In Italy, where gun control is pretty big, the homicide rate for 2004 or 2005 was only 20% smaller than the USA. The most brutal killing, those grabbing the headlines for weeks, have largely been committed with blunt/bladed weapons.
Other crime? In Parma, a city of 300 000, there's on average a bank robbery per week. Guns are rarely used, because criminals can make it with a boxcutter and a pistol would cause them more legal trouble.
Anyway, did I mention that I finally enrolled with the range? I have shot just 100 .22 rounds up to now, but noticed a slight improvement with the second box of ammo already. And I can confirm, target shooting is great.
Many Brits have a genuine phobia about guns. I was in the Netherlands a while back touring the Hague with an international group, which included a girl from Cambridge. There were some motorcycle cops in front of us on the sidewalk, and while I was trying to figure out what they were carrying (9mm Glocks, I think), she started moaning and wringing her hands. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear! That's so irresponsible!" I had no idea what she was talking about, and when she told me she was upset about cops carrying guns I was floored. I had never heard of such a thing. She was absolutely terrified at the sight of guns. It was as though she was afraid they would jump out of the holsters of their own volition and start shooting people.
I know this fear has a lot to do with ignorance (which, as Kevin said, is fixable), but I think with some people it's to the point of mental affliction.
Kevin I love the way you debate issues. Wish I had the capacity for doing so. I get all tounge tied and want to tell folks where to go, and I really do not know how to do that in a *lady like* fashion.
I work with a bunch of very liberal ladies, who are not exactly thrilled with the idea that I live in a home FULL of GUNS, and worse still I SHOOT THE GUNS!! "Guns kill people you know"
I have explained, that *people kill people, not guns* but I still get those *looks*
The little devil inside of me, just makes me, brag about my wins at our pin shoot or hanging plate matches *grin*
I also wonder if you are going to get a response from Neil. I hope he gets the picture soon.
Beautiful! Tre Bon, pardon my French (or what passes for it these days). As well, you are a very patient man. I have given up on those types, though I see where dialogue might be useful if only to sharpen your convictions. Still, I don't bother. I'm gearing up for the civil war, this one should be really easy, given the arms thing... but, but that's not the point. Good going.
Like Kevin said, those who are ignorant of guns, fear guns. I will never forget going to college in Boston and my roomates discovering that I owned guns (and I didn't even bring them with me). The horror! You would have thought that they just discovered a murderer in their midst. It all comes down to normalizing firearms. If you scare the pants off of little kids and wash their little brains from K-12 with one-sided talk of the evils of guns, this is what you get.
A bit off topic here, but my comment goes to Kevin's previous "discussion" with the good Dr. Kelly of Philly fame. Recall that nothing pisses me off more than Dr.s telling me how my gun is a public health problem the solution to which can be prescribed by smart people--like doctors. My answer: (i) my gun is not the problem, (ii)doctors should get their own house in order. See below for additional evidence that health care providers are killing enough 100% innnocent people (not gangbangers)with stupidity--maybe they should fix their own problems before telling me how many guns I should own.
Hospital cited over infections
Health officials fault White Memorial for improperly sterilizing instruments. Two babies in the neonatal unit died.
By Charles Ornstein, Times Staff Writer
January 24, 2007
California health regulators have cited White Memorial Medical Center for failing to properly sterilize a medical instrument later implicated in a deadly bacterial outbreak in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.
White Memorial, near downtown Los Angeles, closed its busy neonatal intensive care unit last month after identifying an outbreak of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which sickened five babies. Two of the babies are believed to have died as a result. The neonatal unit subsequently reopened.
In a report made public Tuesday, inspectors from the California Department of Health Services criticized the way the respiratory therapy staff at White Memorial cleaned laryngoscope blades, which are used to insert breathing tubes. The blades were cleaned with soap, tap water and alcohol wipes, which was not in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations to sterilize them, the report said.
I was driving some Chinese engineers to the airport last week and we got into a discussion on the military and firearms. They were absolutely floored that I was "allowed" to keep firearms in my home and that I used them on my property (out in the coutnry) and not at a government mandated range.
They want to go shooting when they come back in better weather. :)
Somehow Brits, more so than almost any other nationality, have worked themselves up into an uncontrollably phobic frenzy about guns. And the very idea of defending yourself from a criminal with a gun seems unbearably repulsive to them.
Very few other countries are like this. I am an immigrant to the US. Society in my home country, while not gun-friendly, is not really hostile to guns either. Most people think of self defense with or without a gun as perfectly normal and natural.
I think Mr. Harding should work on his peculiarly British phobia.
It really amazed me to read the response to your post.
Can't people read anymore. When I read it, I didn't see rascist comments of any kind. What I did see was an analysis of where, and from whom, the crime happens to be centered, and nothing more. The mere fact that you localized it and identified it, was enough to set those who care to concentrate on "racial issues" into a dither. That's the key right there. These kinds of people are looking for it. They ONLY care about someone making any kind of statement about race, whether it's purely an analytical one or not is NEVER THE ISSUE, since merely mentioning it makes you an "accuser" of some sort.
We live in a world with a large population of profoundly stupid people, and yes, this Neil Harding is one of them. Unfortunately, numbers are not on our side, and the correction of the problem is something that can't be handed out like candy. It must be learned the hard way, and usually on self-imposed terms. This is something that a school can't, and won't even if they could, teach.
Keep up the good work here sir. Someone has to do it.
What used to be routine critical thinking now constitutes racist, sexist, whatever-ist, behavior: to notice distinctions and point them out. This is why the formerly innocuous noun "discrimination" has become a dirty word. What's especially galling is that people like Neil actually take pride in their refusal (or lack of ability) to think critically.
Right again, Sarah. What was once a last resort of someone who couldn't tolerate being wrong has become the first response of the mentally lazy. If you can rebut 'is argument, or even intelligently discuss it, just 'ang a derogatory label on 'im and let 'im defend 'imself.
I've begun to notice that many countries are beginning to establish "national conciousnesses" that are more about how they're not the US, than what's good about them, directly.
Certainly, it's been the MO of the French for years.
You see it in some respects with Canadians now. (Beer... healthcare... I once had a Canadian vehemently insist that the Canadian army was peacekeepers, in every UN peacekeeping program, wherease the US "refused to assist". I asked him how the Canadian army *got* to the area. See, the Canadians don't have the transport, so the USAF moves them and their equipment to these "peacekeeping missions" that we don't support.... (We do send them a bill, but it's a fraction of the amortized cost))
And the pathological revulsion to guns now seems to be part of it in Britain. Now, the more anti-gun you are, the more authentically American you aren't...
Which somehow is supposed to make you a better person than the horrible Americans.
"You see it in some respects with Canadians now."
It is no recent phenomenon. I hitchhiked around Europe in 1973. By then, many Canadian hitchhikers made it a point to put their maple leaf flag on their backpacks.
I really enjoyed your back and forth writing with Neil. I will be a repeat reader as I admire your moxey. I am adding you to my blog roll. Keep up the great writing!
I don't know about in '73, but by the '80s most Canadians I knew, and even some Americans living in Canada, put the maple leaf on their backpacks when they went abroad so they wouldn't be targeted by anti-American types, not necessarily because they were proud to not be American.
Greetings from The Great White North. Well ... it certainly is white here where I live.
Many other comments deserve response but I'll concentrate on Unix-Jedi's one about the Canadian Forces needing American transport. That's so very true ... unless we're leasing some of those humungous Russian transports. (There are plans to acquire a couple of C-17s, I think, along with probably a bunch of upgraded Hercs.) We still really need a couple of dedicated assault-type ships and, who knows, we may build them.
At least, the Canadian Forces are participating in combat/civilian development with NATO in Afghanistan. Please note that I don't use the term "Canadian Armed Forces". That singular adjective is seen as having too much of a war-mongering flavour for the politically correct brainwashed here.
On other comments, I have encountered Brits and have had to deal with their rabid anti-gun stances. They're really weird about it ... and debating the issues is just not possible. To think that the Brits and their Scots, Irish and Welsh mercenaries were the premier light infantry. It's a shame that, as a nation, they've fallen so low. Their troops are still just as valiant in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The states obligation makes little difference to me. The reality of the situation does. It's been said so many times that it's become cliche, "call for a cop, call for a pizza, and see which arrives first". I recently heard a former Speaker of the House in an interview, and I believe the statistic he quoted was 3.5 LEO's/1000 people in the U.S. If one is present at the time any crime occurs, it's pure luck.
Trackback message
Title: Interesting Back and Forth with a Gun Hater
Excerpt: Over at Kevin Baker’s site, he posts an interesting conversation with British hoplophobe. Interesting he also discusses crime rate disparity as a socioeconomic issue and not a “gee why don’t we just grab all the guns” issue. ...
Blog name: Pro-Gun Progressive
Not trying to be a troll here, but I sincerely hope that you don't think all Brits are that way.
I used to be that way, until I noticed an omission of fact by the main anti-gun hate group over here, the Gun Control Network.
On my blog, I've been bringing up as many facts as possible, both from here and in America, showing the lies and half-truths of the gun control groups.
Sadly, common sense is lacking in the UK, except for their faux "Common Sense", the one the Brady Campaign brings up with refernces to "common sense laws".
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2007/01/i-wonder-if-ive-frightened-him-off.html (26 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
In Italy, where gun control is pretty big, the homicide rate for 2004 or 2005 was only 20% smaller than the USA. The most brutal killing, those grabbing the headlines for weeks, have largely been committed with blunt/bladed weapons.
Other crime? In Parma, a city of 300 000, there's on average a bank robbery per week. Guns are rarely used, because criminals can make it with a boxcutter and a pistol would cause them more legal trouble.
Anyway, did I mention that I finally enrolled with the range? I have shot just 100 .22 rounds up to now, but noticed a slight improvement with the second box of ammo already. And I can confirm, target shooting is great.
Congratulations! You'll be a rabid gun-nut in no time!
My name is Earl Harding. I sometimes comment here.
I am not the Mr. Harding in the post!
Just felt I had to clarify that.
No, his name is Neil, and he lives across the pond. You're safe!
Many Brits have a genuine phobia about guns. I was in the Netherlands a while back touring the Hague with an international group, which included a girl from Cambridge. There were some motorcycle cops in front of us on the sidewalk, and while I was trying to figure out what they were carrying (9mm Glocks, I think), she started moaning and wringing her hands. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear! That's so irresponsible!" I had no idea what she was talking about, and when she told me she was upset about cops carrying guns I was floored. I had never heard of such a thing. She was absolutely terrified at the sight of guns. It was as though she was afraid they would jump out of the holsters of their own volition and start shooting people.
I know this fear has a lot to do with ignorance (which, as Kevin said, is fixable), but I think with some people it's to the point of mental affliction.
Kevin I love the way you debate issues. Wish I had the capacity for doing so. I get all tounge tied and want to tell folks where to go, and I really do not know how to do that in a *lady like* fashion.
I work with a bunch of very liberal ladies, who are not exactly thrilled with the idea that I live in a home FULL of GUNS, and worse still I SHOOT THE GUNS!! "Guns kill people you know"
I have explained, that *people kill people, not guns* but I still get those *looks*
The little devil inside of me, just makes me, brag about my wins at our pin shoot or hanging plate matches *grin*
I also wonder if you are going to get a response from Neil. I hope he gets the picture soon.
Beautiful! Tre Bon, pardon my French (or what passes for it these days). As well, you are a very patient man. I have given up on those types, though I see where dialogue might be useful if only to sharpen your convictions. Still, I don't bother. I'm gearing up for the civil war, this one should be really easy, given the arms thing... but, but that's not the point. Good going.
Like Kevin said, those who are ignorant of guns, fear guns. I will never forget going to college in Boston and my roomates discovering that I owned guns (and I didn't even bring them with me). The horror! You would have thought that they just discovered a murderer in their midst. It all comes down to normalizing firearms. If you scare the pants off of little kids and wash their little brains from K-12 with one-sided talk of the evils of guns, this is what you get.
A bit off topic here, but my comment goes to Kevin's previous "discussion" with the good Dr. Kelly of Philly fame. Recall that nothing pisses me off more than Dr.s telling me how my gun is a public health problem the solution to which can be prescribed by smart people--like doctors. My answer: (i) my gun is not the problem, (ii)doctors should get their own house in order. See below for additional evidence that health care providers are killing enough 100% innnocent people (not gangbangers)with stupidity--maybe they should fix their own problems before telling me how many guns I should own.
Hospital cited over infections
Health officials fault White Memorial for improperly sterilizing instruments. Two babies in the neonatal unit died.
By Charles Ornstein, Times Staff Writer
January 24, 2007
California health regulators have cited White Memorial Medical Center for failing to properly sterilize a medical instrument later implicated in a deadly bacterial outbreak in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.
White Memorial, near downtown Los Angeles, closed its busy neonatal intensive care unit last month after identifying an outbreak of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which sickened five babies. Two of the babies are believed to have died as a result. The neonatal unit subsequently reopened.
In a report made public Tuesday, inspectors from the California Department of Health Services criticized the way the respiratory therapy staff at White Memorial cleaned laryngoscope blades, which are used to insert breathing tubes. The blades were cleaned with soap, tap water and alcohol wipes, which was not in accordance with the manufacturer's recommendations to sterilize them, the report said.
keewee
Ever tempted to respond "I'll make a note that you prefer to be hacked to death with a machete rather than shot."?
Or at least, were you ever tempted before?
I was driving some Chinese engineers to the airport last week and we got into a discussion on the military and firearms. They were absolutely floored that I was "allowed" to keep firearms in my home and that I used them on my property (out in the coutnry) and not at a government mandated range.
They want to go shooting when they come back in better weather. :)
Ah, feel the love. You move people, Kevin.
It's a gift.
Somehow Brits, more so than almost any other nationality, have worked themselves up into an uncontrollably phobic frenzy about guns. And the very idea of defending yourself from a criminal with a gun seems unbearably repulsive to them.
Very few other countries are like this. I am an immigrant to the US. Society in my home country, while not gun-friendly, is not really hostile to guns either. Most people think of self defense with or without a gun as perfectly normal and natural.
I think Mr. Harding should work on his peculiarly British phobia.
Kevin,
It really amazed me to read the response to your post.
Can't people read anymore. When I read it, I didn't see rascist comments of any kind. What I did see was an analysis of where, and from whom, the crime happens to be centered, and nothing more. The mere fact that you localized it and identified it, was enough to set those who care to concentrate on "racial issues" into a dither. That's the key right there. These kinds of people are looking for it. They ONLY care about someone making any kind of statement about race, whether it's purely an analytical one or not is NEVER THE ISSUE, since merely mentioning it makes you an "accuser" of some sort.
We live in a world with a large population of profoundly stupid people, and yes, this Neil Harding is one of them. Unfortunately, numbers are not on our side, and the correction of the problem is something that can't be handed out like candy. It must be learned the hard way, and usually on self-imposed terms. This is something that a school can't, and won't even if they could, teach.
Keep up the good work here sir. Someone has to do it.
What used to be routine critical thinking now constitutes racist, sexist, whatever-ist, behavior: to notice distinctions and point them out. This is why the formerly innocuous noun "discrimination" has become a dirty word. What's especially galling is that people like Neil actually take pride in their refusal (or lack of ability) to think critically.
Right again, Sarah. What was once a last resort of someone who couldn't tolerate being wrong has become the first response of the mentally lazy. If you can rebut 'is argument, or even intelligently discuss it, just 'ang a derogatory label on 'im and let 'im defend 'imself.
I've begun to notice that many countries are beginning to establish "national conciousnesses" that are more about how they're not the US, than what's good about them, directly.
Certainly, it's been the MO of the French for years.
You see it in some respects with Canadians now. (Beer... healthcare... I once had a Canadian vehemently insist that the Canadian army was peacekeepers, in every UN peacekeeping program, wherease the US "refused to assist". I asked him how the Canadian army *got* to the area. See, the Canadians don't have the transport, so the USAF moves them and their equipment to these "peacekeeping missions" that we don't support.... (We do send them a bill, but it's a fraction of the amortized cost))
And the pathological revulsion to guns now seems to be part of it in Britain. Now, the more anti-gun you are, the more authentically American you aren't...
Which somehow is supposed to make you a better person than the horrible Americans.
"You see it in some respects with Canadians now."
It is no recent phenomenon. I hitchhiked around Europe in 1973. By then, many Canadian hitchhikers made it a point to put their maple leaf flag on their backpacks.
I really enjoyed your back and forth writing with Neil. I will be a repeat reader as I admire your moxey. I am adding you to my blog roll. Keep up the great writing!
I don't know about in '73, but by the '80s most Canadians I knew, and even some Americans living in Canada, put the maple leaf on their backpacks when they went abroad so they wouldn't be targeted by anti-American types, not necessarily because they were proud to not be American.
Greetings from The Great White North. Well ... it certainly is white here where I live.
Many other comments deserve response but I'll concentrate on Unix-Jedi's one about the Canadian Forces needing American transport. That's so very true ... unless we're leasing some of those humungous Russian transports. (There are plans to acquire a couple of C-17s, I think, along with probably a bunch of upgraded Hercs.) We still really need a couple of dedicated assault-type ships and, who knows, we may build them.
At least, the Canadian Forces are participating in combat/civilian development with NATO in Afghanistan. Please note that I don't use the term "Canadian Armed Forces". That singular adjective is seen as having too much of a war-mongering flavour for the politically correct brainwashed here.
On other comments, I have encountered Brits and have had to deal with their rabid anti-gun stances. They're really weird about it ... and debating the issues is just not possible. To think that the Brits and their Scots, Irish and Welsh mercenaries were the premier light infantry. It's a shame that, as a nation, they've fallen so low. Their troops are still just as valiant in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Regards,
George
Off Topic --
Would some of you folks mind commenting in this thread -
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/01/on-being-down-and-defenseless-in.html
There is a Finnish guy that is mighty proud of his homemade surveillance system.
I'm digging around this site on how the state isn't obligated to protect individuals and Clayton Cramer's gun defence blog for fodder.
But I'm thinking you folks might come up with better arguments than me posting several links to other info.
The states obligation makes little difference to me. The reality of the situation does. It's been said so many times that it's become cliche, "call for a cop, call for a pizza, and see which arrives first". I recently heard a former Speaker of the House in an interview, and I believe the statistic he quoted was 3.5 LEO's/1000 people in the U.S. If one is present at the time any crime occurs, it's pure luck.
Trackback message
Title: Interesting Back and Forth with a Gun Hater
Excerpt: Over at Kevin Baker’s site, he posts an interesting conversation with British hoplophobe. Interesting he also discusses crime rate disparity as a socioeconomic issue and not a “gee why don’t we just grab all the guns” issue. ...
Blog name: Pro-Gun Progressive
Not trying to be a troll here, but I sincerely hope that you don't think all Brits are that way.
I used to be that way, until I noticed an omission of fact by the main anti-gun hate group over here, the Gun Control Network.
On my blog, I've been bringing up as many facts as possible, both from here and in America, showing the lies and half-truths of the gun control groups.
Sadly, common sense is lacking in the UK, except for their faux "Common Sense", the one the Brady Campaign brings up with refernces to "common sense laws".
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>