Europe, Why don’t we have guns?

daithicarr · Coal Joined: Jan 29, 2007 Posts: 2

In Ireland we had a whopping 65 murders last year, maybe 30-40 gun related and most of them organised crime, one criminla shooting another , except for one case where an innocent buy stander is injured. Guns were banned in ireland because of the whole thing with the IRA and Britian. it is still possible to get a shotgun or hunting rifle if you have land to shoot on or access to land to shoot on. the banning and seizing of all other weapons and denied the IRA access to powerfull military firearms, so they had to import them from America and the police managed to seize a high proportion of them and thus reduce the capacity for violence.
The only guns that come into Ireland now are brought by drug gangs, but the penaltys for using or carrying them which you can still be charged with trying to undermine the existance of the state ( a left over from the IRA times),this means that the criminals will only take them out of hiding when there is a definit target, normally a high ranking memeber of an opposing drug gang.
Giving the amount of alchohol related fighting on our streets if guns were available to the general populous it the rate of murder would be much , much higher.
unless i become a high ranking member of a drug gang i am unlikely to ever encounter an intruder armed with a gun, maybe a knife, but id prefer that, it means my baseball bat is an equal match and i dont have to worry about a stray bullet killing one of my kids or the kids getting their hands on it when i am away.

I cant see how they could ever remove guns from american culture since the criminal elements have such a ready access to them, but it is still possible to stop dangerous eliments gaining access to them here and thus making our society safer.

As for goverment control the irish armed forces are tiny and could neber keep the Irish populous subdued if they opposed the goverment en masse.

BrotherKalashnikov · Coal Joined: May 24, 2007 Posts: 12

Well i kinda like Serbia because of all the "Schmeisser"SMG's just lying around,Armageddon will really bring out the old party favorites around here.
Mauser,Walther,Luger,Beretta,Tokarev,Degtyariev,Maxim,you name 'em they'll show up arond here ...
Hell there are still people with dull gleaming Stenguns back in their closets or cupboards out there.
General Kalashnikovs Sons and Daughters as well as Eugene Stoner's babys will get to spend some quality playtime with the older children on this particular block......again.

Forget about the Serbs disarming anywhere in the near future as well folks...
Once the oil really becomes expensive and the "Peacekeepers" will be withdrawn due to the rising costs of their operations,you will see a flare-up of some unresolved issues taken care off one way or the other...and this time the rest off the world will too busy with their own problems.
Serbia still has their own oil iirc...not much but still enough to keep a couple of tanks rolling for a long time. Evil or Very Mad

so what was the questions about not having any guns about?
_________________
303,.308,7.62x54R,7.92x57,.30'06,.50BMG.
from cover to concealment since 1884.

Any movement in history which attempts to perpetuate itself, becomes reactionary. Josip Broz Tito (1892 - 1980) ...

nemo

I live Sweden.

Two weeks ago I went running along some forest trail or other, and happened to pass by the town's dedicated pistol range. Seeing people there, I stopped and chatted with one of the shooters for a while out of curiosity. There clearly is a "gun culture" where I live, but it's radically different from what I was exposed to when I lived in the US. I saw lots of .22's, some 9mm semis and the odd revolver. I didn't get any "redneck" or "tactic-lol" vibe - I met what seemed like regular people who were serious about putting holes in paper. I realize that these shooters exist stateside as well, but there was a conspicuous lack of camouflage and machismo I can't quire put my finger on.
Mainly, I think this difference stems from the very un-american view that self defense isn't seen as a legitimate reason to own weaponry - we essentially live in a disarmed society, and there's a strong consensus that we want to keep it like that.

Personally, I'm a bit ambiguous about the subject. I like guns well enough in my own way. I'm a decent shot with a rifle (top 20% in my army class or so) and I wouldn't mind being able to legally own a boomstick or two on my own "just in case". However, I don't want my weird beady-eyed neighbor who mutters to himself to have this opportunity, as I feel a lot safer knowing he's almost certainly unarmed, and I am willing to trade my being disarmed with him being so as well. Call it a balance of non-terror if you will.
Also, if I really wanted to own weapons, I could just go through the somewhat arduous process of getting licensed - this would include theoretical and practical training as well as proficiency testing, it would cost a pretty penny and take at least a year in the case of pistols before I could expect to legally own my very own semi-auto, which I'd only be allowed to use as and expensive hole punch - concealed (or open) carry is a no-no. I can't be arsed to go through the hassle, though I've seriously considered a long arm/hunting license on occasion ( I tagged along a moose hunter with a great dog once, and it was very exciting).

Obviously, the criminal elite is well armed here just like it is everywhere. Every once in a while you read about a professional robbery or gangster showdown where automatic weapons where used. Thing is, you also get to read about some idiot robbing 7-11 with an axe, or someone getting stabbed for no good reason at all(like our foreign minister Anna Lind). Many gun proponents will argue that an axe or knife is just as lethal as an AK, but any reasonable person will disagree. Whenever I read about cold steel being used to commit crimes, I see this as evidence that gun control can actually work in many parts of the world, as the axe robbers clearly couldn't get their hands on better weapons. Whether gun control could effectively work in the U.S. is a different matter altogether, and I don't really hold a strong opinion on that subject.

Chris25

Here in the UK a lot of the hardcore drug dealers and criminals have illegal hand pistols.

Guns were banned in 1997 and ever since then gun crime has dramitically increased.

Smudger

Gun crime has not dramatically risen in the UK, knife crime has primarily because it is contary to the media quite hard and a bigger decision for someone to get hold of a gun rather than just a knife to "defend" themselves with

I always think Bill Hicks sketch about the 1st Iraq war and gun use in the US is a very true and black comedy way of looking at this issue.

the reality is c.80% of murders are family related ("alwyas suspect the spouse 1st") and so the more widespread guns are the more the punch-ups and non-fatal knifings - however wrong these are become a murder investigation.

This is on reason why the Swiss are re-considering their everyne with a gun home defence strategy as it has resulted in an above average death rate as people shoot each other over an argument about a boundary hedge rather than throwing dog poo over it (not that i would advocate that either!).

The we need guns to defend ourselves from criminals - well its a bit like the dont to get involved in fights with streetfighters/brawllers argument. (because you are less likely to be used to fighting and so more likely to lose...). If a crimnal pulls a gun and you pull one he will shoot you as he has little to lose (and probably thinks its cool) while if you dont you have a better chance to survive.

In terms of the nonsense argument about Europeans not having guns because the government does not want us to have them in case of a revolution....well firstly the government/and police have much bigger guns (often with armour plating....) and so would be able to put down any minority uprising pretty easily while if it was a broad based uprising by definition the army/police families would have an input into this and be toppled. (Watch Zimbabwae over the next year - its taken longer than people thought i grant you and maybe could have benefited from outside help earlier but I suspect that pesky second iraq war had soemthing to do with that and the stomach for getting involved).

Coming slightly back on topic - i suspect the underlying question is will we need guns post peak oil? again not really as groups of people with guns will kill each other quicker than groups without guns. gun carriers will have a small advantage for a brief time but would soon run out of ammo or be fairly immobile if they stay near to an ammo store. i.e. if it really got so bad the last place i would want to be is in the US where everyone is walking around all "tooled up".

Cheers
Smudger

PS Archery quite a hobby here in Europe, sustainable too.

Twilight · Expert Joined: Mar 02, 2007 Posts: 2971 Location: UK

There was a shoot-out in a nearby city a week or so ago, it was such an exceptional occurence that it made several pages in all the papers in the county. Funny thing was, the first guy to open fire had his gun explode in his hand at the first shot, because it was a home workshop made piece of crap. The rest blazed away point blank and didn't hit anything, finally resorting to bashing someone on the head with a rock (so weakly, he was able to walk away and catch a lift to the hospital from a passing motorist).

Gun control in Britain works, because this is the pathetically low standard of gun crime we have to deal with. Complete novice shots using deactivated or replica pistols modified in a workshop and ammunition of unknown age and origin. No quality control at all. At least in the US a criminal can be reasonably certain of the reliability of the ammunition he buys at the supermarket.

This is why fewer than 100 people are killed by guns in the UK each year, for 60m population. Not just because of relatively few weapons in circulation, but lack of quality and practice - unsung achievements of gun control. You're in far deeper crap if the criminal has a knife - those don't miss.

If private gun ownership was legalised, criminals would use guns in preference of knives and (this is important) be far more accomplished shots using a superior product. No thanks. I'd rather be unarmed and them not know what they're doing.

Chris25

I guess chavs+guns= disaster

BTW replica converted guns make very little of the crime rates compared to handguns which are illegal.

You were actually safer when guns were legal. Until some nutter opened fire on helpless school kids, then gun laws changed when Blair got into power.

The guns used at dunblane were large magnum pistols. Which I think would be madness to legalize, but small target and hunting .22 pistols I see no problems with.

The reason i'd support legalization of these is because I do shooting myself and a .22 hunting pistol would be great for popping off grey squirrels.

Smudger