Quote:
Originally posted by Food Eater Lad
I will answer when you show me that the BBC is not a good source for british news.
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If you roll your eyes at me again I won't respond to you.
I never said the BBC wasn't a good source for British news--this is a strawman argument. The real issue I raised was that the BBC article didn't identify the source of the statistics they were using supporting the claim that violent crime trends were rising in England and Wales.
The article stated that one (unidentified) study found violent crime trends to be rising.
At the end of the story, however, the reporter explained that the British Crime Survey, the more reliable of the two studies, found violent crime trends to be declining.
Regardless, even if the first study is accurate, the number of homicides by guns only rose by approximately 2.4 persons per year in two nations--England and Wales--combined. Their total gun murders are 80 people.
While the figure of nearly 200 "gun crimes" (which could be anything from robbery to attempts to purchase guns--we simply don't know without the benefit of the source of the data or how the researchers operationalized their variable) per year is alarming, the evidence that fatalities are declining (or not increasing as severely as other regions, if you prefer) leads one to question whether personal handgun possession escalates street crimes to fatal episodes.
In consideration of these points that you haven't even attempted to refute, I do not believe you have presented a very convincing argument that gun control is a failure in the United Kingdom.
All that aside, what exactly would occur if people in the UK had handguns on their persons?
Are we to presume that robbers, rapists, and murderers approach victims from the front?
Do these "cowards" wait while someone pulls a firearm from under his or her clothes (according to the proponents on this board, weapons carriers shouldn't expose their weapons to effect the greatest level of deterence) and in defense?
Would they commit such crimes in view of witnesses who might be carrying?
If they did, would the witnesses shoot the offender? Should they? Do our trained police officers even shoot people in a stand-down situation between them and an offender with a victim/hostage?
The literature I am aware of would claim that violent offenders choose victims based upon the belief that the victim is either mentally disoriented due to a strange environment, timid, or otherwise not paying particular attention to his or her environment. They would reasonably do so in dimly lit places to avoid detection and apprehension. They are likely to do so in areas they are most comfortable in and knowledgable of. Unless they are stupid or desirous of being caught, they attempt to commit crime in the absence of witnesses. Finally, more often than not, they allow their victims to live.
Given that victims are highly unlikely to know when they will be attacked and, as a result, won't be able to turn a weapon on an attacker, it stands to reason that the threat of the presence of a firearm won't deter a criminal from attacking nor will its actual presence serve to make the victim more safe.
One might argue that witnesses could come to the aid of the victim if they are armed. Trained professionals, however, realize the danger inherent in shooting people who have guns to other people's heads or backs and, consequently, rarely do so. That said, if you ever see someone demanding my wallet, just let me hand it over--please don't try to "save" me because your efforts have a higher chance of resulting in my getting shot than helping me keep the 30 bucks in my wallet.