearms laws on violence and met the inclusion criteria for this review. No study was excluded because of limitations in design or execution.

What did they find? The CDC did suggest more studies. Then a few years later the CDC got a second bite at the apple with The National Academy of Sciences studies. They, along with the Anti-gun Joyce foundation funded, the study. Data on Firearms and Violence Too Weak to Settle Policy Debates; Comprehensive Research Effort Needed

Here is an article about the study Link who issued a 328-page report based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, a survey of 80 different gun-control laws and some of its own independent study.

__________________
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel." -- Patrick Henry

What estimates are these? Recently the police have been saying they're seeing the same few guns used in crimes in different parts of the country because there are so few available. Shotguns are a red herring because a lot of those are legally held by farmers and others, so ready availability on the black market is unsurprising.

3 to 4 million is patently absurd, that's around 1 illegal gun for every 20 people living in the UK. It's complete BS. In my entire life the only places I've seen guns are in the form of air rifles, and at army bases. If there were 3 million knocking around you think they might be seen a little more often?

__________________
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist” - Helder Camara
“It is not the will of God for some to have everything and others to have nothing. This cannot be God” - Oscar Romero
"It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder" - Einstein
"We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him" - CS Lewis

Well Jo, realistically speaking, there will be enough guns in society to cover demand. What ever that number is, it is likely that this number is the correct one. Otherwise people will make what they need, if they have to.

22 January 2010
Merchant of death' Michael Sammon jailed for 30 years
15 January 2010
BNP member given 11 years for making bombs and guns I'm not sure Sinjin would agree with you. (Fixed for Sinjin!)

The Anti-gunners have been saying that if all legal weapons were registered, and we had storage laws, then all of this illegal gun stuff would disappear!

Well, that is what the Anti-gunners have been claiming anyway.

__________________
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel." -- Patrick Henry

You're a liar. I've never said anything close to what you're implying and
I have never discussed any need of registering shotguns.

Quote me saying what you suggest I believe, I dare you.

You should stick to reposting the same stats over and over.

If you've got something to say to me, please address me and not a third party.

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I've decided to utilize the Ignore Feature for the first time.