Wow! Look! Gun Confiscation is still not working in Britain

[gopsdragon]

January 03, 2003
Figures to be issued next week by the Home Office are expected to show fresh increases last year.


Gun crime soars as thugs seek 'respect'
By Stewart Tendler, Crime Correspondent



GUN-TOTING drug dealers and young criminals carrying firearms to earn respect on the streets and in clubs have fuelled a 37 per cent rise in gun crime over five years.
Figures to be issued next week by the Home Office are expected to show fresh increases last year. Police fear a descent into American-style violence and the use of guns as a fashion accessory among teenagers in inner cities.

The two teenage girls shot dead in the backstreets of Birmingham yesterday are the latest victims of a gun culture that is also evident in London, Manchester, Merseyside, Bristol, Nottingham and the cities of South Wales.

The latest available Home Office figures already show that gun offences in England and Wales rose from 12,410 in 1997 to 17,589 during 2000-01. The number of murders went up from 59 to 73 and handgun offences rose from 2,648 to 4,019.

As a result chief constables, led by Sir John Stevens, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, have been urging ministers to adopt tougher gun controls, which they say successfully took guns off the streets of New York.

In Britain 20 years ago few criminals risked carrying or keeping guns and often hired weapons from the underworld for operations such as armed robberies. The weapon of choice was a sawn-off shotgun.

But by the Nineties many criminals were moving into the lucrative drug trade, where a weapon was a necessity to protect trade or fight turf wars. Young criminals also had few scruples about tackling a soft target such as a post office or betting shop with a gun, or using one in a mugging.

In 1990 shotguns were used in 1,193 crimes in England and Wales while handguns were used in 2,537. By 2000-01 there were 607 crimes involving shotguns and 4,019 involving handguns.

The ban on handweapons above .22 calibre, which was introduced in 1997 after the Dunblane primary school shootings, forced many legitimate owners to surrender their guns but did nothing to stop underworld supplies.

Police have seized Israeli-made Uzi sub-machineguns and American Ingram micro- machineguns as well as AK45 assault rifles and a vast range of pistols. The present favourite is said to be the Walther PPK automatic, as used by James Bond.

There has also been a brisk trade in the underworld in reactivating guns that have been deactivated for collectors, or the alteration of high-powered air weapons such as the Brocock. The Brocock ME38 Magnum air pistol can be bought legally for about £120 and illegally converted for just £70. Real guns can be bought for little more than £100, depending on their condition.

The rise of crack cocaine sold by Jamaican-based Yardie gangsters who routinely carry guns added to the rise in gun use and what police now call “black on black killings”.

The gun, police say, has become an essential possession for young black men emulating Yardies. A spat on a dance floor can quickly lead to a killing by a gunman who feels that he has been denied “respect”.

The shootings have reached such an extent that one man was shot for stepping on another man’s foot in a bar. Another was shot after he laughed at someone’s haircut and a woman was wounded by a stray bullet when two gunmen confronted each other outside a food shop.

A month ago Sir Keith Povey, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, warned David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, that the biggest menace facing police was the spread of gun crime often linked with the drug trade and in particular crack cocaine.

After studying reports from chief constables around the country, Sir Keith said: “The issue of gun crime and its connections with the drugs trade, particularly crack cocaine, is beginning to overshadow other efforts being made to reduce crime and the fear of crime.”

He added: “The increasing number of drug-related firearms incidents, the rise in the use of crack cocaine and the turf wars being fought between drug dealers all combine to strike fear in the heart of the worst-affected communities.”

It was a message that Paul Scott-Lee, the new Chief Constable of the West Midlands, knew by heart. Gun crime in his region rose between 2000-01 and 2001-02 from 1,512 to 2,262 offences.

In one incident in August police were involved in a gun fight with a gang of men chased from Staffordshire by officers investigating an attempted armed robbery. An exchange of gunfire took place in front of a row of houses on a busy road in Erdington at about 4.30pm as the evening rush hour was beginning.

In another incident 15 shots were fired during a gun battle in the car park of a pub. The West Midlands has become one of the biggest hotspots for gun crime outside London.

In October Mr Scott-Lee began a new drive against gun crime codenamed Operation Ventara. It focused on gun crime hotspots in the West Midlands — Handsworth, Winson Green, Ladywood, Highgate, Smethwick, Wolverhampton and Aston itself, where the two teenage girls died.

The latest national figures show that 29 of the 43 forces in England and Wales are investigating black-on-black shootings and London, which is the epicentre of gun crime, has been running a special investigation code-named Operation Trident for more than four years.

Last year there were 22 black-on-black murders in London under investigation and more than 170 people were wounded. Scotland Yard seizes 144 guns a month and weapons were fired 200 times between April and December, compared with 171 for the same months of last year.

Two weeks ago Scotland Yard announced that it would beef up its 24-hour armed patrols across London by recruiting another 50 officers.

Norman Brennan, of Protect the Protectors, which campaigns for frontline police officers, said: “Gun carrying is taken for granted in many of our cities and offenders now carry a firearm like they would a fashion accessory.

“Without tougher penalties against such offenders and heightened information from the public and others, the many people who carry guns will increase, each of them a walking assassin.”


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-530727,00.html

[shotglass]

Originally posted by gopsdragon
The ban on handweapons above .22 calibre, which was introduced in 1997 after the Dunblane primary school shootings, forced many legitimate owners to surrender their guns but did nothing to stop underworld supplies.



There's the whole article boiled down to one sentence.

[Deamon]

Of course the U.K still has a much lower crime rate (though the police are alot more lenient on so-called 'assault' if I hit someone in school today I'd get put on probation).

But this article is going to be great for the BNP (british nationalist party), non-white foreigners carrying guns around and dealing drugs and shooting people for not showing respect?

I don't consider it much of a problem though, as long as its scum shooting scum, let them keep at it. Robberies with guns can be done just aswell with other weapons. And what would happen if they did legalise guns (which I assume you would support) crime rates would be much higher, maybe 2 old ladies might be saved, but many more would suffer.

[gopsdragon]

Originally posted by Deamon
Of course the U.K still has a much lower crime rate (though the police are alot more lenient on so-called 'assault' if I hit someone in school today I'd get put on probation).

Wrong. According to the United Nations Crimes Victim Survey, the UK is the most crime ridden nation in the Western world. Australia is #2.

[Ty]

Are you telling me the US does not hold the number one spot. :scary: Who'd a thunk it?

[JBMoney]

This is what happens when governments try to ban guns
By Mark Steyn
(Filed: 05/01/2003)

You would think if "gun control" was going to work anywhere it would be on a small island. Particularly a small island at whose ports of entry the zealots of HM Customs like nothing better than performing intimate cavity searches on the off-chance you've got an extra bottle of duty-free Beaujolais tucked away up there. Surely, if you also had a Walther PPK parked out of sight, these exhaustive inspectors would be the first to notice.

But apparently not. Since the Government's "total ban" five years ago, there are more and more guns being used by more and more criminals in more and more crimes. Now, in the wake of Birmingham's New Year bloodbath, there are calls for the total ban to be made even more total: if the gangs refuse to obey the existing laws, we'll just pass more laws for them not to obey. According to a UN survey from last month, England and Wales now have the highest crime rate of the world's 20 leading nations. One can query the methodology of the survey while still recognising the peculiar genius by which British crime policy has wound up with every indicator going haywire - draconian gun control plus vastly increased gun violence plus stratospheric property crime.

What happened at that party in Aston? I don't mean "what happened?" in the sense of the piercing analysis of Chief Superintendent Dave Shaw, who concluded: "There has clearly been some sort of dispute which has resulted in people coming to the premises with guns, discharging their weapons and causing this incident." You can't put anything over on these coppers, can you? But my question is directed at the broader meaning of the event. Chief Supt Shaw went on: "We have never had to deal with anything like this. In terms of the nature of the incident, it's almost unprecedented in Birmingham." He didn't quite say Birmingham is one of those bucolic tightly-knit communities where everyone in the village knows everyone else and no one locks their doors, but you get the drift: this is some sort of bizarre aberration.

I think not. When those young men decided to open fire in Birchfield Road, they were making an entirely rational decision. One reason why Chief Supt Shaw has "never had to deal with anything like this" is because Aston was long ago ceded to the gangs. And, if you can deal drugs with impunity and burgle with impunity and assault with impunity and use guns with impunity, who's to say you can't murder with impunity? The West Midlands Police have offered a reward of £1,000 for information leading to the arrest of those involved. Think about that: would you name a known gang member for a thousand quid? Once the funerals have been held and the media's moved on, the constabulary will go back to forgetting about Aston. But you'll still have to live there.

When Dunblane occurred, all of us - even, if they're honest with themselves, the shrieking hysterics baying for pointless legislation - understood it was a freak event: a nut went nuts. It happens, and, when it does, the event has no broader implications. But what happened in Birchfield Road is of wider relevance: it's a glimpse of the day after tomorrow - not just in Aston, but in Edgbaston and Solihull and Leamington Spa.

After Dunblane, the police and politicians lapsed into their default position: it's your fault. We couldn't do anything about him, so we'll do something about you. You had your mobile nicked? You must be mad taking it out. Why not just keep it inside nice and safe on the telephone table? Had your car radio pinched? You shouldn't have left it in the car. House burgled? You should have had laser alarms and window bars installed. You did have laser alarms and window bars but they waited till you were home, kicked the door in and beat you up? You should have an armour-plated door and digital retinal-scan technology. It's your fault, always. The monumentally useless British police, with greater manpower per capita on higher rates of pay and with far more lavish resources than the Americans, haven't had an original idea in decades, so they cling ever more fiercely to their core ideology: the best way to deal with criminals is to impose ever greater restrictions and inconveniences on the law-abiding.

The gangs on Birmingham's streets instinctively understand this. They know, even if the Government doesn't, that the Blairite "total" ban, which sounds so butch and macho when you do your soundbite on the telly, is a cop-out: it makes the general population the target, not the criminals. And once that happens it's always easier to hassle the cranky farmer with the unlicensed shotgun than the Yardies with the Uzis. When you disarm the citizenry, when you prosecute them for being so foolish as to believe they have a right to self-defence, when you issue warnings that they should "walk on by" if they happen to see a burglary or rape in progress, the main beneficiaries will obviously be the criminals. Aston is the logical reductio of British policing: rival bad guys with state-of-the-art hardware, a cowed populace, and a remote constabulary tucked up in bed with the answering machine on.

I see I haven't yet mentioned the touchy social factor which even squeamish British Lefties have been forced to confront: Aston is yet more "black-on-black" violence. The reason I haven't mentioned it is because there hardly seems any point. What's new? Canada also had a Dunblane-like massacre, followed by Dunblane-like legislation, and, like Birmingham, boring, bland Toronto has lately been riven by gun violence from - wait for it - Jamaican gangs. But in neither Britain nor Canada is it politically feasible to suggest that perhaps Jamaicans should be subjected to special immigration scrutiny. As it happens, that Canadian massacre, of Montreal female students 12 years ago, was committed by the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, but, although we all claim to be interested in the "root causes" of crime, they tend to involve awkward cultural judgments. It's easier, like Mr Blair, just to go "total": blame everyone, ban everything.

This basic approach of addressing any cultural factors apart from the ones that correlate was pioneered by American progressives. The corpulent provocateur Michael Moore, in his film Bowling for Columbine, currently delighting British audiences, spends an entire feature-length documentary investigating the "culture" of American gun violence without mentioning that blacks, who make up 13 per cent of the population, account for over half the murders (and murder victims, too). Once you factor them out, Americans kill at about the same rate as nancy-boy Canadians.

But, as I said, it's hardly worth mentioning in relation to Britain. In my part of New Hampshire, we're all armed to the hilt and any gangster who fancied holding up a gas station would be quickly ventilated by guys whose pick-ups are better equipped than most EU armies. The right of individual self-defence deters crime, constrains it, prevents it from spreading out of the drug-infested failed jurisdictions. In post-Dunblane, post-Tony Martin Britain, that constraint doesn't exist: that's why the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea now has a higher crime rate than Harlem.

Meanwhile, America's traditionally high and England and Wales's traditionally low murder rates are remorselessly converging. In 1981, the US rate was nine times higher than the English. By 1995, it was six times. Last year, it was down to 3.5. Given that US statistics, unlike the British ones, include manslaughter and other lesser charges, the real rate is much closer. New York has just recorded the lowest murder rate since the 19th century. I'll bet that in the next two years London's murder rate overtakes it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;?xml=/opinion/2003/01/05/do0502.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2003/01/05/ixopinion.html

[cuda]

New York has just recorded the lowest murder rate since the 19th century. I'll bet that in the next two years London's murder rate overtakes it.

Thanks to Rudy Giuliani! :thumbs:

[uncle john]

This is obviously a made up statistic because the U.K. and Australia have laws forbiding personal firearm ownership so surley the criminals turned in their guns too, OOPS I forgot a criminal is someone who does not obey the law, Sorry my bad.
Seriously this is what happens when you blame the tool not the operator of the tool for its misuse. I grew up with guns learned the were not toys and not the answer to getting respect and to date Ted Kennedy has killed more people with his car than I have with my gun. wake up U.K.

[Seaman Stains]

Most criminals prefer their victims unarmed!

[Deamon]

Originally posted by gopsdragon
Wrong. According to the United Nations Crimes Victim Survey, the UK is the most crime ridden nation in the Western world. Australia is #2.

Why is it we quote the UN now... but not when the UN points out that israel has broken more of their resolutions than any other country on the planet, and has broken them TWICE AS MUCH as the second worst country. Either way, these are crimes, they don't say 'gun crimes' just crimes. The U.S probably has the most gun violation crimes, though I don't care to look it up right now, but you can.

[Eddy's Geist]

Deamon, good call on the UN quote!

Gops, shouldn't we recognize that the vast majority of the crimes in the UK are crimes against property vs. violent crimes?

This is the fundamental problem with gun control... it only controls law abiding citizens. The people that will have the weaponry will be the criminals and the government. Look at the numbers that were reported for murders. London, a city of 8 million (?) has about a quarter of the murders that Sacramento (1.5 million) has annually.

Last year there were 22 black-on-black murders in London under investigation and more than 170 people were wounded. Scotland Yard seizes 144 guns a month and weapons were fired 200 times between April and December, compared with 171 for the same months of last year.

Just to be cynical.. I'd say that this article was originally published to instill fear into the citizens and to justify the hiring of more security forces and allow the creation of even more draconion gun laws that will allow the British government to remove even more guns from legitimate, law abiding owners.





Originally posted by gopsdragon
Wrong. According to the United Nations Crimes Victim Survey, the UK is the most crime ridden nation in the Western world. Australia is #2.

[gopsdragon]

Originally posted by Deamon
Why is it we quote the UN now... but not when the UN points out that israel has broken more of their resolutions than any other country on the planet, and has broken them TWICE AS MUCH as the second worst country. Either way, these are crimes, they don't say 'gun crimes' just crimes. The U.S probably has the most gun violation crimes, though I don't care to look it up right now, but you can.

Because I know people like you think they are credible. You're not going to mock your own sources.

It's called knowing your audience.:)

[gopsdragon]

Originally posted by Deamon
Either way, these are crimes, they don't say 'gun crimes' just crimes. The U.S probably has the most gun violation crimes, though I don't care to look it up right now, but you can.

Sorry, had to go to a meeting.
Anyway, if you look at those stats the rates for aggravated assault, sexual assault, etc (including with guns and knives) are higher. That's the problem; you think the crime is a gun. Most of us think crimes are wrong things done to others. The fact is crime rates are lower in areas of gun ownership. The only way you can try and sidestep that is to classify guns as criminal and try and make the idea of owning a gun more criminal than an actual crime.

[JBMoney]

Originally posted by Deamon
Either way, these are crimes, they don't say 'gun crimes' just crimes. The U.S probably has the most gun violation crimes, though I don't care to look it up right now, but you can.

To possibly say what Gops said but a different way...

If you institute gun control in an area, and crime rises, it's important to look at the whole picture not just crimes committed with a gun.

If I'm a criminal, and know that it's now illegal for my victims to carry guns and defend themselves, is that going to encourage or discourage me from commiting a crime? It's going to encourage me of course, regardless of whether I use a gun or not.

So, if you restrict guns, and the rate of assuault, robbery and other crimes increases significantly, you can feasibly draw a correlation.

[Deamon]

I see what you're saying and I agree, but if its harder for good people to have guns, its also harder for bad people to have guns, now you right wingers regularly say giving up your freedom during these times for our saftey is a necessary price to pay and blah blah blah, but you need to use it in this situation here too. I'd rather have less good people with guns if it meant there was less bad people too. The only people I ever met with guns in england were far off members of the royal family who are some distant cousin and had massive game rifles (your hunting rifles are tiny to these things)/

[JBMoney]

Originally posted by Deamon
I see what you're saying and I agree, but if its harder for good people to have guns, its also harder for bad people to have guns

The 'bad people' generally don't use legally registered guns. Their guns are already illegal. So, no, it's not harder for them to get guns.

Originally posted by Deamon
now you right wingers regularly say giving up your freedom during these times for our saftey is a necessary price to pay and blah blah blah, but you need to use it in this situation here too.

That's a hasty generalization.

There is a large moderate 'center' and left-of-center of the American public who is apparently willing to do that. For the most part, I suspect they have little appreciation for the lessons of history, nor do they consider the future. These people have previously given in to having government run their lives and be involved in every aspect of it. The only question for them is the rate at which they cede their constitutionally gauranteed freedoms.

The vast majority of 'right wingers' and/or libertarians (NOT the christian right) who respect America's history & culture, are aware of its constitutional background, and are familiar with historical precedents ARE NOT willing to sign away any their freedoms.

By the way, these are the same folks who respect our constitutional right to bear arms. You would have us believe that government should take away our guns for the sake of safety, yet we oppose that. A contradiction to your theory - If you were right, we would gladly hand over our guns.

[Pistol Pete]

I'm not handing over anything. "Registered guns" is something done in states that their people have allowed to happen through not giving a shit about their freedoms. It happens slowly sometimes, but the elite get their way where they're allowed to. Those states are too far gone to recover. Thank God I'm not in one of them and that the surrounding states haven't gone socialist, or worse. It's nobody's business what you, or I, own.

When the siege of Moscow was going on, Stalin didn't leave the city. He did however, arm all people that was possible. After the siege was lifted he confiscated the firearms, lest the people get any "ideas".

As a load of hypocracy, Ted Kennedy has John's large firearms collection, including the M1 he received from the NRA when he shot competitions (he was a Life Member). All those Red bastards can kiss my ass :D

[gopsdragon]

Originally posted by Deamon
I see what you're saying and I agree, but if its harder for good people to have guns, its also harder for bad people to have guns, now you right wingers regularly say giving up your freedom during these times for our saftey is a necessary price to pay and blah blah blah, but you need to use it in this situation here too. I'd rather have less good people with guns if it meant there was less bad people too. The only people I ever met with guns in england were far off members of the royal family who are some distant cousin and had massive game rifles (your hunting rifles are tiny to these things)/

Deamon,

I remember on another thread pointing out from a statement that you had written that your right wing friends must be libertarians. I know libertarians don't support the giving up of your freedom for safety, nor do conservative right wingers.

Throughout our (U.S.) history it has been the left and not the right that has supported what you are talking about. Stalin and the communists supported what you are talking about, Hitler and the National Socialists supported what you are talking about, etc.

However, the American conservative tradition is best summed up by Benjamin Franklin:

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

-- Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759


I would also remind you that the kind of gun control you are talking about also existed in Socialist Germany. Goering had his hunting rifles too. Even after the Jews were disarmed.