You know those British gun control laws that are the envy of the people at the Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center, mikeb302000 and other fans of the constitution? The laws that will bring peace and tranquility to this sadly gun-crazed country if only we have the moral courage to look beyond the worst devils of our nature to enact them? Well just as a point of reference, those laws aren’t exactly working out quite like the ever-more intrusive British government had hoped. Sure, it’s hard to believe that a wide-ranging abrogation of individual liberty could have negative consequences, but there it is. And as Liverpudlians can attest, life ain’t no picnic now that all the guns are ‘gone’…
The independent.co.uk details the recent exploits of one particular group of adolescent yoots (one as young as 13) who’ve been terrorizing cabbies and convenience store owners.
Jobe Kilbride (above) was the youngest of a gang of five teenagers who robbed shopkeepers and taxi drivers in Liverpool at gunpoint.
One victim was shot in the neck while others, all chosen at random, had a loaded shotgun pointed in their faces.
Judge Mark Brown described him and his young accomplices as capable of ‘ruthless villainy’ and of having ‘no sense of danger’.
Jailing them, he said people were ‘sick and tired’ of the gangs and gun crime that blighted Liverpool..
But isn’t that unpossible? How could a modern British city live under the fear of gun crime these days with all of the laws on the books saying you can’t do that? Sure, if it were, say, New York City the locals could blame all of the loose gun laws in surrounding states for their gun crime issues. But the UK is a frickin’ island. Pointing to gun shows in Virginia as the source of their problems might be a little awkward.
Judge Brown said the gang members had no respect for authority and ‘limited thinking skills’.
He said: ‘This case highlights the scourge of gun crime and gang culture which we have in our society today. The residents of those communities are sick and tired of it.’
Addressing Jobe Kilbride, he said his use of a shotgun was a ‘terrible, sad and disturbing state of affairs’.
Harrumph!
Judge Brown didn’t seem to have anything to say to the good people of Liverpool who live in fear for their lives every day because of sociopaths like Jobe and his crew who really couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what may be illegal in Blighty. No, those people are left to cower in fear, give up their money and pray the little hood holding the shotgun in their face doesn’t get too twitchy. That, m’lord, is a terrible, sad and disturbing state of affairs.
“Blighty” “That, m’lord, is a terrible, sad and disturbing state of affairs.
“I agree.Very disturbing indeed.
Having guns in U.K. is not acceptable because some armed yoots with ‘limited thinking skills’ may get hurt. Just give them what they want and they will go away. Just a side question, where are the parents?
Last sentence of the article says “If they get involved in this type of thing, there are only two outcomes – they’re either looking at a lengthy prison sentence or being seriously injured or killed.”
Not likely being killed or injured since no one else has guns. I am glad to see they got stiff sentences of 4-9 years. Wonder what British Juvi is like.
“Wonder what British Juvi is like””…
Probably something similar to Hogwarts, sans the magic wands and games of Quidditch!
lol
British ‘Juvi’, actually a young offenders institution, is considerably more cosy that what your american gangbangers might experience. Playstations and DVD players are the norm, comfy cells, with mobiles and drugs smuggled in at their convienience. And as to a 4 year sentence? Nope, that person would be out within 2 years. Not even long enough to earn a degree. A minor blip in their criminal careers.
They don’t want to live in bad neighborhoods but keep raising bad kids…
Success in crrime control is much like success in a counter-insurgency campaign. It is not enough to have an armed security force in the area because they can’t be everywhere at the same time. It requires the active cooperation of the population to fill in for the official security force when they are not there. That is the lesson of every CI campaign.
It takes the active paricipation of the community working with the police to restore civic order in a crime ridden neighborhood. You won’t get vulnerable people to work with you if they do not have means to protect themselves against armed thugs because you go home at the end of the day and the locals stay. If the thugs have guns then the good people need them to defend themselves.
All the Second Amendment really says is the citizen is the first line of defense against both foreign enemies and civil disorder. The citizen is both his own first line of defense and grouped together in communities the collective first line of defense. You defend your neighbor by first defending yourself. If you disarm the citizenry, civic order is endangered and the criminals rule the streets. Once the thugs rule the streets it is very costly to take the streets back.
Am I missing something here? These kids have a shotgun and neither the police, nor the citizens, have any guns? How, exactly, were they stopped then? How were they caught?
I’m sure they just turned themselves in after huddling together and coming to realize the err of their ways. Or, more likely, just ran out of shells.
Hey England: How do the bad guys lose when they have all the firepower?
Shot guns are actually obtainable, but it’s difficult. Probably stolen from someone. Of course it could have been around for a ling time since they most likely did nt get all the guns off the island.
It is like GS650G says, It is possible to get a license, but I point out not to carry.
It was a few years ago I was there but the locals warned me about going into certain areas day or night. Plenty of cameras around but generally you are on your own. About the only thing left is martial arts, I guess with enough training and a healthy lifestyle you could defend yourself a bit.
Of course the scum won’t challenge a healthy male that looks like he can kick their ass.
Some real pretty boys in them pictures, I bet the hard cons are just waiting for the lights to go out on the first night.
Yup, it looks like they’ll all be date bait in the joint. Well, they deserve it.
Does anyone know what the statistics are these days? I did a little checking around and all I came across was:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223193/Culture-violence-Gun-crime-goes-89-decade.html
In this article they admit that from 1999 to 2009 there was an 89% increase in gun violence. I did see somewhere else murders per 1000 people:
Murders with firearms (per capita)
# 8 United States: 0.0279271 per 1,000 people
# 32 United Kingdom: 0.00102579 per 1,000 people
Of course that stat only shows murders and not robberies or other crime. I know that statisically the US has always enjoyed a highter murser rate then the UK.
The Brits aren’t less violent, they’re just bad shots.
The Brits have a quaint way of figuring stats. Until a crime is solved, no stats. So if a person is murdered and they have no idea who did it; no crime. The same with robberies and assaults. It makes the numbers so much nicer.
Historically the US has always has a much higher murder rate than the UK. The US non firearms murder rate is more than twice the UK total murder rate. We have a much worse gang violence problem and that alone accounts for the lion’s share of our firearms related murder rate.
This was published in 2008http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6960431.stmAccording to the BBC, after the ban hammer, while some crimes using a gun went down, it looks like that crimes involving a knife went up. It was a 4 fold increase. So, the guns went away and criminals just found another way.That said, in such a peacefull island, there were about 55,000 violent crimes (gun or knife boys and girls) commited by youth 18 or under in 2007.
BTW: Update crime stats in the UK can be found here:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/http://rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/whatsnew1.html
Thanks for that comment, Drew.
Murders with firearms (per capita)
# 8 United States: 0.0279271 per 1,000 people
# 32 United Kingdom: 0.00102579 per 1,000 people
It’s hard to imagine how Dan, who lives in the US, could claim that the British way is not working. This is the most incredible biased nonsense imaginable. The only thing more amazing than the claim itself is the frequency of it’s repetition.
The fact is that the UK gun control laws save lives year in and year out. We should be ashamed of ourselves in the US.
Quick question Mike. Since UK’s gun laws were introduced, are violent crimes on the rise or decline in the UK? Has the murder rate gone down, or is it just murder rate by gun?
Well, Ruff, we’ve been through this before. Both sides can cherry pick stats that support their argument. It gets us nowhere.
What could work is this. Given the increased lethality of guns compared to knives and bats, what would happen if suddenly, magically the Brits were flooded with guns? I’ll tell ya. The violence of all kinds including murder would skyrocket.
Now, take a deep breath before you try to deny that.
With all due respect, Mike. We’ve all heard the “There’ll be blood in the streets” argument before. It hasn’t held water here and I don’t see it holding water over there. What our recent history has shown is that with the increased presence of armed citizens here we have not seen the sort of armed anarchy that the gun control legislature has promised (Unless you count rush hour in L.A.).
If you are arguing that the British people are unable to cope with the re-introduction of firearms into their society then that’s a whole ‘nother can ‘o worms.
As a personal aside. It seems to me that if a society deemed itself so civilized that they did not need firearms to protect themselves then they should have been civilized enough to live with those same firearms in their midst. But I have no mathematically verifiable proof to support this assumption.
The only problem with that, Mike. As mentioned before, the US has ALWAYS enjoyed a higher murder rate than the UK. It doesn’t seem to mean much that we still have a highter murder rate (when considered in relation to gun control). What I was curious about, and some others kindly provided the information for, was how other crimes stacked up. Had they seen a increase or decrease in violent crime (gun related) since banning guns. The answer is that they have seen an increase.
It would also seem that the UK has seen an increase in non-gun related violent crime.
I am not saying that England is a ceasepool of gang violence. I’m sure that the countryside is still very pretty and that the white cliffs of Dover haven’t been covered in graffiti yet. It is interesting that the same then happening in cities like Chicago and New York is happening across the pond.
And as a strictly tongue in cheek comment I would like to point out that it isn’t a surprise that the English couldn’t keep guns out of the hands of hoodlums. They couldn’t even keep Armalites out of the hands of the IRA so what hope do they have against soccer hoodlums.
If the Brits want to eliminate rioting in London, they should outlaw soccer.
Britain’s crime stats are intentionally manipulated to conceal the true picture of British crime.
Explanation here:
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_2_british-crime.html
So the citizens of England are totally defenseless from invasion now? Sweet! Let’s go add a new Island or two to America… Oh wait… Never mind, it’s England.
Yeah, when I bring up that gun control does not work, the liberals always bring up that with a nation wide gun ban, the gun control laws would work, just like in England. OK…so there you go!
Arguably the “liberal” ivory tower folk are not well versed in game theory or street smarts. By definition a criminal is cheating on the law. They cheat because that gives them an advantage. All the laws in the world won’t stop that cheating. Denial of this is no defense against it.
Know-it-all conceit is a practical problem e.g. “grabbers” apparent propensity to ignore empirical evidence just to protect their pet theories.
IMHO pragmatism rather than perfectionism should be nearer the top in everyone’s personal list of “-isms.”
It’s nice to see that their able to publish the names & photo’s of the convicted.
Now is it just me or is a prerequisite for UK criminal youth to have a shaved head or shortly buzzed hair? Every picture I see of youth offenders in the UK shows some ugly kid with very short hair.