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Interestingly, it’s a “bicycle-by” shooting. If you’ve ever considered the price of motoring in the UK you’ll know why. And if you’ve ever thought “all we need to do to lower gun crime is ban guns,” think again. Click here to read the full story of five-year-old Thusha Kamaleswaran’s shooting in a tit-for-tat gangland fusillade in Brixton.
The girl didnt die, but she was permanently crippled. Having lived in the UK for 6 years I can say its one of the more violent developed countries. Self defense laws are nearly nonexistent.
Text amended.
Roger: My wife and I love the UK. She went to school in Cambridge, and we’ve visited many times, often on long layover plane changes at Heathrow, somtimes for weeks at a go. Here’s what amazes me: The charming little towns in the exurbs of London are so lovely. Then in the evening, especially after 12 or 1 a.m. It changes. The safety disappears and there are drunk teenagers everywhere, and fights. It wouldn’t take guns to fix this, perhaps, but certainly more police with clubs. The other thing in the recent decade is the older guys (28? 35?) with very young girls, 14, 15, 16, and up to no good. “There ought’a be a law. Corrections welcome.
I think the UK has a Zombie problem.
Heathrow has weeks-long layovers?
I thought O’Hare was bad.
Sometimes we would take the tube into London on the six or eight hour connections, taking our kid to the zoo or going out for a long lunch. Other times we’d just buy the flight segments separately, and stay there for a longer time. The destination was almost always Stockholm. And O’Hare is bad, for other reasons.
No guns no crime, right? So this never happened. Neither did the Dunblane Massacre. Nor the Cumbria shootings.
To quote John Lott, “Western Europe, most of whose countries have much tougher gun laws than the United States, has experienced many of the worst multiple-victim public shootings. Particularly telling, all the multiple-victim public shootings in Western Europe have occurred in places where civilians are not permitted to carry guns.”
The thing is, I couldn’t care less about Great Britain. Let the fools do what they want, and let its subjects reap what their rulers sew. After three hundred years of the murder and exploitation of foreign peoples and nations, who’s to say that the Brits don’t deserve it.
British people live to 300+ years of age? Far out dude. I had no idea the current generation of English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish were responsible for forging an empire. Even if they were, so what? America wouldn’t exist without the British Empire. We owe them.
We owe them? I think you got that backwards. They would be speaking German if not for us and don’t forget it.
“Speedbird 249, have you never been to Frankfurt?!”
“Twice in 1944, but it was dark and I didn’t land…”
Hey, we might have been a Dutch or French colony without England. Possibly more French? Oui?
In a media world in which we, here at this site, are treated to Al Jazeerha interviewing representatives of blood-thirsty middle-eastern tyrannies calling the US psychotically violent, communication starts to lose its value. Seeing every black politician in the US compelled to echo the sentiments of the Mau Mau set, even my mayor under the pressure of media-stoked and ill-informed anger, amplifies this reality. Fact-checking has largely left media, (we’ll do it tomorrow, really!) who would rather just buy off data-thieves for stories and make do with a few attractive presenters. A contract is treated as an option, not one’s bond, with the aid of attorneys who are willing to do the knife work. Money talks. It has never spoken louder. Gun ‘rights’ are just another opportunity to be capitalized. “How much can we make them pay for this, uh, ‘right’?” We aren’t the throw-away culture, nor are we the capitalist culture. We are, as Britain became, the culture of millions and millions sitting on couches becoming fatter and stupider, more ignorant and careless of their rights and opportunities, watching shows about other people becoming rich or famous or powerful or royal. In other words we are the Dairy Culture, farmers milking cows with the help of cheap imported labor. “Our cows are too lazy and fat to work. We need (Poles. Mexicans. X) to do the work.” I.e. “Don’t disturb the Cows. If they wake up and read and vote, we Farmers are through.”
Handguns were legal in the UK prior to Dunblane. And the Cumbria shooter was licensed for the weapons he used. So neither of those cases is really an effective argument against Britain’s ratcheted gun control IMHO.
In the aggregate, gun-control for the Brits probably has reduced overall deaths since they are an island and can have relative success keeping guns out of their nation.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think its the right thing to do.. but I can see how their Devil’s bargain can actually reduce total gun deaths at the expense of individuals’ right to self-defense.
In terms of massacres… well, I’m a Virginia Tech alumnus, so I don’t think they have any massacres comparable to that.. and we do have more mass shootings per capita.
Arguments for Pro-2a should remain philosophical, like arguments for other human rights, instead of trying to prove how they make us safer than a country without them.
I just don’t think Schadenfreude looks good on ya Ralph.
I just don’t think Schadenfreude looks good on ya Ralph.
Obviously, you can’t tell the difference between “Schadenfreude” and “f^ck ’em.” I’m more of a f^ck ’em kind of guy. So f^ck ’em.
FYI, Dunblane was in 1997, post-ban. You’re thinking of Hungerford ten years before that, which was pre-ban.
As to your Virginia Tech comment – you’ve made the other fellow’s (who advocate responsible concealed carry by competent persons) point precisely. Had I, or anyone with comparable years of training, experience and proven expertise (in the military, LE and competitive shooting) been on the Va. Tech campus properly armed (as I usually am, but could not have been due to “no guns near shools law” … that law fixed a lot didn’t it? … but I digress). Anyway if I, or someone like me, had been within hearing of that madman on that April day many people would have been saved. I would have moved toward the sound of the gunfire, hopefully locating its source, and extinguished the young boy’s pains forever more. But that is the rub isn’t it? Simple minded people believe that if we put in print a law which states that no one may have a gun on, or near, a school campus then … well, what else is there to say, but … problem solved!!! Yay! let us celebrate our accomplishment! If only it were that simple we could just pass one law that says CRIME IS ILLEGAL SO DON’T DO IT and then go on our merry way knowing that people thinking of committing a crime would think, but you know, there is THE LAW.
Of course it is obvious that laws alone will not stop anyone intent on gaining possession of a firearm and doing others bodily harm if that is their aim (pun intended) … but a well placed bullet will certainly stop them once they have made their intent clear. Look, I’m all for trying to keep crazy’s like the kid at VA Tech from LEGALLY obtaining firearms, but there have been a lot of guns made throughout history and throughout the world. As long as they still exist it is still possible for that crazy dude to get one or more. What must, unfortunately, exist is someone to counteract his evil actions. And that, my friend, is best done by someone highly qualified to kill them as soon as they show their intent. I know this is redundant, but it doesn’t even have to be another student. It would be cheap insurance to have on campuses (campi?) a few well trained “security guards”, or exterminators, with highly visible automatic rifles mounted with proper scopes whose mission is to protect the lives of the vast bunch of people who are there to get an education and not to kill everyone who ever looked at them funny. Heck, I’ll volunteer some time to help train them; or better still let’s get some of these BIG MONEY donors to pay guys like me to train and equip these “guards” and I’ll bet we don’t have anything like Virginia Tech again. What do you think?
Agree with you about how a gun-free Europe contributes to the mass shootings there and GB has hundreds of years of imperialist oppression in its resume. However, that innocent little five year old girl of Indian heritage did not deserve it.
No, she didn’t. It’s too bad that there were no members of Parliament around to shield her.
I hope they put does dirtbags in jail until that girl walks again (ie forever) but I suspect they will get out of jail much sooner than that. I don’t mind some much when scumbags kill each other but I wish they would do it far away from all the non-scumbags or at least learn to shoot. This kind of crap really pisses me off.
Any stats on the number of bow and arrow murders in the UK?
“What are you going to do/
When the guns of Brixton come for you?”
…Not much you can do, if you’re a disarmed British
peasantsubject, is there?Banning guns prevents gun crime and drugs are a victimless crime in the first place. Nothing to see here. Move along…
Lets not forget about the countless number of stabbings in the U.K.. I am suprised they havent outlawed sharp objects there.
They’re trying. It has already been proposed to make the sale of pointed kitchen knives illegal. “No one needs a point on their kitchen knives.” Sure, that guys cooked more than a hamburger.