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Stupid Gun Laws
05/06/02
Europe's gun laws are perfect, according to U.S. gun-control advocates. Many European countries have extremely tight restrictions concerning firearms. For example, to have a hunting rifle, Germans must undergo checks that can last a year. Germans wanting guns for sport must be a member of a club, and the police must issue a license for such. The French must apply for gun permits (which are valid only for three years), which are granted only after an exhaustive background and medical record check and demonstrated need. Switzerland's federal law allows gun permits only for those who can demonstrate in advance a need for a weapon to protect themselves or others against a precisely specified danger.
Outside of Europe, Britain and Australia really take the cake. 1996 was a banner year for them, when Britain completely banned handguns (even shooters training for the Olympics are forced to travel to other countries to practice), and Australia banned most guns and made it a CRIME to use a gun defensively.
So, you might think that those places are pretty safe, right?
Germany, the land of year-long background checks and police-issued licenses, had a school shooting a few weeks ago. Sixteen people were killed.
Fourteen regional legislators were killed in Switzerland last September. Switzerland, the home of precious laws forcing people to prove a need for a weapon for a precisely specified danger. Somehow I doubt those 14 dead people knew in advance that they were in that precise sort of danger.
Eight city council members were blown away in Paris last month. Paris, the land of civilized decorum and strict gun control. Cheese-eaters.
These were the three worst public shootings in the Western world in the past year. And to enrich the irony further, all three occurred in so-called "gun-free/safe zones" (school and government buildings).
Oh yeah, and let's not leave out the police state of the former Soviet Union, which has a ban on guns dating back to the communist revolution. From 1976 to 1985, the U.S.S.R.'s homicide rate was between 21% and 41% higher than that of the U.S.
So now let's get to the nitty-gritty crime statistics comparing the civilized, peaceful, dignified Europeans to the redneck, hillbilly, Wild West United States.
Since 1985, when eight US states had liberal right-to-carry laws, to now, when 33 states do, deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings fell on average by 78% in the states that passed such laws.
By contrast, since the 1996 gun ban in Britain, their gun crimes have risen by an astounding 40%. Britain now leads the U.S. by a wide margin in robberies and aggravated assaults. And by 1990, four years after Australia's gun ban, armed robberies had risen by 51%, unarmed robberies by 37%, assaults by 24%, and kidnappings by 43%. While murders fell by 3%, manslaughter rose by 16%.
The International Crime Victims Survey of 2001 (with data from 1999) showed some charming and delightful trends. For instance, people in England and Wales are at greater risk of being victims of crime than the people of most other industrialized countries (including the U.S.). In fact, the U.S. is not even in the top ten list of the countries in which you are most likely to be victimized in general. In further fact, England and Australia are the top two most dangerous industrialized nations. The same two countries who implemented very strict gun bans six years ago. How fascinating.
In particular, violent crime is more prevalent in England and Australia than in any other industrialized nation. For edification, here's the top ten list of the industrialized countries in which you are most likely to be the victim of a violent crime, in descending order: England, Australia, Canada, Scotland, Finland, Poland, North Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, and France.
If you wanna check these facts yourself, here's the link to the chart: Crime Figures.
'Contact crimes' are those in which the criminal actually confronts the victim (as opposed to nobody-home burglaries). The percentage of the population which suffered a "contact crime" in England was 3.6 per cent, compared with 1.9 per cent in the United States. Chew on that.
You are six times more likely to be mugged in London than in New York. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has a worse crime rate than Harlem. In other words, you are six times more likely to be attacked and robbed in a place where no handguns are permitted under any circumstances, even to Olympic shooters, than you are in the city of New York, in the land of the wild and crazy Americans.
The last attempted massacre in the U.S. (at the Appalachian School of Law in West Virginia), in contrast to the last three successful massacres in Europe, was stopped cold by a student who was packing a pistol. Who's packing pistols in Europe to stop their homegrown psychopaths?
I think that what's going on in Europe, England, and Australia is absolutely hilarious. The more they try to restrict gun ownership, the more their rate of gun violence goes up. It's skyrocketing by the numbers. And in the US, states with conceal-carry laws have lower rates of crime, as well.
So where the hell is the logic? Isn't anybody thinking? I can hardly wrap my brain around the reality that full-grown elected adults continue to pass laws making it illegal for law-abiding people to possess a gun to protect themselves, when all the data screams that it's not working, and not only is it not working, it's having the opposite effect!
Stupid, stupid gun grabbers! When will you see the light? And for that matter, how many statistics and reports and studies do the liberals in the U.S. have to see before they pull their collective head out of their collective butt and stop trying to restrict gun ownership here? It boggles the mind.
05/06/02
Europe's gun laws are perfect, according to U.S. gun-control advocates. Many European countries have extremely tight restrictions concerning firearms. For example, to have a hunting rifle, Germans must undergo checks that can last a year. Germans wanting guns for sport must be a member of a club, and the police must issue a license for such. The French must apply for gun permits (which are valid only for three years), which are granted only after an exhaustive background and medical record check and demonstrated need. Switzerland's federal law allows gun permits only for those who can demonstrate in advance a need for a weapon to protect themselves or others against a precisely specified danger.
Outside of Europe, Britain and Australia really take the cake. 1996 was a banner year for them, when Britain completely banned handguns (even shooters training for the Olympics are forced to travel to other countries to practice), and Australia banned most guns and made it a CRIME to use a gun defensively.
So, you might think that those places are pretty safe, right?
Germany, the land of year-long background checks and police-issued licenses, had a school shooting a few weeks ago. Sixteen people were killed.
Fourteen regional legislators were killed in Switzerland last September. Switzerland, the home of precious laws forcing people to prove a need for a weapon for a precisely specified danger. Somehow I doubt those 14 dead people knew in advance that they were in that precise sort of danger.
Eight city council members were blown away in Paris last month. Paris, the land of civilized decorum and strict gun control. Cheese-eaters.
These were the three worst public shootings in the Western world in the past year. And to enrich the irony further, all three occurred in so-called "gun-free/safe zones" (school and government buildings).
Oh yeah, and let's not leave out the police state of the former Soviet Union, which has a ban on guns dating back to the communist revolution. From 1976 to 1985, the U.S.S.R.'s homicide rate was between 21% and 41% higher than that of the U.S.
So now let's get to the nitty-gritty crime statistics comparing the civilized, peaceful, dignified Europeans to the redneck, hillbilly, Wild West United States.
Since 1985, when eight US states had liberal right-to-carry laws, to now, when 33 states do, deaths and injuries from multiple-victim public shootings fell on average by 78% in the states that passed such laws.
By contrast, since the 1996 gun ban in Britain, their gun crimes have risen by an astounding 40%. Britain now leads the U.S. by a wide margin in robberies and aggravated assaults. And by 1990, four years after Australia's gun ban, armed robberies had risen by 51%, unarmed robberies by 37%, assaults by 24%, and kidnappings by 43%. While murders fell by 3%, manslaughter rose by 16%.
The International Crime Victims Survey of 2001 (with data from 1999) showed some charming and delightful trends. For instance, people in England and Wales are at greater risk of being victims of crime than the people of most other industrialized countries (including the U.S.). In fact, the U.S. is not even in the top ten list of the countries in which you are most likely to be victimized in general. In further fact, England and Australia are the top two most dangerous industrialized nations. The same two countries who implemented very strict gun bans six years ago. How fascinating.
In particular, violent crime is more prevalent in England and Australia than in any other industrialized nation. For edification, here's the top ten list of the industrialized countries in which you are most likely to be the victim of a violent crime, in descending order: England, Australia, Canada, Scotland, Finland, Poland, North Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, and France.
If you wanna check these facts yourself, here's the link to the chart: Crime Figures.
'Contact crimes' are those in which the criminal actually confronts the victim (as opposed to nobody-home burglaries). The percentage of the population which suffered a "contact crime" in England was 3.6 per cent, compared with 1.9 per cent in the United States. Chew on that.
You are six times more likely to be mugged in London than in New York. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has a worse crime rate than Harlem. In other words, you are six times more likely to be attacked and robbed in a place where no handguns are permitted under any circumstances, even to Olympic shooters, than you are in the city of New York, in the land of the wild and crazy Americans.
The last attempted massacre in the U.S. (at the Appalachian School of Law in West Virginia), in contrast to the last three successful massacres in Europe, was stopped cold by a student who was packing a pistol. Who's packing pistols in Europe to stop their homegrown psychopaths?
I think that what's going on in Europe, England, and Australia is absolutely hilarious. The more they try to restrict gun ownership, the more their rate of gun violence goes up. It's skyrocketing by the numbers. And in the US, states with conceal-carry laws have lower rates of crime, as well.
So where the hell is the logic? Isn't anybody thinking? I can hardly wrap my brain around the reality that full-grown elected adults continue to pass laws making it illegal for law-abiding people to possess a gun to protect themselves, when all the data screams that it's not working, and not only is it not working, it's having the opposite effect!
Stupid, stupid gun grabbers! When will you see the light? And for that matter, how many statistics and reports and studies do the liberals in the U.S. have to see before they pull their collective head out of their collective butt and stop trying to restrict gun ownership here? It boggles the mind.
