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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Firearms ownership (was Re: Air raid on Libya)
Message-ID: <923@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Jul-86 12:45:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.923
Posted: Thu Jul 17 12:45:57 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Jul-86 05:54:03 EDT
References: <902@kontron.UUCP> <182@suneast.uucp>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Mt. View, CA
Lines: 85

> >>         If you've let the genie out of the bottle and can't get it
> >>         back in, you have my sympathy. But don't expect us to make
> >>         the same mistakes as you.
> >> -- 
> >>       Peter Kendell <pete@stc.co.uk>
> >> 
> >
> >If firearms ownership were as widespread in Britain as it is in
> >the U.S., I suspect that your burglary, unarmed robbery, and rape rates 
> >would be dramatically lower.
> 
> Extremely unlikely. The majority of burglaries in England are of unoccupied
> dwellings - don't forget that a significantly higher percentage of women
> are in full time work. And the rape rate is so much lower, it's not
> statistically significant to try and compare and extrapolate with the U.S.
> 

The majority of burglaries in the U.S. are of unoccupied dwellings as well.
But when a burglar breaks into an occupied dwelling here, they know there 
is at least a possibility the occupants will kill the burglar.  Doesn't
sound like that's even a remote possibility in Britain.

The rape rate is much lower, indeed, even though firearms are a factor in
a very tiny fraction of rapes in America.  I will agree with you on one
thing though -- "it's not statistically significant to try and compare
and extrapolate with the U.S."  And that's true for all types of crime.

> >                           I suspect that your murder rate might be 
> >slightly higher.
> 
> How about manslaughters due to intrafamilial violence? How about
> accidental gunshot deaths? Both are at present VERY low compared with the
> U.S.
> 

That's what I was talking about.  Intrafamilial violence in the presence
of firearms would doubtless result in more murders and manslaughters --
but also more criminals killed in self-defense.  Remember, civilians
kill THREE TIMES as many criminals in self-defense as the police do in
America.

Accidental gunshot deaths in the U.S. are VERY low -- less than two thousand
a year, most of them hunting accidents.  (I presume that Britons are allowed
to hunt, and I presume they make mistakes, also.)

> >      Armed robbery rate would be higher -- how much I
> >don't know. 
> 
> As in the U.S., a growing number proportion of robberies are drug related,
> to finance the perpetrators' habits. This group of criminals would probably
> acquire firearms at a much higher rate than the rest of the population,
> leading and accelerating the kind of patterns seen over here.
> 

My understanding is that criminal use of handguns has been on the rise for
some years in Britain, in spite of the difficulties in obtaining them.  Why
keep honest people disarmed so that the criminals have the advantage?

> >Overall, I think Britain would be better off -- but not
> >dramatically.  But unless your population is too dumb to behave rationally,
> 
> All populations include rational and irrational elements (including
> Usenet readers :-), and it's the irrational ones we have to worry about
> when we talk about free access to socially dangerous commodities such as
> drugs, guns, nuclear weapons......
> 

Elections, automobiles, ladders...

> >I see no way you would be worse off.
> >
> >Clayton E. Cramer
> 
> Go on - TRY and think of some ways. Really - there IS a world out there which
> is NOT the kind of Dante's Inferno you seem to inhabit....
> -- 

But not because guns are not legally available -- because the population
of Britain is more peaceful with ALL types of weapons than the population
of the U.S.  What's Britain's murder rate with knives?  Blunt instruments?
Strangulation?  Poison?  Lower than the U.S. rates by a comparable margin
to the firearms murder rate.  Firearms aren't the reason that Britain is
so much less crime-besieged.

Clayton E. Cramer