If the NRA is such a financially modest organisation why did it campaign so aggressively in its opposition to campaign finance reform.
On 13 March 1996, unemployed former shopkeeper and former Scout leader[2][3] Thomas Watt Hamilton (born Thomas Watt 10 May 1952) walked into the school armed with two 9 mm Browning HP pistols and two Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolvers.[4][5] He was carrying 743 cartridges, and fired 109 times.[6][7] The subsequent police investigation revealed that Hamilton had loaded the magazines for his Browning with an alternating combination of full metal jacket and hollow point ammunition.
The Cullen Inquiry recommended tighter control of handgun ownership as well as other changes in school security and vetting of people working with children under 18.[1] However because the Hungerford massacre also involved a legal gun owner killing with his legally-held guns, public feeling had turned against private gun ownership, allowing a much more restrictive ban on handguns to pass.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre
Wrong Cliffski. Thomas Hamilton apparently legally owned handguns in 1996. Please read all the posts I present. I know it will take a long time, but human life is important, and you should take the time to read all of them rather than assuming I am wrong.
- England: According to the BBC News, handgun crime in the United Kingdom rose by 40% in the two years after it passed its draconian gun ban in 1997.
Read all of these please.
spectator.org/archives/2006/04/1 … ure-in-lik
London and British crime rates have been increasing for years. Recently total crime rates for London have been estimated at about seven times those of New York for a slightly smaller population and some authorities suggest these figures have been minimized. England and Wales are now accounted by some estimates as the most dangerous places for crime in the developed world*
IN MARCH 2005, THE CHIEF Constable of Nottinghamshire, Steve Green, said his force was overwhelmed with violent crime, and “could no longer cope.” He said police were smothered in bureaucratic duties. Gun-related crimes had hit record levels across England and Wales in the preceding year, rising by about 11 percent in a single year (sexual offenses rose by 18 percent), to more than double their rate when Labor took power. At that time the Home Office had promised a renewed drive against crime in various areas. Home Office Minister Caroline Flint admitted that having a gun pointed at one was a “frightening experience.” However, she continued, in many cases the triggers were not actually pulled*
I repeat: Crime, even gun crime, has actually increased in Britain after guns were banned.
city-journal.org/2009/19_2_b … crime.html
*Defenders of the statistics counter that changes in crime-counting rules kicked in during 1998, pushing the number of recorded crimes up. Perhaps—but that doesn’t account for the even grimmer picture painted by police records of violent crime. Sure enough, when the rules changed in 1998, the total number of violent crimes recorded jumped from 231,000 to 503,000. But then, even after the switch, it continued to rise sharply, hitting a peak of 1.06 million in 2006. That number has since declined only slightly: in 2008, the number of police-recorded violent crimes stood at 961,000. When it comes to violence, in other words, Police Recorded Crime actually confirms the public’s general view.
Please read all of the links I have posted thoroughly. Also, you could just google British Crime Rate. And to Rboni, I never said that the NRA lacked MONEY, what I said was that they lacked media coverage. The Media simply doesn’t like them, for a variety of reasons. In terms of MEDIA COVERAGE they are the underdogs. There are no laws in America saying that the television stations have to take the NRA’s money and run their ads. The NRA has the MONEY for ads, sure. The television networks simply refuse to do business with them. That is what Heston complained about in the link I provided. HOWEVER, the NRA is trying to GET ads on T.V. I think they might also have ads on the radio, but I am all but sure are none on T.V. I know that not simply because Heston complained about it in his speech, but from personal experience watching T.V. while living in States like Arkansas that were heavily pro-gun. I have never seen NRA ads on television, EVER. Despite living 5 years in a state where everyone supported the right. My guess is that they think they can get the t.v. stations to run ads for them soon, or that they are concerned about radio. Anyways, I am speaking form personal experience here. Put simply, Heston wasn’t complaining for nothing.
I was born in California, and grew up hearing a lot of liberal views on guns. I went to Arkansas and heard a lot of conservative views on guns. In the end, I decided to be open mined, and listen to both sides, then make my conclusion. I have ultimately decided to support the right to bear arms, because that is what the math supports.
Sorry, I just had to post this last one. Seriously, just google British Crime Rate. You will find tons of this stuff.
There may be stats that show this, but I live here. I really have not noticed a change in crime levels. And such a change could be due to other factors (the economy, boost in immigration, decline in police presence etc) just as much as it was when guns were more restricted.
And like I say, guns have NEVER been widely available in the UK in my lifetime. I’ve never ever known anyone who has ever owned a gun, or even known anyone who has ever owned a gun. It is just not fair to assume that we were all heavily tooled-up until one day seven years ago. You could have burgled someone’s house in 1960 100% confident they did not have a gun. Nothing has changed there at all.
I’m not saying guns cause or prevent crime, just that this depiction of Britain being ‘like the US, and then we banned guns’ is not vaguely accurate.
I’ll agree that that they weren’t widely owned, and that social factors are the major cause of the increase in crime. Japan has demonstrated that you can ban guns and have a low crime rate. However, it is worth noting that according to these statistics, gun bans haven’t really stopped criminals from getting guns. In a country were criminals want to carry guns due to poor social conditions, they will simply smuggle them into the country like cocaine or marijauna. Hence, if a country has poor social conditions, all you can really do is allow people to defend themsleves. In the state of Michigan, when they passed right to carry laws the crime rate fell, and stayed lower even as the economy got worse. When handgun bans were overturned on a national level, the areas were handguns were banned immediately experienced lower crime.
I am not saying guns are necessary for a low crime rate, Japan disproved that. What I am saying is that when poor social conditions create crime, criminals will have guns anyways. There is no reason why crooks would be able to smuggle in cocaine, and yet be unable to smuggle in a gun. Of course crooks turn to crime to make money, and guns cost money, so it would seem logical that making it possible for them to steal guns from gun owners would increase the crime rate. However, the crime rate in Illinois fell when the handgun ban was overturned, despite the fact this would have theoretically made it easier for thieves to get guns. I don’t believe that guns are necessary for a low crime rate, but I do feel that when poor social conditions create high crime, gun bans only disarm victims. I base that belief on the math I have seen. And if any of these statistics are fake, I apologize, though they aren’t fake to my knowledge.
I echo what RevolverHawk just said: Guns dont’ contribute to crime. They might prevent crime in areas where crime happens due to self defense, and they might turn regular crime into gun crime, but they don’t actually directly cause crime themselves. Criminals don’t think “Hey, now that I have a gun, I can start doing crime!” at all. They are often already committing crimes.
Social factors are what cause the most crime, things like less police presense, increased social stress in the world and less control over life circumstances have many more people turning towards crime. Especially when you have a world in which some people can earn multiple million dollars a year, but the mass majority of people work for barely enough to get by. It’s the huge gap between the wealthy and the poor, along with our societies demand for more and more goods and services that lead to crime. It’s impossible to have so many adverts on TV for holidays and cars and expensive items, as well as people who want them on an extremely low wage and not get crime.
Yeah, but they’re not committing crimes nearly as well (as a consequence of this, one might also expect that they’re committing crimes less frequently and less violently).
And personally, I’d be much happier to be robbed at knifepoint than at gunpoint (even if, in the latter case, I also have a gun and the belief that this will enable me to “defend myself” instead of just getting me shot).
Still, I do emphatically agree with you guys that while gun control might or might not reduce crime, the real solution is to remedy the underlying social conditions
Well, like I said, this line of thinking is what they used in Illinois…yet when the handgun bans were overturned, the crime rate got lower. And the crooks couldn’t have run to a state were handguns WERE banned, because the bans were overturned on a national level. Crooks aren’t suicidal, they are greedy. Of course, Japan banned handguns, and they have low crime. And Switzerland gives most of it’s citizens a sub-machine gun in case of invasion, and they have low crime. So this means that crime is overwhelmingly dependent on social conditions.
I didn’t much want to get into this, but I’m not sure what exactly you’re referring to. Are you talking about the D.C. vs. Heller case? Because even if crime has gone down in the months since that decision (I didn’t find any defense of this claim in your links, and frankly I think it’s too soon to tell whether an actual trend is occurring, much less to disentangle any of the hundreds of possible causes), handgun bans are still being enforced in much of Illinois. For example, if I’m not mistaken, the 7th circuit court of appeals upheld Chicago’s ban. So I’m a bit confused as to the basis of your claims.
Actually, they are banned in Chicago still, your right. My apologies. However, that does make this more hilarious:
Okay, it seems guns lower crime rates. But what about violent crime rate etc. With guns, people are probably more likely to die in the crimes, even if there are less.
Let’s assume the following for a moment:
- You have complete control over policy
- banning handguns increases crime overall (for the sake of simplicity, say 20%), but decreases violent crime somewhat (again, for the sake of simplicity, say 20%).
- allowing handguns decreases crime overall (20%), but increases violent crime somewhat(20%).
In other words, for the sake of argument, there is a perfect trade off between legalizing handguns and changes in crime rates (which is patently ridiculous in real life, but this is a thought experiment). What do you choose to do?
Me personally, I’ll always choose complete legalization. Freedom is always better then attempting to control behavior… but, that’s me. Obviously, allowing people to be free creates issues, but the answer is not to try to take away everyone’s freedoms. I just don’t understand that line of thinking, I guess.
How do I counter the following specific anti gun-control argument convincingly? The gun-control proposition: If no one carried a gun then there would be no need for any individual to carry one, concealed or not. The anti gun-control argument to that proposition: In the absence of guns, there is still violence perpetrated on victims (rape, battery, attempted murder, etc.). Victims have the right to defend themselves and, especially weaker or elderly ones, the right to do it with something practical, easy to use, and with guaranteed stopping power like a gun. How do I counter that argument convincingly?
Your argument mimicks the suggestion that criminals not guns kill people, it ignores the fact that thousands are killed each year, many of them children, from the accidental discharge of guns, and that people, whether criminal, insane, or temporarily carried away by impulse, kill and are much more likely to do so when armed than when disarmed