Neither of us has the crime stats, so it's all speculation.

I think I qualify as a neutral observer of this particular issue. I like target shooting and used to do quite a bit of hunting, not to mention being in the Army. But I don't have any guns at the moment: no need, and no desire to risk self-inflicted harm to my daughters. But my deer rifle -- a British .303 jungle rifle (short barrel, flash guard) -- is still at my parents' house, along with some .22's and some shotguns; I'll have to figure out what to do with them one of these years.

Anyway, as an observer, I can see why, if there's even a small risk, we might prefer guns that are built to be semi-auto and aren't easily modified to fire bursts, versus ones that are.

I still remember the astonishing video from that LA bank robbery some years back, where the two guys in bulletproof vests and armed to the teeth turned part of the city into a war zone.

...for those that think guns are the problem. Here's a clue, people are the problem. Stalin wanted no guns, as did Hitler, hmmm, makes you wonder huh?

November 2002
Gun Control’s Twisted Outcome
Restricting firearms has helped make England more crime-ridden than the U.S.
By Joyce Lee Malcolm


On a June evening two years ago, Dan Rather made many stiff British upper lips quiver by reporting that England had a crime problem and that, apart from murder, "theirs is worse than ours." The response was swift and sharp. "Have a Nice Daydream," The Mirror, a London daily, shot back, reporting: "Britain reacted with fury and disbelief last night to claims by American newsmen that crime and violence are worse here than in the US." But sandwiched between the article’s battery of official denials -- "totally misleading," "a huge over-simplification," "astounding and outrageous" -- and a compilation of lurid crimes from "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic where every other car is carrying a gun," The Mirror conceded that the CBS anchorman was correct. Except for murder and rape, it admitted, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes."
In the two years since Dan Rather was so roundly rebuked, violence in England has gotten markedly worse. Over the course of a few days in the summer of 2001, gun-toting men burst into an English court and freed two defendants; a shooting outside a London nightclub left five women and three men wounded; and two men were machine-gunned to death in a residential neighborhood of north London. And on New Year’s Day this year a 19-year-old girl walking on a main street in east London was shot in the head by a thief who wanted her mobile phone. London police are now looking to New York City police for advice.
None of this was supposed to happen in the country whose stringent gun laws and 1997 ban on handguns have been hailed as the "gold standard" of gun control. For the better part of a century, British governments have pursued a strategy for domestic safety that a 1992 Economist article characterized as requiring "a restraint on personal liberty that seems, in most civilised countries, essential to the happiness of others," a policy the magazine found at odds with "America’s Vigilante Values." The safety of English people has been staked on the thesis that fewer private guns means less crime. The government believes that any weapons in the hands of men and women, however law-abiding, pose a danger, and that disarming them lessens the chance that criminals will get or use weapons.
The results -- the toughest firearm restrictions of any democracy -- are credited by the world’s gun control advocates with producing a low rate of violent crime. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell reflected this conventional wisdom when, in a 1988 speech to the American Bar Association, he attributed England’s low rates of violent crime to the fact that "private ownership of guns is strictly controlled."
In reality, the English approach has not re-duced violent crime. Instead it has left law-abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals who are confident that their victims have neither the means nor the legal right to resist them. Imitating this model would be a public safety disaster for the United States.
The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted. A government study for the years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world. A hundred years and many gun laws later, the BBC reported that England’s firearms restrictions "seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld." Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. Worse, they are increasingly ready to use them.
Nearly five centuries of growing civility ended in 1954. Violent crime has been climbing ever since. Last December, London’s Evening Standard reported that armed crime, with banned handguns the weapon of choice, was "rocketing." In the two years following the 1997 handgun ban, the use of handguns in crime rose by 40 percent, and the upward trend has continued. From April to November 2001, the number of people robbed at gunpoint in London rose 53 percent.
Gun crime is just part of an increasingly lawless environment. From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England’s inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England’s rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America’s, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. In a United Nations study of crime in 18 developed nations published in July, England and Wales led the Western world’s crime league, with nearly 55 crimes per 100 people.
This sea change in English crime followed a sea change in government policies. Gun regulations have been part of a more general disarmament based on the proposition that people don’t need to protect themselves because society will protect them. It also will protect their neighbors: Police advise those who witness a crime to "walk on by" and let the professionals handle it.
This is a reversal of centuries of common law that not only permitted but expected individuals to defend themselves, their families, and their neighbors when other help was not available. It was a legal tradition passed on to Americans. Personal security was ranked first among an individual’s rights by William Blackstone, the great 18th-century exponent of the common law. It was a right, he argued, that no government could take away, since no government could protect the individual in his moment of need. A century later Blackstone’s illustrious successor, A.V. Dicey, cautioned, "discourage self-help and loyal subjects become the slaves of ruffians."
But modern English governments have put public order ahead of the individual’s right to personal safety. First the government clamped down on private possession of guns; then it forbade people to carry any article that might be used for self-defense; finally, the vigor of that self-defense was to be judged by what, in hindsight, seemed "reasonable in the circumstances."
The 1920 Firearms Act was the first serious British restriction on guns. Although crime was low in England in 1920, the government feared massive labor disruption and a Bolshevik revolution. In the circumstances, permitting the people to remain armed must have seemed an unnecessary risk. And so the new policy of disarming the public began. The Firearms Act required a would-be gun owner to obtain a certificate from the local chief of police, who was charged with determining whether the applicant had a good reason for possessing a weapon and was fit to do so. All very sensible. Parliament was assured that the intention was to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals and other dangerous persons. Yet from the start the law’s enforcement was far more restrictive, and Home Office instructions to police -- classified until 1989 -- periodically narrowed the criteria.
At first police were instructed that it would be a good reason to have a revolver if a person "lives in a solitary house, where protection against thieves and burglars is essential, or has been exposed to definite threats to life on account of his performance of some public duty." By 1937 police were to discourage applications to possess firearms for house or personal protection. In 1964 they were told "it should hardly ever be necessary to anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person" and that "this principle should hold good even in the case of banks and firms who desire to protect valuables or large quantities of money."
In 1969 police were informed "it should never be necessary for anyone to possess a firearm for the protection of his house or person." These changes were made without public knowledge or debate. Their enforcement has consumed hundreds of thousands of police hours. Finally, in 1997 handguns were banned. Proposed exemptions for handicapped shooters and the British Olympic team were rejected.
Even more sweeping was the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act, which made it illegal to carry in a public place any article "made, adapted, or intended" for an offensive purpose "without lawful authority or excuse." Carrying something to protect yourself was branded antisocial. Any item carried for possible defense automatically became an offensive weapon. Police were given extensive power to stop and search everyone. Individuals found with offensive items were guilty until proven innocent.
During the debate over the Prevention of Crime Act in the House of Commons, a member from Northern Ireland told his colleagues of a woman employed by Parliament who had to cross a lonely heath on her route home and had armed herself with a knitting needle. A month earlier, she had driven off a youth who tried to snatch her handbag by jabbing him "on a tender part of his body." Was it to be an offense to carry a knitting needle? The attorney general assured the M.P. that the woman might be found to have a reasonable excuse but added that the public should be discouraged "from going about with offensive weapons in their pockets; it is the duty of society to protect them."
Another M.P. pointed out that while "society ought to undertake the defense of its members, nevertheless one has to remember that there are many places where society cannot get, or cannot get there in time. On those occasions a man has to defend himself and those whom he is escorting. It is not very much consolation that society will come forward a great deal later, pick up the bits, and punish the violent offender."
In the House of Lords, Lord Saltoun argued: "The object of a weapon was to assist weakness to cope with strength and it is this ability that the bill was framed to destroy. I do not think any government has the right, though they may very well have the power, to deprive people for whom they are responsible of the right to defend themselves." But he added: "Unless there is not only a right but also a fundamental willingness amongst the people to defend themselves, no police force, however large, can do it."
That willingness was further undermined by a broad revision of criminal law in 1967 that altered the legal standard for self-defense. Now everything turns on what seems to be "reasonable" force against an assailant, considered after the fact. As Glanville Williams notes in his Textbook of Criminal Law, that requirement is "now stated in such mitigated terms as to cast doubt on whether it [self-defense] still forms part of the law."
The original common law standard was similar to what still prevails in the U.S. Americans are free to carry articles for their protection, and in 33 states law-abiding citizens may carry concealed guns. Americans may defend themselves with deadly force if they believe that an attacker is about to kill or seriously injure them, or to prevent a violent crime. Our courts are mindful that, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, "detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an upraised knife."
But English courts have interpreted the 1953 act strictly and zealously. Among articles found illegally carried with offensive intentions are a sandbag, a pickaxe handle, a stone, and a drum of pepper. "Any article is capable of being an offensive weapon," concede the authors of Smith and Hogan Criminal Law, a popular legal text, although they add that if the article is unlikely to cause an injury the onus of proving intent to do so would be "very heavy."
The 1967 act has not been helpful to those obliged to defend themselves either. Granville Williams points out: "For some reason that is not clear, the courts occasionally seem to regard the scandal of the killing of a robber as of greater moment than the safety of the robber’s victim in respect of his person and property."
A sampling of cases illustrates the impact of these measures:
• In 1973 a young man running on a road at night was stopped by the police and found to be carrying a length of steel, a cycle chain, and a metal clock weight. He explained that a gang of youths had been after him. At his hearing it was found he had been threatened and had previously notified the police. The justices agreed he had a valid reason to carry the weapons. Indeed, 16 days later he was attacked and beaten so badly he was hospitalized. But the prosecutor appealed the ruling, and the appellate judges insisted that carrying a weapon must be related to an imminent and immediate threat. They sent the case back to the lower court with directions to convict.
• In 1987 two men assaulted Eric Butler, a 56-year-old British Petroleum executive, in a London subway car, trying to strangle him and smashing his head against the door. No one came to his aid. He later testified, "My air supply was being cut off, my eyes became blurred, and I feared for my life." In desperation he unsheathed an ornamental sword blade in his walking stick and slashed at one of his attackers, stabbing the man in the stomach. The assailants were charged with wounding. Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.
• In 1994 an English homeowner, armed with a toy gun, managed to detain two burglars who had broken into his house while he called the police. When the officers arrived, they arrested the homeowner for using an imitation gun to threaten or intimidate. In a similar incident the following year, when an elderly woman fired a toy cap pistol to drive off a group of youths who were threatening her, she was arrested for putting someone in fear. Now the police are pressing Parliament to make imitation guns illegal.
• In 1999 Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone in a shabby farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass as two burglars, both with long criminal records, burst into his home. He had been robbed six times before, and his village, like 70 percent of rural English communities, had no police presence. He sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders. Martin received life in prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for wounding the second, and a year for having an unregistered shotgun. The wounded burglar, having served 18 months of a three-year sentence, is now free and has been granted £5,000 of legal assistance to sue Martin.
The failure of English policy to produce a safer society is clear, but what of British jibes about "America’s vigilante values" and our much higher murder rate?
Historically, America has had a high homicide rate and England a low one. In a comparison of New York and London over a 200-year period, during most of which both populations had unrestricted access to firearms, historian Eric Monkkonen found New York’s homicide rate consistently about five times London’s. Monkkonen pointed out that even without guns, "the United States would still be out of step, just as it has been for two hundred years."
Legal historian Richard Maxwell Brown has argued that Americans have more homicides because English law insists an individual should retreat when attacked, whereas Americans believe they have the right to stand their ground and kill in self-defense. Americans do have more latitude to protect themselves, in keeping with traditional common law standards, but that would have had less significance before England’s more restrictive policy was established in 1967.
The murder rates of the U.S. and U.K. are also affected by differences in the way each counts homicides. The FBI asks police to list every homicide as murder, even if the case isn’t subsequently prosecuted or proceeds on a lesser charge, making the U.S. numbers as high as possible. By contrast, the English police "massage down" the homicide statistics, tracking each case through the courts and removing it if it is reduced to a lesser charge or determined to be an accident or self-defense, making the English numbers as low as possible.
The London-based Office of Health Economics, after a careful international study, found that while "one reason often given for the high numbers of murders and manslaughters in the United States is the easy availability of firearms...the strong correlation with racial and socio-economic variables suggests that the underlying determinants of the homicide rate are related to particular cultural factors."
Cultural differences and more-permissive legal standards notwithstanding, the English rate of violent crime has been soaring since 1991. Over the same period, America’s has been falling dramatically. In 1999 The Boston Globe reported that the American murder rate, which had fluctuated by about 20 percent between 1974 and 1991, was "in startling free-fall." We have had nine consecutive years of sharply declining violent crime. As a result the English and American murder rates are converging. In 1981 the American rate was 8.7 times the English rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times the English rate, and the latest study puts it at 3.5 times.
Preliminary figures for the U.S. this year show an increase, although of less than 1 percent, in the overall number of violent crimes, with homicide increases in certain cities, which criminologists attribute to gang violence, the poor economy, and the release from prison of many offenders. Yet Americans still enjoy a substantially lower rate of violent crime than England, without the "restraint on personal liberty" English governments have seen as necessary. Rather than permit individuals more scope to defend themselves, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government plans to combat crime by extending those "restraints on personal liberty": removing the prohibition against double jeopardy so people can be tried twice for the same crime, making hearsay evidence admissible in court, and letting jurors know of a suspect’s previous crimes.
This is a cautionary tale. America’s founders, like their English forebears, regarded personal security as first of the three primary rights of mankind. That was the main reason for including a right for individuals to be armed in the U.S. Constitution. Not everyone needs to avail himself or herself of that right. It is a dangerous right. But leaving personal protection to the police is also dangerous.
The English government has effectively abolished the right of Englishmen, confirmed in their 1689 Bill of Rights, to "have arms for their defence," insisting upon a monopoly of force it can succeed in imposing only on law-abiding citizens. It has come perilously close to depriving its people of the ability to protect themselves at all, and the result is a more, not less, dangerous society. Despite the English tendency to decry America’s "vigilante values," English policy makers would do well to consider a return to these crucial common law values, which stood them so well in the past.

Joyce Lee Malcolm, a professor of history at Bentley College and a senior adviser to the MIT Security Studies Program, is the author of Guns and Violence: The English Experience, published in May by Harvard University Press.

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"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."
Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV)

I realize you weren't asking me. But I'm Truebrit's "favorite gun nut", so I figured I'd pipe up. Unless you're something of an enthusiast, and you are still somewhat concerned with its self defense potential, I'd choose a revolver over a semi-auto pistol. If you don't like the 9mm round, you probably won't care for the .38. So go with a .357 maybe (similar size, but more power). There are a LOT of exotic calibers floating around now... I can't keep up. The soundest, simplest, most reliable handgun I can think of is the Glock. Functions as well as a revolver, but has the action of a semi-auto (though it fires with a heavier double-action trigger pull). Try the Model 22 in .40 caliber. I have the .40 and my mom has the Model 19 9mm.

By the last retarded legal definition, an "assault weapon" is something like an AK47 semi-auto (the only one that's EVER been freely available in the U.S.), with a bayonet lug and/or the threaded barrel or a folding stock, etc. Sanitize the weapon with a solid (one piece) stock set, remove the bayonet lug, cover up the threads and whaddya know.. it's not an "assault weapon" anymore. It accepts the same magazines. It's no more and no less accurate than before. The only thing that's changed is the appearance.

You could buy 30 round mags, and 75 or 100 round drums before. You can buy them now. All that stuff is a dime a dozen.

As an FYI for everyone. We all know that Clinton and Johnny Chung (sic?) were pals. Find out who Johnny worked for by Googling him. Yes, that's the same company that was caught smuggling fully automatic AK47's into the U.S., destined for street gangs during Clinton's tenure as Prez.

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"Tweeter was a Boyscout before she went to Vietnam and found out the hard way... nobody gives a d@mn."

cool! i've been waiting to buy some uzzis with 100 round mags, some sniper rifles with silencers, scopes, flash suppressors and RPG capability. can i order a truck load?

But really, until people learn to respect human life and themselves, i don'think law enforcement, the military or civilians should have guns at all. We need to take time to discover human dignity, depth and value. Guns make it too easy to kill people. Let people use their bare hands so they have time to feel the pain and reality of the crime and reconsider their actions. It's too much of a power game and a thrill for gun toters, and the American psyche is just too filled with hate and vengence in both the civilian and military mind. We need more community bonding and discussion, and less gun buying. I think a nice aluminum bat by the front door would do fine for home defence.

The three shot fire mode is a burst setting, not automatic setting. An automatic setting fill fire as long as the you pull the trigger or you run out of ammo. M16 used to have an automatic setting but this was removed a few years ago, apparently to save ammo. It is all to easy to panic in a combat situation and simply empty the whole clip.

I used a full auto only weapon when I was in the military (mandatory conscription training, usually 7.5 months thou I did 9). We had to learn how to squeeze the trigger the exactly right way to let of a single shot or a burst if we wanted to fire fewer rounds. Double shots where common in the beginning but I learned how to control my weapon rather rapidly at the firing range. Info about the gun:http://home.earthlink.net/~jwet/swede.htm

What is reasonable for a civilian to possess? I don't know for you Americans, I have no right to dictate laws for you but I can give an opinion. If you don't want to allow ordinary citizens to have military style weapons, then I suggest you outlaw any weapon that have burst or full auto mode. Further, any weapon that can be given these firing modes by using "a simple kit" should also be banned. In comparison, hunting rifles where I live are strictly single action weapons. The user need to manually operate the mechanism to move a round from the magazine into it's firing position. I belive that this is called "bolt action weapons". There is no way these weapons can be converted to auto fire capable weapons with a "simple kit" a conversion would require a way to extensive process. Furthermore, since no known animals wear armor, armor piercing ammunition has no resonable use for a civilian.

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Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn't become a monster.
Friedrich Nietzsche

I can't answer the why (do people want them) in all cases, DBG. But the why is probably linked to the fascination with their potential, the big bangs they make, the appearance... lots of things, depending on the person. Though it's "make-it-up-as-you-go" psycho-babble, the penis theory may have some validity, but I'd need to see the study, since I don't check out the guys and gals at the range, I wouldn't know about that one. I do find it interesting that certain types seem hung up on that as their main contention though. Not suggesting anything, but it is interesting.

But the why (do people need them) is one where there is no solid answer, IMO. Very few people, if any, need them. I don't need the (misnamed) assault weapons that I have. I don't need a car that goes 150mph. I don't need to follow sporting events, where several people each year die. I don't need to jump out of airplanes. I don't need a lot of things. I don't need to do a lot of things. I have certain things, and do certain things, simply because I enjoy the experience. With some of these things, I do have greater potential to hurt someone... or myself. But I have that potential anyway... most people do.

While their politics are surely different from yours, the strict NRA/GOA types are the last types you need to worry about having an "assault weapon" or a machine gun permit. These are law & order types. A good many of the full autos that I saw on display in Richmond, in the early-mid '90's, were "factory" full autos. They were smuggled weapons and had been seized from street criminals or en route up I95. I think you folks would find most gun owners (NRA and GOA types included) support the move to clean those weapons off the street. It's the illegal possession of weapons (legal and illegal versions) that should concern most rational people.

Being overly (and oddly) concerned with a weekend G.I. Joe/Jane, who has an AR15 or AK47, is really a waste of time. I wonder why people need to do that - they never accomplish anything. But I figure it makes them happy and gives them something to do, so...

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"Tweeter was a Boyscout before she went to Vietnam and found out the hard way... nobody gives a d@mn."

In order to possess a full auto or select fire weapon in the United States, you must obtain a Federal stamp or license. Possession of any such weapon is otherwise illegal. Modification of a semi-auto to full auto will earn you some time in a Club Fed. Even modification of the appearance of post-ban weapons is illegal (adding a folding stock, threaded barrel, etc.). So there are plenty of laws that cover these weapons now. I would suggest we try enforcing the existing laws, and then see what that gets us. Adding more words to pieces of paper will do nothing. The people who use these weapons in crimes (what few are actually in "use"), generally acquire them by illegal means (smuggling... look up the Johnny Chung/Norinco story). They're already felons... they can't legally possess a gun (ANY gun) anywhere in the United States.

In L.A. they still have a gang and gun problem. Plenty of strict gun laws, but not enough enforcement, IMO. In Richmond, VA, they used to have a major gun problem. The gun murder rate rivaled D.C. when I was in the area. The gun laws in VA are even more "liberal" now than they were then, yet the murder rate in that city has dropped. What changed was the strict enforcement of the existing gun laws. A person in illegal possession of ANY gun (.25's and 9mmm are the street guns of choice... not big, honking AK47's) gets an automatic 5 years in prison. Even a liberal ACLU lawyer, who cries to the judge about your pitiful childhood, mean mommy and uncaring daddy can't get you out of it. 5 years of hard time - quite often served in another state. Get caught with guns and drugs and you really have a problem! What happened? The wannabe gangstas stopped caring guns while selling their dope. The problem now is with people getting smacked with sticks and clubs, and a rising number of stabbings.

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"Tweeter was a Boyscout before she went to Vietnam and found out the hard way... nobody gives a d@mn."

I already have asked cops. Most would like to see lower caliber handguns (the 22s and other Saturday Night Specials banned, if anything was, because these guns, unlike rifles and shotguns, are used ONLY for killing humans). I've worked with police officers for the past 14 years, the same length of time I've worked with gang members.

In all that time, I've seen thousands of shootings involving small-caliber handguns...and less than you can count on the fingers of one hand involving an "assault" weapon as they are presently defined.

Most of the fully automatic assault weapons plaguing officers on the streets aren't collectors items favored by gun afficionados, but weapons that are already fully automatic that have been imported illegally from other countries.

For the third time. There is NO REAL DIFFERENCE, in terms of firepower, caliber of bullets, or shots per trigger squeeze between what is now defined as "assault weapons" and your average hunting rifle.

I'm sure you can find a handful of instances in which stolen or illegal assault weapons were used against officers. But you can find hundreds of thousands of instances in which small caliber handguns were used against officers or in the commission of crimes.

Anyone who works the streets knows what the real problem guns are, and it's not "assault weapons" (hell, half the cops I know have legal versions of them themselves). It's cheap, easily accessible small caliber handguns.


It's not the street cops who are asking for this superficial, appearance-focused ban on assault weapons. The street cops I know would like to see the cheap, mass-produced, small caliber, easily-concealable, and semi-automatic handguns that are used in the vast majority of this country's violent crimes be banned from production to get them out of the hands of criminals and gang members.
Catz

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http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...ing/crime.html

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