Bad stats:
833 murders in England and Wales in 2005, yes - but not from guns. You compare that number to the US's 6500 murders from guns alone to say that per capita it's only 20% higher.
From 2001-02, death by guns in the whole of the UK, was 23. 02 to 03 was 80. 03-04 was 70. 04-05 was 75. 05-06 was 50. Small numbers with wide variance.
And gun crime statistics are hugely bumped up by... imitation guns. They count in UK stats.
Mark
Fair point. I have just gone back over the numbers and the like-for-like comparison for number of murders per capita gives a ratio of 3.6x rather than the 2x i use. Thanks for pointing out.
There will never be agreement between those who oppose and those who condone gun ownership. No amount of statistics will convince either side of the rightness of the other’s argument. This is because both sides approach the dilemma from different ideological positions, with one side being more in favour of personal responsibility than the other. Those against gun ownership are rather more willing to put their faith in the brotherhood of man than I am.
When i first heard about this Pommy, i hoped this wasn't one of those gun-free zones.
Such a terrible tragedy and i wish someone there was armed and could have stopped the bastard.
Judging from the emerging evidence that the fellow chained the exit doors to trap the students and an eye witness account from a student that this fellow didn't say a word, didn't scream or shout, but just shot people in a cold and disconnected fashion, it sounds like this was planned.
I work it out at more like over 4, but also consider that the US is more spread out than the UK, and there's much more contact between people, more urban concentration, which tends to increase crime stats. That there are still so many less gun deaths (and the recent stats have them going down again) is worth considering and not totally blowing off.
Increasing gun laws reduces gun deaths. The population affected has to consider whether this is a price worth paying for reduced personal liberty.
pommygranate...
>>@ 24,000 Students & Faculty...
>>2 (Two) Firearms...
That's one (1) Firearm per every 12,000 people...
Cuba--Russia--and even Great Britain don't have 'Gun Control' THAT restrictive...
So...the question could be made...
""Where were all the guns that could have STOPPED this young man before he murdered 31 people?""...SR
Never seen guns in a UK university at all...
And i wouldn't want to see guns in a UK university. Frankly the thought horrifies me.
John R - >i>There will never be agreement between those who oppose and those who condone gun ownership
Yes and No. I used to be passionatley anti-gun but now i'm agnostic. Opinions can be changed by events. The rising gun crime in the UK ten years after they were banned has caused me to re-think.
From 2001-02, death by guns in the whole of the UK, was 23. 02 to 03 was 80. 03-04 was 70. 04-05 was 75. 05-06 was 50. Small numbers with wide variance.
And gun crime statistics are hugely bumped up by... imitation guns. They count in UK stats.
What's the qualitative difference in not dying from a handgun? Dead is dead. Gun laws MUST be related to VIOLENT CRIME, because there is no difference getting bludgeoned to death and shot to death.
If imitation guns bump up the crime stats what does that tell you. More importantly what is the proportion?
Pommy, gun crime in the UK is falling not rising. It was rising before the gun laws, continued to rise and is now falling.
But a lot of that is due to other factors. The Gun laws you speak of were aimed at shooting clubs, a member of which had killed a bunch of schoolkids. There has been no similar attack since.
We have had a number of new mafia-style groups enter the UK, with a gun culture. But that has been directly targeted and now figures are coming back down.
There are always more factors at work. the gun laws did succeed in the area they were aimed at. And existing laws have been applied to new problems.
Elijah,
*All* murders are down. The qualifying difference is that people attacked by someone with a gun are more likely to die than if attacked by someone with a bat or a knife or a brick. You have the same level of crime, but less people die.
Hey, Pommygranate. Tim Blair's site sent me over here.
I graduated from Virginia Tech in '96. If I may be allowed to make a slight correction...
Marion Bary was not the mayor of Washington State. He was the mayor of Washington D.C. (District of Columbia), which is the capitol city of the USA. Washington State is actually moderately relaxed in the strictness of its gun control laws. Washington D.C. (the city) has the most strict in the country, on par with UK gun laws. It also currently has an astonishing murder rate (approximately 35.4 murders/100,000 residents vs a nationwide average of 5.6 - Washington state has a rate of 3.3).
Firearms are prohibited at Virginia Tech for anyone to possess except for the campus police force. This is a school policy, not state law. When I attended VT, I had to keep my firearm at the police station and check it in & out when I wanted to go to the range.
Great blog!
Mark
i) Handgun mudres have doubled since they were banned and total murders have doubled in the last 20 years (sources are above).
ii) Yes - the banning of guns has seemingly prevented mass-shootings such as at VT but
iii) it has made attacks on citizens and armed break-ins much more prevalent as citizens have no means of defending themselves. The US burglary rate is half that in the UK. And four times lower when the owners are at home.
I am no gun fan (far from it) and i can see that mass shootings are far less likely to occur where they are banned. But you must not ignore the fact that citizens are far more vulnerable to attack when unarmed as the stats prove.
One thing that, as an American, I would like to say about Brit gun laws, which are none of my business except insofar as they serve as a model for the US, is this.
Just as I will accept the occasional crash of a jetliner as the price of air travel, I will accept the occasional shooting spree as the price to keep crime low. Go
It is absolutely depressing the low level crime that the UK tolerates. I visit frequently on business. Try using your laptop in a public space.
BTW, a nation which grows terrorists in the volume that the UK does, terrorists willing to kill their countrymen by the score, if not the thousands, has little to teach us on the subject of reducing violence.
The qualifying difference is that people attacked by someone with a gun are more likely to die than if attacked by someone with a bat or a knife or a brick.
You are obviously unacquainted with terminal ballistics. You are no more likely to die from a gunshot wound than any other wound. What matters is shot placement.
Same with any weapon. When using a brick and baseball bat if you want to kill someone you target the head. If they're fighting back you diminish this capacity and then kill them.
Besides this is irrelevant. I asked you what is the qualitative different in being killed with a certain method from another. Not what is the likelihood of being killed by one method or another.
Pommy: The gun laws in question were aimed at gun club users, an easy way to get access to a gun and the way the Dunblane killer killed so many. Since then, there have been no such gun killing sprees. Gun deaths have been rising, mainly due to foreign mafias emerging, but again this has been tackled and gun crime is down again, back to eighties levels. And non-gangster-to-gangster gun deaths can be counted on one hand. And both violent crime and gun crime is coming down, not up.
Yes, citizens are probably more vulnerable to attack (having a greater urban population per capita than the US doesn't exactly help). But they are much much less likely to die. Overall, I'd rather have my health. Again, it's the balance you choose to accept. You get greater burglary, you get much less murder.
Eljah: I'll take a brick to or a bat to the gut over a bullet to the gut any day.
There is no qualatative difference of death. There is a quantative difference of likelihood of death. Could Cho have killed so many with a bat or a knife in similar circumstances?
Moptop: I use my laptop in public areas in London every weekday. On the underground, on Soho Square, in the pub. Never had a problem.
However, I do find your balance a refreshingly honest and defendable one. We all travel in cars, in the knowledge that hundreds will die from car accidents. That's the price we're willing to accept for easy transport.
The price we were willing to accept for tobacco consumption has changed, and so the laws change.
In the UK we are willing to accept less deaths for gun control, and that's a democratic decision. As is yours. I just wish more people like you could be honest about it.
As for terrorists, Americans funded the IRA for decades. They're also a terrorist group which the UK has managed to stop. We can probably teach plenty.
Whether Americans should have easy access to guns is entirely a matter for Americans - and not for po-faced, hyporitical broadsheet editors in the UK.
However, it is useless to pretend that lax gun control in the USA has no bearing on the murder rate or the ability of saddo teenagers to notch up an impressive "kill" when they give vent to their frustrations.
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I found this archive while searching for something else and VA Tech caught my eye. A major key in the gun control issue is not legislation or bans but education. If a person doesn't have respect for a firearm and the gravity of using one, these shootings will not diminish. This is indicative of a deeper-seeded issue facing American society.
A ban also removes guns from responsible handlers used for their protection. In my opinion, the state of Texas has a better approach to the issue. They have passed a law that allows citizens to obtain concealed-carry handgun permits. At least this establishes a program and standards for maturity with firearms. I think the debatable point should be what the requirements for this permit should be, not whether we have stricter bans. (I do, however, understand a school's policy of no firearms on campus. It's a hard decision to make--how to keep children safe without making them feel like they're in prison)
And just to be a devil's advocate, here's something to ponder. In 2003, over 42,000 people died as a result of car accidents in the US. That's about 115 each day. In 2004, the US gov't reported about 30,000 firearm-related deaths. If we ban guns to reduce firearm deaths, shouldn't we ban the use of cars as well? Most people would say that's absurd, people just need to be more careful and become safer drivers. I'd say, exactly my point.
--a Virginian living in Southern California
You seem to have Washington State and Washington D.C. confused.
Washington State is on the Western side of the country (Pacific Ocean) and Washington D.C. (District of Columbia) is on the Eastern side.
Handguns are legal in Washington State, but not in the USA's capital, Washing D.C. (which by the way is not a state and is really just the city of Washington D.C. The handguns for crime are easily carried in from the States surrounding Washington D.C.
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