MBOF

Thus, one cannot conclude that gun ownership rates bear any correlation to gun murder rates. Here's the big secret, the root cause for crime which no one wants to talk about: CULTURE. Was England made more safe by taking your shotgun away from you, by making the gun laws so difficult? No, but as I mentioned above since there are few places where I could go out and shoot it seemed pointless keeping the weapon. ***No, we're talking about gun crime. Unless you provide some kind of logic to indicate that gun-control laws have a reducing effect upon non-gun crimes. But I fail to see how banning guns would contribute to a reduction in, for example, car theft. I was replying to your original quote a few posts ago where you were talking about all violent crimes not just gun crimes: 'Violence is violence. It doesn't matter what you blame it on. You can't dismiss it or consider it unimportant, just because you can pigeonhole a lot of it into a certain category' Therefore, by lumping all crime statisitics together to 'avoid pigeonholing' crime into certain categories as you suggested, we can state that all crime figures in the UK show a year on year reduction. Does this mean that the policies on policing in the UK are correct? We both know that this is not necessarily the case. Mmmm... I guess it comes down to a balancing act. On the one hand you have a very small number of people in the UK who own (or want to own guns). On the other you have an very large part of the population who have no desire to own or even see a gun coupled with the fact that many people have just witnessed an appauling act of violence against school children. Indeed the police at the time were also pressing for tighter gun controls. Although the decision may have been illogical I find that these days few policies are passed on the basis of sound logic. I have to be honest the pro-gun lobby at the time were simply too small. By far the majority of people wanted this type of legislation, although I'm not suggesting that this is still the situation. You should come over to the UK and join the happy pro -hunting crowds at Brighton beach where the Labour conference is being held at the moment. This is not a hypothesis, it is a hypothetical question. I'm not suggesting that the situation is even remotely real but in answering the question I would have a better understanding of your obviously passionate views about gun ownership. John, I'll be taking the day off work tomorrow to go jumping (just let THEM try and ban that!) so I'll let you have the last word on what has been an enlightening discussion.

Ok we agree that gun crime is comparatively higher in the USA than in the UK but that as you rightly point out this does not tell the whole story, in that the UK still has a rising gun crime rate (even though this is small). This however, does not answer the real question which is would gun crime have increased even more if gun laws were less restricted. I guess that you have your opinion on this and I have mine. I have to add that I used to own a shot gun before the current legislation made it too difficult. Ok by that rational we should be talking about all crime figures which clearly show that crime in the UK is declining. Does this mean that the policies on crime in the UK are effective? No, we have to talk about specifics and contributing factors. I never suggested that one statistical group be excluded, I was merely providing an answer to a question i.e. why is violent crime in the UK on the increase? Answer: statistics show that this is largely due to alcohol related violence. Knee jerk political actions are not exclusive to the UK. I guess that in most cases where democracy rules the majority tend to get their way, although I'm not siggeesting that the fox hunters are necessarily in a minority. I'd like to ask a very hypothetical question, if it were absolutely proven that tighter gun legislation was effective in reducing gun crime (I'm by no way suggesting that it is), would you personally accept stricter gun control in the USA, even though that may mean giving up your right to own a gun or certain types of gun?

I'm afraid that most of the information written in the original thread is totally incorrect. I'm a T cell immunologist and have been researching various aspects of immunology (including vaccin design) for more than 10 years. Quite frankly I find this type of ill informed scare mongering offensive. I do not have the time or inclination to correct the original post on a point by point basis, however if people would like to know more about influenza vaccinations in general then here are a few links (I'm not sure how to make them clicky!). General worldwide diseases, WHO recommendations etc...http://www.who.int/csr/disease/en/ CBER and CDC recommendations reagrding influenza vaccinations...http://www.fda.gov/cber/flu/flu.htm http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/whoshouldget.htm

But the trend for violence is upward, even for gun crime, despite the gun ban. Thus, it can be safely said, that the gun ban did nothing to deter gun crime. Thanks for that acknowledgement about violent crime. It should also be noted that the UK has a higher violent crime rate than the U.S. Yeah, the U.S. has a higher murder rate. But the U.S. murder rate has dropped 10 years in a row, with no gun ban, while England's has gone up, even with a gun ban. So the trends mean something here Oh, but it was so much easier to attack a minority of the population that were law-abiding gun owners, and blame them for all of the nation's crime woes! Now that they're gone, I wonder who they'll blame next... *** The UK has always had very strict gun controls compared to the US and these were further tightened largely in response to Hungerford and Dunblaine shootings. To be honest these incidents were not so much an indication of slack gun legislation, as more highlighting the fact that existing legislation was not being enforced correctly at the time. Thus, gun owners in the UK do/did have cause to complain, but since there were so few (compared to the non-gun owning populace) the decision to make the law stricter by banning handguns outright was easily passed. As I mentioned in my first posting gun crime contributes (and always did play) a miniscule amount in all crime committed in the UK, gun owners (whether legal or not) were never blamed for any significant increase in violent crime. By far the biggest contributing factor is alcohol, however I would definitely not advocate banning this product especially since the USA has already shown this course of action to be an excerise in futility.

In the UK violent crime is broken down into various categories including domestic violence, robbery, gun related crime and alcohol related crime. The statistics (at the home office website http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/crime/violentcrime/index.html) show that all except alcohol related violent crimes are down by at least 14 percent (compared to the previous report 2001-2002). I think the perception that is being perpetuated here, that the UK has an exceptionally high crime rate is false. It is also false to generalise about crime figures (for which the BBC is definitely guilty). If we are talking about all crime then it is clear that in the UK all crime is falling. Violent crime is on the increase but this is largely due to alcohol related crime. In the UK we need to tackle the real issue which has nothing to do with gun legislation, it is that we have to solve the rapidly growing problem associated with binge drinking.