DZJ

I think we could solve this problem with more guns.

Is that the sound of a can of worms being opened?

Afraid I don't see how. My post was entirely consistent with my recent posts to this thread.

Pardon? My recent posts in this thread have mostly been requests for details and statistics, and questions about American law. I haven't taken a position on either side of your or kallend's lengthy and unproductive argument. If my pointing out an obvious and fundamental question about statistics is 'semantic hair-splitting', then I think you should be reexamining your attitude to data.

I find this comparison of blue-on-blue really objectionable. Yes, shit happens in war, and people have doutless been accidentally shooting their friends since the very first projectile weapons. Yes, this doesn't make these casualties any less tragic, and yes, these incidents should be properly investigated and the findings made public (or, at the very least, shared with the families). Pointing fingers and making remarks like "So, each side has killed 3 British soldiers. Given that the US has supplied 250,000 soldiers, and the UK has supplied 45,000, you're not doing too hot in comparison." is incredibly unhelpful. What is this, a competitive sport? A lets-see-who-can-kill-more-friendlies contest? A force:fuck-up ratio? What I think our American friends (and I do count you as friends) need to know, is that the vast majority of Britons are glad to have you as allies, and realise that a certain amount of fratricide is inevitable in large-scale operations. What galls us, however, is that American authorities have at times seemed unwilling to share information about these incidents. It is disgraceful that this cockpit video should have come to light through a leak to a tabloid paper, and was not offered openly to the coroner. It is this apparent indifference to the feelings of an ally and friend that does much more damage to Anglo-American relations than the tragedy of friendly fire deaths on the battlefield, in my opinion.

Simple reason for that, 2001 was when the last census was taken. Without a detailed definition of what is taken to be a 'violent crime' in those statistics, the ratio you calculated is neither here nor there. [Ah, I see SkyDekker has beaten me to it]

Saw this and wondered: 'What happens if two 13-yr olds have sex twice?'. Off to the gallows with them both? More seriously though, being against the death penalty on principle, this doesn't even get off the ground as far as I'm concerned. Simply increases the chances on spending a fortune in convicting and executing people some of whom, given human fallibility, might well prove innocent somewhere down the line.

That's quite interesting, thanks. Curious what the remaining 6% is though.

This is from a report looking at 14-20 years ago. You make it sound like it's an ongoing thing. A deceptive misrepresentation? I'm sure you'd think not. During the period of study, the violent crime rates were at historically high rates. Since then, they've been steadily dropping. If that report is the only worthwhile data on the question of legal guns getting into criminal hands, it's hardly deceptive to make use of it. Even given higher crime rates at the time that report was written, surely that number must be high enough to cause concern. Or is there some reason to believe that thefts of firearms have dropped in the order of more than 24,000 a year over the past 14 years?

More to do with an outrageous backlog in dealing with the coroners' inquests into the deaths of British servicemen, AFAIK.

Not for long. Get ready for a much bigger one called Gordon Brown.

It depends on where you live. Here in the US we have a patchwork of laws on just about any issue related to guns, except the ones that really matter, like murder and assault by pointing being illegal. In most places there is no requirement to store your firearms any certain way. The places that have the most gun control, like Washington DC, have requirements that guns be disassembled, locked, separate from ammunition, and so on. Interesting. I know that the US is a federal system with lots of powers reserved to states rather than central government, but is there any simple reason why some states impose (and presumably, the population support) such vastly more stringent rules? What's the rationale? Your Washington DC example makes me curious because, AFAIK, not even British rules require weapons to be disassembled in storage. Not being conversant with the relevant data at the moment, I'm not going to argue with this. I take this point. Just out of interest, do decent statistics exist on the reasons given for owning weapons? Self-defence vs sport vs hunting vs pest control/agriculture etc? Torn whether or not to respond to this, seeing as your implication seems to be that the right to self-defence is not respected in other countries (i.e. the UK). This would be a mistaken implication. The right to self-defence is enshrined in British law and has been posted at length elsewhere on this board.

Are there no laws on firearm storage in the states? Over here in Blighty weapons have, at the very least, to be kept in a locked steel cabinet.

First jump, tandem the day after my 18th birthday. Did AFF a little over a year later.

Well, that makes things in England even worse than I thought. The 4th Amendment in the U.S. says that the police have to leave you alone, unless you're actually doing something wrong. And I like it that way. If you're driving without a licence or insurance, you *ARE* doing something wrong.

I love how these threads always end up deadlocked like this.

Christ, they'll be after our guns next!

Why is this even in the news? That story could be written up as: "WORCESTER, MA -- Something of no consequence happened. It was inconsequential, and nothing came of it."

A friend of a friend of mine (a historical reenactor) owns fully automatic weapons (even some pretty heavy stuff like MG42's) on a Section V licence, (and AFAIK they aren't permanently blank-firing adapted either) but I understand they're almost impossible to get. Lots of hoops to jump through.

IIRC, the 'WMD' found in Iraq were a quantity of old artillery shells and mortar rounds with obsolete chemical fillings. Hardly the arsenal of nerve gas, bioweapons and nuke programmes in progress that we were assured were there to be found.

you have a strange sense of humor Scrubs makes me laugh out loud. Some comedians and a few funny friends can. Terrorism doesn't really do it for me, though. I'll try harder. You think I'm laughing about terrorism? I think you miscomprehend. I'm much more tickled by the blatant and shameless intellectual dishonesty of whoever tried to pass that comparison off as 'myth busting'.

This made me laugh aloud. Do you really think that the IRA's terrorism, that killed 3000 over 30 years, is even remotely comparable to the slaughter currently taking place in Iraq and running at something in the region of 30,000 a year?

You accuse him of being out of touch with reality, yet claim Charles Clarke's statement to the House of Commons to be 'just the opinion of one man'?

I used to have a job at Harrods, we'd accept £, Euro or $. I'd always marvel when I gave change in sterling from Euros or dollar notes. It's all just business, and the Europeans and Americans were always grateful for the option (even if the vast majority of them had already brought £ with them)

This logic justifies throwing every serviceman and woman you can find into the meatgrinder.