TDPerk,
Sorry (not to you, to the rest of the board), but that is one of the most wilfully ignorant posts I have ever read on this forum.
Its almost as if you have ignored all the facts and just continued to put your fingers in your ears and shout "I'm not listening!!"; to the extent that further debate is evidently wasted on you, because you have no knowledge of the subject, and no desire to have your knowledge improved - if it is capable of being improved; given this gem:
Changes required by the gross understatement of crime which previously plagued the Police reports, and which understatements have been corrected.
and yet, TDPerk, your whole contention is summed up by the quote below, from the same post:
It is in fact an extraordinary claim that the violent crime rate (and burglary and firearms crime when those are separable categories) in the UK did not rise after the UK gun ban in 1997. Given long established principles of cause and effect and cost vs. benefit, it is quixotically odd to feel they are not correlated on the face of it.
You,
in the same post, argue that the rise in crime is due to changes in the way Police record crimes, and also that the same rise is due to the 1997 gun ban. This is a remarkable piece of logic, and one that is deserving of further study at one of your nations fine sanitoria.
Thats not even to start on the fact - which is evident from the statistics, which were posted on the thread - that burglary has been falling since that period (in both the BCS and Police statistics). That you claim that it isnt, based on nothing at all (aside from "I read it somewhere"), says a great deal.
However, as more intelligent members than you of this forum have pointed out, the 1997 ban had no effect at all on the levels of violent crime, because pre-1997 the UK had probably one of the strictest set of controls in the world.
a) Cherry-picking is using data that supports your conclusion when other data at least as accurate as yours doesn't support it.
For the last time, on this thread - indeed on most if not all other threads that I have posted on here - I have not posted a conclusion, save that what you have been told about the UK is a big pack of easily-disprovable lies, and almost always the evidence that shows the lies for what they are.
I remind you what I posted at the start, and again on the last post, because you have either not read it, or (more likely) not understood it. I'll embolden it so that you can have someone read it to you:
The statistics form two parts, Police recorded crime and the British Crime Survey. Recorded crime has been subject to two major changes since 1997 which have had the effect of increasing the numbers of certain crimes reported, but are more comparable to the UCR statistics (though of course the UCR doesnt include everything) than the BCS. However the BCS has not been subject to change as the recorded crime has, so it gives a better idea of long-term trends within the UK.
What part of this statement do you disagree with, and why, and please provide some evidence this time.
The British government has until recently held virtually unanimously that the rights of burglars to be unmolested by violence by homeowners borders on the absolute.
Please provide evidence of this, and bear in mind the
R v Martin parole decision was based not on "burglars have rights too", but rather on Martin's reluctance to acknowledge that his behaviour was unacceptable. By that I mean not only his shooting a fleeing burglar in the back, but also his shooting at apple scrumpers, his blowing out of his neighbours windows following a disagreement and sundry other "eccentric" behaviours that came out at trial.
This is another area where you lose credibility, when you insist the right of self defense in the UK is present in the law, when it is in fact rendered nuggatory by the phrase "reasonable force," which to Crown Prosecutors seems to mean any force which is successful.
Also, provide evidence of this - you may want to research
R v Shannon which established a clear precedent with regards to the issue of reasonable / proportionate force. Then come back here and apologise.
Kleck has done no particular study of UK crime that I know of, but to assume his conclusions (and Lott's) are inaccurate for the UK is to assume that human nature and the laws of economics are different between the UK and the USA--you really are making an extraordinary claim.
Which study of Klecks' are you referring to? The one about defensive gun uses? Do you know anything about the nature of personal ownership of firearms in the UK that might affect the number of brandishings?
When the BCS is touted by the UK government to show the "truth," and competing "truths" are more in line with human nature and the laws of economics, and in line with the reporting of news sources of varied political stripes, then I will place little faith in the self serving claims of that government. Occam's Razor should be applied, and the BCS cut out of the fabric of the "truth."
Yes, its all part of a massive conspiracy that - in a Government which is as leaky as this one (see the demise of the Home Secretary) - noone has leaked the fact that HMG has been cooking the books (but just the BCS) in order to make itself look good. I mean, lets just ignore the fact that, if HMG wanted to do that it would be much easier to have not brought in the NCRS and kept the reported violent crime levels at their pre-adjusted level, which (as you admit above) would have "reduced crime".
You declaim against the BBC here
Utterly, and demonstrably, wrong. What I said was (including your quote):
Approximately once a month or a little more often, I hear of weapons being siezed while being smuggled in, or the use of black market manufactured weapons led to the factory, or person defending themselves against crime is being arraigned for it.
And of course, that standard of information is so much better than the BCS in determining "the truth".
The meaning could not be clearer, you base your "views" on news items, which you yourself said were "once a month, or a little more often", from an incredibly wide base of stories from which to choose. You then use that information, combined with all your little biases, to produce a "truth" that is so untrue as to be
For those who still care, the BCS and Police Statistics are available, with explanations as to their uses, and pitfalls,
here .
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