Thursday, December 10, 2009

Disarming the Police

Laci the Dog posted an article entitled, First, Disarm the Police...

It sounds like a joke or an exaggeration, but it's nothing of the sort.

Says Laci,

I found this US News & World Report story--Disarming News: Why Bobbies Have No Guns (3 February 1998) that pointed out:
According to a survey by the police officers union, the Police Federation, 4 out of 5 British cops do not want to be armed. Today, 95 percent of officers in England and Wales never carry firearms, and on average police nationwide open fire on only half a dozen occasions a year. In the 30-year history of the Thames Valley Police, a southern England force with 2 million people in its district, not a single round has ever been fired at a human.

And to sum up,

It is even more interesting to see that the place where the US received its concept of rights, does not share a similar concept of "gun rights".

I prefer a disarmed and peaceful society to an armed and violent one.

That is a much better right.

I couldn't agree more. What's your opinion?

10 comments:

  1. "I prefer a disarmed and peaceful society to an armed and violent one."


    Who here is actually deluded enough to believe the fantasy that ANY amount of gun laws in the US would allow police to disarm?

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  2. You are delusional if you think that,

    1. A society can be disarmed of weapons

    2. That society, assuming for the sake of argument that it was actually disarmed, would not still be violent.

    Are you and laci actually delusional enough to think that you could get rid of all guns, and furthermore, that doing so would create a peaceful society? What evidence leads you to believe this?

    Even if you confiscate and melt down all guns and stop all overseas trafficing you're still not gun-free. Firearms are easily made by anyone with a basic machine shop.

    History is full of societies where predatory violence was the norm despite the complete absense of firearms.

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  3. From the article...

    "And while police share law-abiding citizens' disdain for firearms, that has not stopped them from building up their own arsenals. In London, the armory has racks of Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolvers, Heckler & Koch MP5 semiautomatic 9-mm carbines with 26-shot capacity, Steyr .762 sniper rifles, Glock 9-mm semiautomatic pistols, Remington 12-gauge shotguns, and even H&K MP5K submachine guns.

    Airport police and bodyguards protecting members of the royal family are allowed to display their firearms."

    Well isn't that nice.

    It's OK for police and bodygaurds for the royal family to carry guns but the lowly subjects must submit to aggression.

    I wonder why that is?

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  4. Boy, you really missed the point. It was about British gun culture and the fact that not only do the people want unarmed police, so do the police.

    The US worships guns believing that they bring security.

    Another point, there is no concept of "gun rights" in common law. That is a totally US concept.

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  5. "I prefer a disarmed and peaceful society..."

    Sadly, such a thing does not exist and it never will exist. That's the problem with idealism.

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  6. Maybe that helps to explain why Britain's violent crime rate is on the rise.

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  7. A dozen years ago when these surveys was done the ban was just beginning, the cops claim to not need guns. I wonder what the same result would be like if the surveys were done today? I am sure with the sharp rise in crime since the ban, these same cops would want to be armed.

    "I prefer a disarmed and peaceful society to an armed and violent one."

    I would prefer that too. Maybe you can find that in Fantasyland but it certainly cannot be found anywhere else in the real world--especially in Great Britain.

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  8. FWM, I wondered about that to. Would those same cops feel the same way today?

    Laci, I hear ya. We're talking about the UK.

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  9. In answer to my own question, I don't think that many gun control advocates are deluded enough to believe the fantasy that ANY amount of gun laws in the US would allow police to disarm. There are too many cultural differences, especially criminal culture.

    But gun control advocates blame and rail against "gun culture" in the US. That's an acknowledgement that British gun laws in the US won't reduce gun crime to British levels (although they expect it to have a greater effect than it actually would). But the real problem they perceive with US "gun culture" is that so many Americans LIKE to own guns for hunting, target shooting, etc.. That's what they think really stands in the way making the US into an antigunowner paradise.

    This brings us to my (same old) theme: Once strict gun "control" laws like registration are in place, those who rail against "gun culture" will inevitibly find in neccessary to turn theit attentions to hunting, target shooting, etc..

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  10. FishyJay - Yup, just look at the progression of Gun Control in the UK and how they were systematically disarmed.

    We see anti's here trying the same strategy.

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