Anti-Gun Policies at Work

[darrels joy]

Britain looking to ban knives now, too!

Posted on December 4, 2008
Anyone with half a brain could tell you what would happen if you ban guns. It does not halt all violent crimes… it just means murderous criminals would find new ways to kill people they want to kill. And that’s exactly what Britain has been seeing, especially towards teenagers. Teen killings have apparently doubled in London alone, with one teenager being murdered every 5 days in Britain, and 2/3 of those murders being stabbings. The British response? Get rid of the knives!

In response, the Met launched its largest operation yet targeting knives, called Operation Blunt 2, using airport-style metal detectors, search wands and emergency stop-and-search powers. Since it began in the Spring, 150,000 people have been searched, 5,370 people arrested and 3,242 knives seized.

Tough enforcement measures, a high detection rate and millions of pounds being spent on anti knife crime initiatives had not stopped the rate of killing rising sharply from 17 in 2006, 16 each in 2005 and 2004, and 15 in 2003. But the latest drive has significantly curbed the rate of killings in London in the last three months.

A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: “We are very concerned about younger and younger people getting involved, being willing to use knives in violent confrontations and losing their lives. We want to create that environment where, if you are prepared to carry a knife, you can expect to be searched and found out. Every knife we recover could be a life saved.”

See? This is pure genius because obviously it’s the knife that is dangerous… not the murderous teenagers using them. Good thing Britain banned guns, huh?

When will people realize that banning weapons does not stop crime? For Christ’s sake, go ahead and ban knives, Britain, but then what are you going to do when you see more deaths caused by bludgeoning with baseball bats or clubs? People who want to murder people will find a way, even if you take guns and knives away. You would think that the increase of stabbing murders would have shown these idiots that, but NO. Instead, they’re going down the exact same road of ridiculousness.

How far down that road do they need to travel before they start to understand that the weapon does not commit the crime and banning weapons will not solve the problem?
http://www.stoptheaclu.com/archives/...nives-now-too/

[Paulus]

Originally Posted by 39mto39g

Ban all guns except shot guns and bolt action rifles. There is no reason to have an hand gun or an auto rifle, except to kill people.

Ron

Ron,

Sure, go after the law-abiding citizens. Don't bother with the gang-bangers, they're just deprived youngsters, right - NOT

Now, if you were being sarcastic with your statement, my apologies, sir.

[darrels joy]

Exclusive: Guns Don’t Kill People – Communists Do

Ben-Peter Terpstra


It may be said that there are two sides in the “gun debate.” On the one hand, we have big city, anti-gun socialists. On the other, libertarians and farmers. Guess which side the legacy media sides with?

But really the beauty of this “debate” is found in its great variety of hysterical myths.

Myth No. 1: There are more “hot burglaries” in pro-gun America than “gun-control” Britain

Au Contraire. States John R. Lott Junior in More Guns, Less Crime: “In Canada and Britain, both with tough gun control laws, almost half of all burglaries are ‘hot burglaries.’ In contrast, the United States, with fewer restrictions, has a ‘hot burglary’ rate of only 13 percent.”

Hot burglaries take place when the resident (or residents) are at home. Therefore, they are intrusive crimes, as Madonna and thousands of British people can testify.

Big-picture academics, of course, base their studies on strong empirical evidence. This is most important. In America’s case, big-picture studies reveal that would-be home invaders fear breaking into occupied houses simply because the risks are too high. What if the owner has a gun? Yes, this very question haunts would-be home invaders. But that’s the point, isn’t it?

Myth No. 2: America’s gun culture encourages school shootings.

The argument is, in part, a product of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine DVD. Ignore the fact that some of the key scenes were staged. For Moore, the “gun debate” is an opportunity to make money. Indeed, he charged victims to watch his “docu-ganda” film.

Yet, there were thousands of guns in schools during the “repressed” 1950s. Students brought rifles on trains for school-based sporting activities. Later, young men jumped on NYC’s subways with their weapons of choice. Boys played with guns on weekends.

America doesn’t have a gun problem or a knife problem; campaigning reporters do have a problem with history, however. When we revisit the 1950s, we find context. If guns kill people, then where are all the bullet wounds on my father’s pro-gun generation?

Myth No. 3: Guns are a danger to their owners.

It’s a simple argument, but there’s one glaring flaw: guns are tools. One can’t single out a handful of accidents, and bury the many ways in which guns protect owners. We can, however, see guns as tools to defend grandmothers, scare would-be rapists, and hunt (among other things).

In the real world, more people die in motor-vehicle accidents. More people die in motorcycles accidents. More people die in fires.

An American is more likely to die choking on an object. Falling down the stairs is more dangerous. Bicycles also claim more lives, as do beds (or falling out of them).

In the end, bathtubs are riskier too. Accidental gun deaths don’t even come close to making the top ten. Step inside the weird syllogisms of Joe Socialist’s mindset and you’ll be banning cars, motorbikes, matches, stairs, bicycles, beds, and – wait for it - bathtubs.

Myth No. 4: Gun control laws prevent massacres.

No more serious abuse excuse takes place in the context of the “gun debate.” Let’s return to a controversial, familiar example. Enter: the infamous Columbine tragedy.

States David Von Drehle in TIME Magazine (April 30, 2007): “There’s a telling moment in Michael Moore’s film Bowling for Columbine, in which singer Marilyn Mansondismisses the idea that listening to his lyrics contributed to the disintegration of Harris and Klebold. What the Columbine killers needed, Manson suggests, was for some one to listen to them.” Adds Von Drehle: “This is the narcissist’s view of narcissism: everything would be fine if only he received more attention. The real problem can be found in the killer’s mirror.”

Myth No. 5: The media knows best, Bush is leading the Wild West.

Hey, it rhymes so it must be true, right?

Just curious, but how wild was the so-called “Wild West”? Really. If you want “wild,” try Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Red Russia, or even Mao’s China. All communistic or militant socialistic regimes banned law-abiding citizens from purchasing guns.

In the end, yesterday’s “Wild West” and today’s “Wild West” don’t even compare to the brutalities inflicted upon civilians in “gun-control” regimes. Banning law abiding citizens from buying arms, history argues, gives police states and criminals the edge.

Summarily, then, we have available to us mountains of big-picture studies. What’s more, families don’t deserve to live like prisoners. A mature society doesn’t engage in selective-focusing. It looks in the mirror. Nor does she hide facts.

And yet, some radical elements wish to ban cars, and bathtubs (if smelling them is any indication), but stairwells, and matches? As the Left’s comrade Josef Stalin said: “Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns; why should we let them have ideas?”

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Ben-Peter Terpstra, an Australian-European satirist, is a contributor to a number of websites, from On Line Opinion (Australia's e-journal of social and political debate) to American Thinker. His pieces are also posted on his blog, Pizza Trays and Beer Bottles.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org...pub_detail.asp

[phuloi]

I have one ordered.

[darrels joy]

Britain moves to curb rise in knife violence

Oli Scarff / Getty Images

A mobile metal detector is set up at a shopping center in London to deter people from carrying knives. In London alone, 85 people were fatally stabbed last year. Guns are strictly controlled in Britain and shootings rare.


[COLOR=#333333! important]In London alone, 85 people were fatally stabbed last year. The Labor government, under fire from Conservatives, puts forward a zero-tolerance policy.[/color]
[COLOR=#999999! important]By Henry Chu
January 5, 2009 [/color]
Reporting from London -- Nabeer Bakurally's short life came to an end on a chilly, inky night in November, on a street in East London.

The 19-year-old was out late with a friend when a group of young men attacked them, possibly after some kind of dispute. There was a lethal glint of metal, and minutes later Bakurally lay bleeding on the sidewalk, stabbed in the heart.



His death added to a grim roll call of fatal knife attacks in Britain in 2008, possibly the worst such year on record. In a country where guns are strictly controlled and shootings are much rarer than in the United States, the surge in stabbings has propelled the issue of knife crime to the top of the public safety agenda.

Like Bakurally, many of the victims have been teenagers, including Robert Knox, an aspiring actor who had won a minor role as a student wizard in the film "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" due out this year. Knox, 18, died from multiple stab wounds in May after trying to protect his younger brother from an attacker outside a bar in southern England.

The Labor government is now talking of a zero-tolerance policy for anyone caught carrying a knife, a stance with which the opposition Conservatives agree. But that has not stopped the issue from becoming a political blame game featuring accusations of lying and replays of a popular public debate over whether British society is "broken."


Last week the Conservatives released statistics that they say show a record number of fatal stabbings in England and Wales last year -- five a week, on average, or a 30% increase since Labor came to power in 1997.

"It is quite shocking to think that these numbers are the highest since they started recording these sorts of incidents back in 1977," James Brokenshire, an opposition spokesman on public safety issues, told the British Broadcasting Corp. "It does paint this picture of knife crime having increased and the measures that the government has tried to introduce not being effective."

Among those measures is a special police operation against knife crime in 10 problem areas, including London, where more than 85 people were stabbed to death last year. It empowers police to conduct spot checks and monitor how easily minors can buy knives in shops, which is illegal here.

The government has called the crackdown a success and disputes the Conservatives' figures. But it was forced to make an embarrassing public apology last month after its own statistical watchdog criticized it for releasing misleading partial figures that officials had touted as proof of a drop in knife violence. The full statistics actually revealed a rise in some knife-related offenses.

Fed up with political squabbling, activists have organized demonstrations, including a large one in London in September. They also have mounted their own campaigns to pressure officials into action and prod communities into being more watchful of the kind of activity their youths engage in.

Gangs are increasingly a fixture in blighted urban areas, and gang warfare has scared more and more Britons into retreating behind locked doors and shuttered windows. The murder conviction of a teenager in Liverpool for the death of 11-year-old Rhys Jones, who was caught in gang crossfire, made headlines last month.

"These gangs need to be smashed," said Gary Trowsdale, a spokesman for the Damilola Taylor Trust, an anti-violence group set up in the memory of a boy who was stabbed to death in 2000, days before his 11th birthday, by two boys barely older than he. "We do have a problem in our inner cities, with poverty being rife and deprivation on a scale that American inner cities have seen for some time."

If there has been a breakdown of societal values, as many Britons believe, then the media may also have had a hand in it with such glorification of violence as in the Batman movie "The Dark Knight," Trowsdale said.

Actor Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker was an artistic tour de force, but "he spent 99% of his time on-screen holding a knife. We need to think about that," Trowsdale said.

"You're a 10-year-old watching Heath Ledger . . . You watch the way he uses that knife. Then you go on Sony PlayStation and play a game . . . where you're rewarded points for stabbing somebody. You go [out] on the streets and feel threatened. What are you going to do?"

Some youths now carry bladed weapons out of fear for their safety, without malevolent intent, but that needs to be discouraged because the knives can be turned on them, Trowsdale said.

The government agrees. It is calling for punishment for anyone caught with a knife. In a nod to the British affinity for publicly shaming offenders, the sentence could take the form of community service, such as clearing graffiti, during which violators would have to wear bright orange jackets stamped with the words "community payback."

"We're not going to have knives on our streets," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said recently. "We're going to protect our young people, and we're going to stop the knife crime that has caused so much damage, so much grief and so much anguish to so many families in this country."

Laborites hope that a clampdown on knife violence will help erase some of the Conservatives' lead in the opinion polls. The government must call a general election by the middle of next year.

But reducing violence of any kind could prove tough as Britain's economic gloom deepens. In the past, downturns in the economy have usually been accompanied by a rise in crime.

"We're worried," Trowsdale said. "We're going to be ever more vigilant. This is a time for everybody to think about the consequences of what this recession might bring."

henry.chu@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,6897580.story

[darrels joy]

Gun Sales Continue to Surge in December



Well, there's at least one sector of the economy doing very well.

Despite a weak economy, gun sales are continuing to increase amid concerns that incoming lawmakers will institute a new gun ban on law-abiding Americans. Data derived from the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) shows a 24 percent increase in firearm purchaser background checks for the month of December 2008 (1,523,426 checks) over December 2007 (1,230,525 checks). This increase follows a 42 percent rise in NICS checks for the preceding month, the highest number of checks in NICS history. FBI background checks are required under federal law for all individuals purchasing firearms from federally licensed retailers. These checks serve as a strong indicator of actual sales.

A recent poll of hunters and target shooters by Southwick Associates Inc., in which 80 percent of respondents said they expect it will become more difficult to purchase firearms under the incoming administration and congress, explains the increase in sales.

"Sales of firearms, in particular handguns and semi-automatic hunting and target rifles, are fast outpacing inventory," said NSSF President and CEO Stephen L. Sanetti. "It's clear that many people are concerned about possible gun bans under the incoming Congress and are reacting accordingly."

http://jammiewearingfool.blogspot.co...-december.html

[SuperScout]

Originally Posted by phuloi

I have one ordered.

That has got to be the most profound bumper sticker of the Year! If you'll email the address, I'll order one as well. It is the perfect "Up Yours" to the Bastard and his minions.

[phuloi]

Brice, I`ll do ya one better...watch your mailbox.

[SEATJERKER]

...

..."all aboard",...

...how can I get one also,...

...

[phuloi]

Due to popular demand for bumper sticker: http://www.discountbookdistributors.com/