I thought guns were banned in England??

[rebelcowboysnb]

Thought I would throw this out there.

UK an Switzerland both are European countries. UK has strict gun laws restricting the ownership of guns. Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership numbers in the world an my understanding is that they issue assault weapons to the general population.

Here is a comparison of crime rates per capita.
http://www.nationmaster.com/compare/Switzerland/United-Kingdom/Crime



Read them all but also remember the "Murders with firearms" statistic is not total murders, only gun related ones.

 

[chickened]

You are preaching to the choir here. I posted a link that listed knife point crimes in the UK and it was 4 times higher than other countries. Knife or gun crime is crime.

Thought I would throw this out there.

UK an Switzerland both are European countries. UK has strict gun laws restricting the ownership of guns. Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership numbers in the world an my understanding is that they issue assault weapons to the general population.

Here is a comparison of crime rates per capita.
http://www.nationmaster.com/compare/Switzerland/United-Kingdom/Crime



Read them all but also remember the "Murders with firearms" statistic is not total murders, only gun related ones.

 

[newfoundland]

Switzerland has a population of just under 8,000000. UK has a population of over 62,000000. 68 gun deaths in Switzerland and 14 in UK. Gun deaths per head of population is very much higher in Switzerland. I rest my case.

 

[chickened]

You would not be overlooking all violent crime now would you? Is a murder by knife or other means acceptable? You are seeing guns in a negative light, they save lives also. We used a very big gun in WWII to save an estimated 1,000,000 U.S.casualties and up to 20,000,000 Japanese.
http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080107184344AAfuVtT

Switzerland has a population of just under 8,000000. UK has a population of over 62,000000. 68 gun deaths in Switzerland and 14 in UK. Gun deaths per head of population is very much higher in Switzerland. I rest my case.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Switzerland has a population of just under 8,000000. UK has a population of over 62,000000. 68 gun deaths in Switzerland and 14 in UK. Gun deaths per head of population is very much higher in Switzerland. I rest my case.

Like I said, Thats gun deaths, not murders total. That only proves that people will chose to kill with a gun over a knife if the option is there. It does not prove deaths are higher cause guns are there. Also self defense shootings are counted in those numbers. We can assume that a large part of those numbers are criminals getting shot by the good guys.

The point is that crime all across the board goes down with the exception of suicide. It takes throwing out all non gun related crime an only talking about gun crime by its self to make guns look bad. If you look at the total the numbers do not fit what the anti-gun groups are trying to say.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Boy this thread rambles a bit, but I think the good ones do.

My take on the Japanese strategy during WWII is that the Japanese were in expansion mode because they were so deficient in natural resources at home. Oil is the resource that gets attention but there were others. There was a tremendous amount of tension in the world, both in Europe and the Pacific, due to expansion policies. Some countries that came late to the game did not have the colonies that the older more established countries had and they wanted access to those natural resources. The Japanese devised a strategy where they would quickly take what they wanted and try to destroy rival political might to give them time to consolidate their captured territory. They thought they could defend what they took partly due to interior lines of supply and that the rest of the world would not have the will to oppose them long enough to take it back. They were ultimately proven wrong. Due to logistics and their own limited resources, they had no intentions of continuing the offensive after they got the territory they wanted. Due to supply lines and the number of their resources they would have to commit, plus what little they would gain materially, they did not plan to invade the US, whether they US population was armed with hunting weapons or golf clubs.

As far as Switzerland, it is a land-locked country in very mountainous terrain. It would have been difficult to take and hold. I don't know what the situation is today, but at the time, military training and service was required and the militia got to keep their guns at home. Switzerland was Neutral. Diplomatically, there were advantages to having a neutral country there. There is a diplomatic component to war, not just a purely guns component. You need to transfer money to pay for things, for example. There are several reasons Switzerland was not invaded, not just because people had guns at home.

Switzerland and the UK have tremendously different traditions and backgrounds. In the US, ours are also tremendously different. We conquered a frontier, and that involved a lot of individual fighting for a lot of people. A lot of people needed guns to feed their families during this time, let alone defend themselves. Prohibition did not restrict our gun culture. I don't know what Switzerland and the UK did during prohibition, but I'd guess it was quite a bit different than what we tried. The reasons we have a gun culture are due to our traditions and history.

I agree you need to look at the total package and not just one component of violent crime, but you also need to recognize that there may be other things involved with why things are the way they are. Gun ownership is a part of the puzzle, but I think there are a lot of other pieces.

I'm not going to take the trouble to look it up, but it would be interesting to have the statistics of how many invaders die when people defend their homes with guns versus how many family members die, assuming the invaders are not family members. I get in trouble when I assume.

Anyway, that's my take on it. I'll grab my helmet, head for the bunker, and prepare for incoming. Have a nice day.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Heres some interesting information.


Quote: So England has about 600 murders a year an about 14 are from guns.... The US has around 13K murders a year an around 8K are with guns. Sorta proves that access to a better tool means the tool is used more over other tools but the crime happens gun or not.

 

[chickened]

Just a guess here but Switzerland was of no strategic value and no threat to the Germans.

The saying "The sun never sets on the British Empire" was accurate at one time. I am not sure what happened but slowly they lost control.

Boy this thread rambles a bit, but I think the good ones do.
My take on the Japanese strategy during WWII is that the Japanese were in expansion mode because they were so deficient in natural resources at home. Oil is the resource that gets attention but there were others. There was a tremendous amount of tension in the world, both in Europe and the Pacific, due to expansion policies. Some countries that came late to the game did not have the colonies that the older more established countries had and they wanted access to those natural resources. The Japanese devised a strategy where they would quickly take what they wanted and try to destroy rival political might to give them time to consolidate their captured territory. They thought they could defend what they took partly due to interior lines of supply and that the rest of the world would not have the will to oppose them long enough to take it back. They were ultimately proven wrong. Due to logistics and their own limited resources, they had no intentions of continuing the offensive after they got the territory they wanted. Due to supply lines and the number of their resources they would have to commit, plus what little they would gain materially, they did not plan to invade the US, whether they US population was armed with hunting weapons or golf clubs.
As far as Switzerland, it is a land-locked country in very mountainous terrain. It would have been difficult to take and hold. I don't know what the situation is today, but at the time, military training and service was required and the militia got to keep their guns at home. Switzerland was Neutral. Diplomatically, there were advantages to having a neutral country there. There is a diplomatic component to war, not just a purely guns component. You need to transfer money to pay for things, for example. There are several reasons Switzerland was not invaded, not just because people had guns at home.
Switzerland and the UK have tremendously different traditions and backgrounds. In the US, ours are also tremendously different. We conquered a frontier, and that involved a lot of individual fighting for a lot of people. A lot of people needed guns to feed their families during this time, let alone defend themselves. Prohibition did not restrict our gun culture. I don't know what Switzerland and the UK did during prohibition, but I'd guess it was quite a bit different than what we tried. The reasons we have a gun culture are due to our traditions and history.
I agree you need to look at the total package and not just one component of violent crime, but you also need to recognize that there may be other things involved with why things are the way they are. Gun ownership is a part of the puzzle, but I think there are a lot of other pieces.
I'm not going to take the trouble to look it up, but it would be interesting to have the statistics of how many invaders die when people defend their homes with guns versus how many family members die, assuming the invaders are not family members. I get in trouble when I assume.
Anyway, that's my take on it. I'll grab my helmet, head for the bunker, and prepare for incoming. Have a nice day.

 

[bakerjw]

I'd have to dig up the statistics but it is stated that doctors accidentally kill more patients each year than guns.

 

[Q9]

Regarding Switzerland - it wasn't just the Nazis. They haven't been invaded in centuries. Part of it is the terrain, but another part is near-universal gun ownership and military training, plus a plan to blow up every bridge in the country within 24 hours. There are a lot of aspects to it, but gun ownership plays a very large role.

Regarding home invasions and self-defense with guns in general - looking at lethal cases only is somewhat misleading. In the *vast* majority of instances of self-defense with a gun, a shot is never fired. Odds are, a robber staring down the barrel of a 12-gauge is going to surrender.

If a burglar has a choice between a hard (well-defended) target and a soft (undefended) target, which is he more likely to go for? Everyone thinks in terms of risk vs reward. Breaking into a home you know is armed, you run the risk of getting shot to death. Breaking into an unarmed home, you run very little risk and the reward is likely the same. One interesting statistic - in areas with heavy gun restrictions, "hot" burglaries (burglaries while the home is occupied) are WAY more common. Criminals may be stupid, but they ain't suicidal. Notice that almost all the major shootings have taken place in "gun-free" zones, especially schools.