Nigel Farage on handguns

[Mike_West]

I think that the physical gathering up of all firearms in a country from its citizens is not the most damaging aspect of the act, but rather the psychological and sociological effects that the media has on the masses long after all of the guns are gone. The media, because it consists of many unrelated sources with a steady flow of different (dis)information, creates confusion. This confusion quickly transforms into fear, and manifests the natural human fear of the unknown. Guns become scary because people do not understand how they work and their limitations of operating.

Yes, this.

[NeoVeNoM]

 

"The gun is a tool, I am the weapon."

The human being has and will always be the weakest link.

Be it with a gun, car, knife, fork, spoon, pen, shrubbery, bare hands ... If they want to commit crime, they do it.

 

But personally, I find it more frightening, that schools these days have their own psychiatrists who like to subscribe student with plenty of meds.

I mean, how many abbreviation disorders are there these days?

 

 

To quote Chris Rock:"The government doesn't want you to use your drugs, they want you to use their drugs."

[Mike_West]

But personally, I find it more frightening, that schools these days have their own psychiatrists who like to subscribe student with plenty of meds.

I mean, how many abbreviation disorders are there these days?

I have no idea, but I've noticed that the most commonly diagnosed ones are IDK and WTF. The cure for both is whatever the drug companies want sold. 

 

Regarding the how and what gets banned in the firearms debate. I don't know how the USA works it but here in Canada for the last ban/confiscation they bought gun magazines, looked at the pictures and circled the scary ones. That was what got most of the bull pups pulled off the shelf. They also ran the formula pistol grip + bayonet lug + folding stock = ban it to catch anything that was maybe not scary; they added in the issued FN FAL since the surplus market was about to be flooded and called it a day. Our Olympic shooters missed having their hardware seized by the skin of their teeth as those target pistols fell into the Saturday Night Special ban.

Yes, that's the exact way Federal Assault Weapons Ban and other regulations aping it were formulated. So what it's a .22 plinker, if it has a folding stock or a pistol grip, or both, BAN THIS FILTH. Hell, some even went as far in their stupidity as to list guns by name, some of them nonexistent. I believe that if someone told those idiots to ban Callahan Fullbore Autolock rifle, they'd do it.

[Skarclaw]

Your points are facetious and self serving.

 

The reality is that many more people are dying from preventable causes because of something they want to do. The druggies and drinkers and smokers are killing others and you're deluding yourself otherwise.

 

You're just an old fashioned bleeding heart liberal; but you are right that folks like you come in all ages and that does not make them particularly wise or smart. It is a mistake thinking that whoever agrees with you is intelligent and whoever doesn't isn't.

 

Now back to your nanny to tell you what to do. Perhaps some day you will grow up.

 

 

Did you miss the first couple of pages where I argued against further gun control?

 

comparing automatic weapons to cars and ciggerettes is apples and oranges as I have demonstrated and you have yet to rebuke. its not about deaths its about murder. You know that whole thing where I used a different colour font to address your points in turn without resorting to desperate personal insults? Give it a go sometime...

[Mazuran]

You can own pistols on a sec1 in the united kingdom.... well northern ireland for target shooting purposes and if sifficently in need you can even get a permit to carry for protection, however to the best of my knowledge (a friend with saod permits) you cannot bring the thing with you into england from where it is legally held and carried in N.I.

 

The fact that this is the case is wrong, if I could hold a sec1 handgun whilst shooting in belfast there is no legitimate reason to bar someone in kwnt from doing the same thing.

 

My views on carrying firearms label me extreme here but I believe it should be legal for licensed average people after a training course and an examination of their background.

 

NI is a very different situation to Kent, though - it's still volatile enough to justify someone owning a firearm (of any kind) for the purposes of self-defense. Last I heard though, handgun permits were given only whilst it was needed, if it was decided that your situation no longer justified the ownership of a handgun then they would rescind the permit. IIRC you can't just put a handgun on an FAC like other firearms.

(Second-hand info from an Northern Irish guy at my shooting club - may or may not still be accurate!)

 

There was a petition floating around to reclassify .22 "target" pistols as legal in the whole of the UK. No idea what happened to it though. It would however be a good compromise to allow all the olympic/ISSF shooting events to be do-able in this country. Probably should've been pushing for it pre-2012 though :/

[PureSilver]

My conclusion is that if we have strict laws that don't work, making them even stricter, as much as it looks good in the news, won't work either.

Um, as before, we have strict laws in the UK and they seem to be working just fine. No-one except Nigel Farage, a fringe politician if ever there was one, is complaining. But putting that aside, what, exactly, are you proposing as the solution to this non-problem? Loosening the laws?

 

Because, if you missed the obvious thing I pointed out, they're shoddily written and focus on irrelevant things like the shape of a buttstock or the presence or absence or flash hider.

So California's gun laws are restrictive in odd ways. So what? That doesn't in anyway invalidate the entirely sane underpinnings restricting the ownership of firearms generally and particularly, like you seem to think it does. Additionally, in case you'd forgotten, this topic was intended to be a discussion about unbanning handguns in the UK, not cigarettes, California, or any other bizarre rants you feel like embarking upon.

 

Even if you cherry-pick your data like that to prove your BS theories, you're still glossing over the very obvious fact that suddenly, the first place is taken by a district with another strict gun ban, and no illegal border activity!

BS theories? Remind me which one of us actually studied this? The first place is taken by DC, but 97% of the weapons used in crimes there are imported from neighbouring states where of course guns laws are much more lax. Is that DC's fault for having tough gun laws, or other states' fault for having virtually no control over who wanders in and buys lethal weaponry? Educate yourself; just 3% of gun crime committed in DC was with a gun bought in DC, and, of course, 81% of D.C.'s gun crimes were committed with handguns, the actual topic of discussion. Fully 59% of DC's gun crimes were committed with guns bought in Maryland and Virginia; 45% of all of DC's gun crimes were committed with guns purchased more than 100 miles from DC. What does this demonstrate? It demonstrates that it only takes a few moronically lax jurisdictions to enable the murder of thousands of people hundreds of miles away.

 

By the way, using the "per 100k citizens" excuse shows how absurdly inadequate the data is. For example, otherwise peaceful Finland has thirteen times as much "gun homicides" per 100k population than Poland, but if you look into the number of actual incidents, it turns out that the actual difference is... five. Another example? The UK has twice as much "gun homicides per 100k population" than Poland. That "twice as much", in the number of actual incidents, is... TWENTY FOUR. With much stricter gun laws and whatnot.

The reason Finland has a disproportionately high level of gun deaths compared to Poland, despite a similar number of deaths, is that Poland is home to almost 40 million people and Finland is home to barely 5 million. If that needs further explanation, you need more help than I can offer; ultimately it is not my fault you don't seem to understand how statistics work. Comparing the UK to Poland is more valid, with the former's population about one-and-a-half times that of the latter. Bear in mind that although the UK has a murder rate double that of Poland's, it's worth noting that it's 0.04 versus 0.02; you're talking about a difference of two hundredths of a death, not more than two tenths (versus Finland).

 

Ok so at your particular age you've just started to mature. I would suggest avoiding the trap of thinking that because you don't want to do something no one else should want to do it either. [...] That brand of logic when applied makes the user look like a zealous bigot. [...] Turn your energy towards making real change; but be aware that in most cases the people who oppose you are entitled to their opinion and not monsters. When you go to battle with that in mind you'll stand a better chance of success and also not look back decades later and wonder what you were thinking.

This is so completely patronising and moronic it's actually kind of jaw-dropping. Whether or not I want a handgun is irrelevant to the actual topic of this discussion, which is "should handguns be unbanned in the UK"; personally, much like FireKnife, in abstract I'd quite like a handgun. But, much like the overwhelmingly vast majority of the UK, including all mainstream politicians, I don't want one so much I'd be prepared to let other members of the public have one too. Since we're being patronising, I suggest you check the dictionary definition of 'bigot' as I'm pretty sure you don't think it means what it actually means.

 

While we're on the topic, I think I should address your suggestion that I don't think you're entitled to your opinion or you're a monster, which is a sort of victim complex. At no stage did anyone, myself included, suggest that those in favour of unbanning handguns were not entitled to their opinion. Nor did any of suggest that they were monsters. Misguided, definitely, but not monsters. So please, stick to what's actually being said.

 

Any sort of social traffic cop ban pushed through with that logic is flawed and as time goes by it becomes more clear how flawed those laws are.

Really? Well, it's been nearly two decades, so time has clearly gone by. What flaws are apparent in the UK's firearms legislation, exactly? You note that overturning the ban would still result in a de facto ban; are you basing that on anything more than "it stands to reason/I reckon" (hint - no, you aren't) and even assuming that you are correct, what, then, is the point of unbanning handguns if they will still be de facto banned?

 

Not to the point of the discussion but when I was your ages I also had no desire to own a firearm. [...] Over time that's changed and I now consider shooting something I do because I enjoy it.

Who says I have no desire to own a firearm? I own enough replicas to arm a James Bond film and spend an unhealthy amount of time online looking at pictures of guns. I've shot plenty of firearms from .22 pistols to an M2. Just because I don't think in the UK should be permitted to purchase handguns for no better reason that because they enjoy shooting them doesn't mean I don't want to own a firearm. We both think that people should be allowed to do what they want, within reason, so long as it does not have significant potential to negatively impact others. I believe on the basis of the available evidence that civilian ownership of handguns has significant potential to negatively impact others, you don't. That's all there is to it. Please don't assume that there is some fundamental gulf of age, understanding, or culture at work here, because there isn't.

[Mazuran]

Um, as before, we have strict laws in the UK and they seem to be working just fine. No-one except Nigel Farage, a fringe politician if ever there was one, is complaining. But putting that aside, what, exactly, are you proposing as the solution to this non-problem? Loosening the laws?

 

Well, the NRA and NSRA have complained since the ban came into force, Countryside Alliance and BASC (traditionally affiliated with the conservative party) have also at various times made noises about the handgun ban. Not to mention the owners of the handguns which needed to be destroyed as an effect of the ban.

 

There has always been a lobby to lift or adjust the ban, Nigel Farage is just the most high-profile person to have mentioned it recently. Shame really, if a more credible politician had mentioned it then something might actually have happened about it.

[paranoiddroid]

Thing is though you can have a pistol for target shooting as well!

 

The for self defence is a legit point however.

 

The shooting thing in 2012 was embarrasing they broke olympic rules because zomg guns is teh badzorz they built then pulled down a range rather than spend money on something that can be used for future shooters. If I wanted a pistol I would go to a scummy pub and buy one, the laws don't do *suitcase*.

 

Also one of the original promises of the EU was to make laws consistent across the road member states in many areas including firearms at the least strict level. Wheres my legal pistols and more dammit.

[Mike_West]

So California's gun laws are restrictive in odd ways. So what?

The oh-so-obvious fact that they're restrictive in completely moronic ways and are mostly PR stunts. At least the UK gun laws make some sense: weapons that pack a heavier punch are restricted in a way that limits fire rate and makes weapon handling more difficult.

 

a few moronically lax jurisdictions

I would like to point your attention to the state of Vermont that has no gun control whatsoever. The state that somehow has the least murders yearly and the smallest percentage of those being gun-related. While being more densely populated than other states with a similar amount of population that somehow have noticeably higher gun-related murder rates both by number of incidents and by 100k population. Now that's "moronically lax jurisdiction" for ya!

 

Comparing the UK to Poland is more valid, with the former's population about one-and-a-half times that of the latter. Bear in mind that although the UK has a murder rate double that of Poland's, it's worth noting that it's 0.04 versus 0.02; you're talking about a difference of two hundredths of a death, not more than two tenths (versus Finland).

OK, let's analyze the factors: it's 70 million folks versus 40 million folks. Fair enough. Poland has more lax laws regarding firearms - despite all the may-issue BS still going on and the plod brass still remembering the commie times fondly. A friend of mine owns a semi-auto Saiga rifle, a double-barrel shotgun and a revolver, another dude I met at a photoshoot brought a real civvie AKMS, cap-and-ball guns don't even have to be registered (another friend of mine, a 5' skinny girl, owns an Italian replica of a Remington NMA). Polish people also have a peculiar disregard for laws and tendency to doing stupid *suitcase* while drunk. Stupid *suitcase* like threatening their families with illegally obtained submachine guns and shooting those submachine guns at the patrol cars of cops that were called to intervene. Hell, one of our chiefs of police was shot dead in his own car and nobody can't figure out who did it and why since sixteen years now. Yet, in this backwards, xenophobic, crime-ridden hell of a country I just painted Poland to be, only nine gun-related murders happened in 2010, when in the surveillance-obsessed, sensitivity-trained, multi-cultural, yadda yadda United Kingdom, thirty three people were murdered with obviously illegal firearms the same year. Now, if both countries had the same population, a 60-million Poland would probably have the number of murders rise to fourteen, and a 40-million UK would probably have theirs drop to twenty (if we were to go with the "per 100k population" statistics). Still: less gun-related murders happened in the less-controlled country that has a fair amount of problems with smuggling of pretty damn much everything, be it booze, cigarettes, drugs or Chechens. We had no gun bans, no knife bans, nothing of the sort since the Commie times (and that'd be 25 years now), yet somehow our gun-related murder rates dropped by a factor of ten from 1995 to 2010. Over that same time, UK had theirs stay at roughly the same level despite a handgun ban in 1997 and the VCRA in 2006, with some years being particularly bad and 2007 being particularly good. Mind explaining how that happened, Mr Magister Juris from Cambridge? I'm just a stupid hick with a degree in Useless Sciences (Philosophy) from Backwoods Uni in Backwoodistan, after all.

 

I believe on the basis of the available evidence that civilian ownership of handguns has significant potential to negatively impact others, you don't.

Well, on the basis of available statistical and empirical evidence (to say nothing of a study by Don Kates and Gary Mauser, published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy) I believe that civilian ownership of handguns does not impact others negatively nor does it have a potential to do so, and you're flinging anecdata cooked up by the counterparts of MAG and other uneducated old bags, then published by Fuller-Schitt, LLC. Or you're flat-out pushing disingenuous assertions reinforcing your personal agenda. I don't know which one is worse.

 

Also one of the original promises of the EU was to make laws consistent across the road member states in many areas including firearms at the least strict level. Wheres my legal pistols and more dammit.

Sorry, they're too busy deciding on the acceptable curve of a banana and the exact amount of money needed to "fight global warming" (mostly by fleecing gullible schmucks believing that steaming pile of BS).

[Mazuran]

 Yet, in this backwards, xenophobic, crime-ridden hell of a country I just painted Poland to be, only nine gun-related murders happened in 2010, when in the surveillance-obsessed, sensitivity-trained, multi-cultural, yadda yadda United Kingdom, thirty three people were murdered with obviously illegal firearms the same year.

 

Only 9 gun-related murders in a year?  Source plz, out of curiosity.

[Mike_West]

Only 9 gun-related murders in a year?  Source plz, out of curiosity.

All statistics for both Poland and the UK in my posts were taken from www.gunpolicy.org. The most recent data for Poland are from 2010, but if you want, I might look at the ones posted at the official police website.

[Danke]

Did you miss the first couple of pages where I argued against further gun control?

 

comparing automatic weapons to cars and ciggerettes is apples and oranges as I have demonstrated and you have yet to rebuke. its not about deaths its about murder. You know that whole thing where I used a different colour font to address your points in turn without resorting to desperate personal insults? Give it a go sometime...

Nope; still not making any sense.

 

It's like you’re a parrot and you’re just regurgitating things you've been told instead of reasoning.

 

I’m super glad you’ve breached the forth wall and trotted out the term “automatic weapons”.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen that is the dictionary definition of a handgun.

[Skarclaw]

Not once have I tried to insult you... Address my arguments or why bother? I assume you aren't getting paid for this so whats the motivation?

[Nickona]

 

There has always been a lobby to lift or adjust the ban, Nigel Farage is just the most high-profile person to have mentioned it recently. Shame really, if a more credible politician had mentioned it then something might actually have happened about it.

 

Problem is all the "credible" politicians would never dare to suggest something like lifting the ban on handguns in the UK but they would be scared of upsetting someone and they would also only suggest something if they felt they had the majority of the population behind them. The thing you have to remember about Clegg, Cameron and Miliband is they are all "wind vane" politicians and unlike Farage don't actually stand for anything and will just go with public opinion. 

 

I personally would support lifting the ban and also lifting the ban on semi-auto weapons as well as both were just knee-jerk reactions. In my opinion it is normally better to try and restrict first before deciding to employ a full ban as bans are very hard to retreat from.

[hitmanNo2]

Even if the Government employed a group of experts and they recommended some easements on the bans, they would be ignored anyway.  Government knows best...

[Danke]

Not once have I tried to insult you... Address my arguments or why bother? I assume you aren't getting paid for this so whats the motivation?

I think your argument is you can read a dictionary? I did try to engage but you're more concerned with scoring points.

 

Bad news, now that I presume you're out of kiddy school it's time to learn something new. There is such a thing as a stupid question.

 

If you want to post stupid questions and demand people tailor their opinion to your dictionary definition that’s OK but it’s just a little too fascist for me (and obviously I mean that in the dictionary definition intent and not in an insulting manner).

 

If you really want to engage folks in that level of debate YouTube is always open.

[Mazuran]

All statistics for both Poland and the UK in my posts were taken from www.gunpolicy.org. The most recent data for Poland are from 2010, but if you want, I might look at the ones posted at the official police website.

 

Thanks, was genuinely curious. I'll have a better look at that site later, compare to official UK statistics etc.

 

 

Problem is all the "credible" politicians would never dare to suggest something like lifting the ban on handguns in the UK but they would be scared of upsetting someone and they would also only suggest something if they felt they had the majority of the population behind them. The thing you have to remember about Clegg, Cameron and Miliband is they are all "wind vane" politicians and unlike Farage don't actually stand for anything and will just go with public opinion. 

 

I personally would support lifting the ban and also lifting the ban on semi-auto weapons as well as both were just knee-jerk reactions. In my opinion it is normally better to try and restrict first before deciding to employ a full ban as bans are very hard to retreat from.

 

True about the politicians.

 

The semi-auto ban is in some ways more difficult to change than the handgun ban - in the UK, the only shooting discipline which could really fight for it is the practical/service rifle crowd, which is a niche group in an already niche hobby. There's just a lack of demand for it. Same goes for any pistol shooting discipline other than .22 calibre - they're not ISSF or Olympic sports, which puts pressure on people to justify ownership for sporting purposes (The only real defence available for wanting to own a handgun or semi-auto full-bore). 

 

(Deliberately avoiding the issue of the lethality of different calibres, which is likely just something to derail the topic with). 

 

Even if the Government employed a group of experts and they recommended some easements on the bans, they would be ignored anyway.  Government knows best...

 

See Professor David Nutt and the drug legislation shenaniganry.

[Skarclaw]

I think your argument is you can read a dictionary? I did try to engage but you're more concerned with scoring points.

 

Bad news, now that I presume you're out of kiddy school it's time to learn something new. There is such a thing as a stupid question.

 

If you want to post stupid questions and demand people tailor their opinion to your dictionary definition that’s OK but it’s just a little too fascist for me (and obviously I mean that in the dictionary definition intent and not in an insulting manner).

 

If you really want to engage folks in that level of debate YouTube is always open.

 

we've both had our say and I don't think we will agree on this - so whatever. 

[Mike_West]

On a related note, and referring to my earlier post on the various illegal guns recovered in Poland: this article from Pacific Standard shows an example of what guns turn up in the UK and how:

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/how-hitmen-operate-73430/

The weapon used in this hit is noteworthy as it was the first time that an AK-47 assault rifle – seemingly originally belonging to the Hungarian Prison Service – had been used on the streets of Britain.

Well, that one did travel some distance...

Thanks, was genuinely curious. I'll have a better look at that site later, compare to official UK statistics etc.

I actually did compare it to the official Polish statistics I could find and was a bit surprised, but since the data on that page came from WHO, I can't tell who messed up: the Polish cops who rolled attempted murders into successful ones in their stats, or WHO that might not have gotten complete data.

 

The semi-auto ban is in some ways more difficult to change than the handgun ban

And has more reasonable justification, at least one following some internal logic.

[paranoiddroid]

The worst part of the bans is the incremental stuff served to cripple the British shooting lobby because it fostered a protectiveness of each subgroups pet area and a willingness to throw different disciplines to the wolves.

 

E.g Oh ban pistols or service rifle competition semi's because thats not 'real shooting'. I was im the berreta gun room asking about prices on m3's and whether buying one on an sgc then converting it from an s2 to a FAC held sec1 was better or easier than waiting and buying it as a sec1 gun because I want to shoot practical shotgun, a tactical style event. When I mentioned that was where my interests lie, from the looks I got from staff you'd have thought I'd announced my interest in competion kitten murder.

 

The govrnment foster this in order to keep the shpoting groups quiet and too busy protecting their niche rather than presenting a united front. Hell one particular tactical match managed to get themselves written into licences as an approved reason to own, you shoot the local clubs shotgun match tough, you shoot a rival match series, in the words of the soup nazi, 'no shotgun for you'. Imagine if to keep your defence to skirmish you had to play at the mall x number of times a year.

[Mike_West]

The govrnment foster this in order to keep the shpoting groups quiet and too busy protecting their niche rather than presenting a united front. Hell one particular tactical match managed to get themselves written into licences as an approved reason to own, you shoot the local clubs shotgun match tough, you shoot a rival match series, in the words of the soup nazi, 'no shotgun for you'. Imagine if to keep your defence to skirmish you had to play at the mall x number of times a year.

And here I thought that only our society and, by extension, government was able to do this kind of selfish super*rickroll*ery.

[Nickona]

Very true about the different disciplines trampling over the other in order to keep theirs going. We need a united front like they have in America where everyone defends everyone else's reasons. Its very easy for the government to employ a divide and conquer attitude is everyone is split

[TheFull9]

The internet:  Where my opinions will never change anything in the real world, but I'll hang on to them like an alcoholic tramp to a bottle of white lightning.

 

I'd love for proper pistols (rather than 2 foot long .22 1911 clone abortions) and full bore semi-autos to come back.  No justification or stats, that's just what I want.  It's never going to happen just as many many many things I want are not ever going to happen, but it's always fun to chat about what you'd do with the money from a Euro Millions win.

 

You can already get a 12 bore semi-auto saiga with as big of a magazine as you can manufacture/buy on a Sec 1 FAC so IMO the laws are relaxed enough for mass shootings to occur with legally obtained weapons.  Maybe pistols coming back would make it worse, maybe not, if anyone here's got a gen-you-ine functioning crystal ball then I'll accept whatever they say.

[creepingfear]

The Yanks have got it right with firearms, though I personally thnk it should be even more lax. Get rid of the NFA then it'll be bang on the money.

 

Why should I or anyone else be denied to right to have access to firearms for the purpose of personal defence?

 

The 2A gets a great big *fruitcage* thumbs up from me. And *fruitcage* anyone else who thinks we shouldn't.

[shmook]

There is a small part of that is glad certain firearms are banned here. That part is my wallet. I would have spent thousands I don't have on guns, ammo and training if they were available...