British Views on guns
 

As I'm sure you are all well aware the UK as a whole fears guns. They are the weapons of gangs and thugs. UK gun law is extremely tight and restrictive. Shotguns can be used relatively easily whereas handguns are looked upon negatively and harshly by society and the police alike.

Some of you will remember the bombings on the london underground on 7/7 last year. Subsequently Charles de menezes was gunned down by police when they suspected him as a suicide bomber.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4262988.stm

This leads me to the focus of my post. This article on the BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5211998.stm

At first glance it seems ludicrous for the police to react in this way. However I cant help but thinking they do have a massive point. If I was an armed transport police officer and I was called upon to confront a youth holding what appeared to be a gun on the underground i wouldn't know how to react. ESPECIALLY given the events of July last year. Is it all just over reaction from a nation of paranoid gun users? Or is it a sensible reaction to an unnecessary (and perhaps inappropriate 'competition' given events in lebanon?)

Having people running around with things that look like guns in a crowded area is always a bad idea, full stop.

Doing it where those people can stampeed, fall on train tracks or otherwise become very unstable in an enclosed area doubly so.

Common sense if you ask me.

(pssst... Quote the article in your post... Don't just link)

I like guns, consdering the number of kids killing / maiming people with airrifles I would love to see every person trained to use weapons properly (and hopefully gain the discipline not to use them). Guns I believe are not the cause of problems in Britain but rather a symptom, we have very little (imo) control over kids here and our 'yob' culture is growing, availability of guns and knives just turns a brawl into a fight.

We don't fear guns.

We just think they are silly and dangerous.

I'm not frightened of tigers, because I'm not exposed to tigers. I certainly wouldn't have one as a pet, though. ;-)

A sidenote: Many Icelanders believe every American carries a gun, and some of my relatives are even afraid to go to American cities because they think they might get shot.

(Incidentally, I'm working in the inner-city of Philly where the homicide rate is #1 in the nation right now, and it's the first time in my life I've REALLY considered that I might get shot...)

In any case, Icelandic police do not carry guns. Consider what that means. There is no military whatsoever in Iceland; the police are the only people keeping the streets safe. And yet they do not see a need to carry guns. What does that tell you about the population and the nature of crime in that country? (And how does it reflect on the US, or perhaps Britain.)

I think it means that Iceland is protected by its stronger non -expansionist neighbors and therefore has no need for a military. I would aslo suspect that Iceland has a very low number of minority groups and is in fact almost all caucasian and of the same subgroup of caucasian. One of those sad facts that its not PC to talk about, and of course will get you called a racist, is that diversity of culture leads to crime and violance.

Incidentally, Iceland was a charter member of NATO and had American troops stationed on the island since then, until the Americans pulled out earlier this year. So you would have been right in the last 60 years, except for recently. :) Iceland has no military protection currently, as far as I know.

In terms of minority groups, actually that is changing quite a bit too. In the last 10-20 years, there has been a huge influx of immigrants to the country, mostly from Eastern Europe and Asia. A ton of these are mail-order brides, but most of them are labor migrants whom the country welcomed in order to work the dirty jobs no one wanted. You are correct in saying that crime has increased in recent years, but I am not sure if it is directly correlated to immigration; a great deal of crime in Iceland is related to drug use, which is almost entirely engaged in by the dominant caucasian population and not the immigrants.

So, I am not convinced that diversity of culture is a direct cause of crime/violence. Humans, unfortunately, make it that way... due to a run on limited resources (often resulting from prejudice and barring minorities from equal access to resources, though sometimes it's just a problem of demand exceeding supply). But I have seen diverse cultures where crime/violence does not always increase as a result.

In any case, I find it immensely relieving that there aren't a bunch of guns lying around in Iceland, whether with the police or otherwise. There are plenty of other violent crimes, mostly fights between drunken Icelanders on the street at 4am, but gun violence is just not part of the culture in Iceland. People do hunt (mostly birds... there isn't much else! :lol: ) but otherwise it's fairly easy to control the flow of guns into the country due to it being a tiny island. :D

They could get the contestants to carry these:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...er_CPS4100.jpg

Something that doesn't look like a real gun might make people feel safer.

I don't fear guns. I fear people.
People are more likely to be killed with a car than with a gun. So shouldn't you be more afraid of cars?

Amen. Iceland is not an apt basis for comparison.


And once guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.. or something.

It tells me that guns don't kill people, people kill people.

there are only 290,000 people in Iceland, and about 175,000 in it's densest city Reykjavik. There are more people living in Staten Island. It's very much not a good comparison for many reasons, but they do have similar issues, one time I recall a child taking a gun to school. That was very traumatic to the country as a whole. As far as racism, one time I was there and did get into an altercation with a drunk guy on the street. It was suggested he attacked me because I am Asian.