I'd check on the current legality of baseball bats in the UK.

What I'm wondering is what they are going to use to cut their butter with when every utensil is banned.

It's not just banning weapons that is stupid (although that one becomes obvious more quickly) but I can't think of any "banning" that's turned out as intended.

Nearly ever prison inmate in the U.S. learns how to improvise stabbing weapons from everything from plastic, to bone, to wood. Even in a non-free society like the U.K., the materials for such weapons are easy to come by. These non-metallic shanks can be lethal and they pass through metal detectors unnoticed giving people within so called security zones a false sense of safety.

At some point society needs to address the root causes of such violence, but as long as progressives are in power such problems will get progressively worse.

A society that bans knives is a society of idiots on the quick path to death or slavery.

Soon, even shoe laces will be illegal there. They are trying very hard to ignore the real problem which is social devolution thanks to their nanny state policies.

I assume in England they don't realize that old steel files make the best new knives? All you need is a cheap shop grinder, propane torch and a can of motor oil. In a pinch, just the grinder will do. Large screwdrivers work fine as well. In fact any old chunk of used up steel will do the trick. Truck leaf springs make very good swords.

So now we have to ban ...

Why is the UK reminding me more and more of the movie "A Clockwork Orange"?

I agree with your basic point entirely but you have to concede that gun bans should eliminate the type of innocent casualties we see in drive by shootings: you don't accidentally knife three people who were standing around the guy you wanted to stab.

I don't say this to support gun control, but I think that those of us advocating gun rights have to affirmatively address issues like this while we simultaneously fight excessive or punitive gun control.

...then what are you going to do when you see more deaths caused by bludgeoning with baseball bats...

I think everybody would agree that it wouldn't be cricket. Then they would all blame the Americans.

"How far down that road do they need to travel before they start to understand that the weapon does not commit the crime and banning weapons will not solve the problem?"

Probably when they get to registering knitting needles.

I'm honestly rooting for them to crash and burn, if only so they can serve as an example.

JLawson : don't forget "1984".. that one is coming true too, sadly.

Robert (whatewver the hell site pimping follows the name) - "I agree with your basic point entirely but you have to concede that gun bans should eliminate the type of innocent casualties we see in drive by shootings:

Guess you've never heard of the long-standing gun ban in D.C. Not to mention it is a VERY violent place and mostly due to guns that are *banned*.

This thread specifically addresses a U.K. ban on knives. In that regard, I would note that it is not uncommon in the United States to criminalize the possession of certain types of knives deemed to be particularly lethal. The comment about butter knives is clever, but doesn't contribute to the discourse.

Before we mock the U.K. for their weapons laws we should be aware that the U.K. in 1997 had 1.40 gun deaths per 100,000 citizens. The comparable rate in the U.S. is 8.95. This may have something to do with the fact that for every 100 citizens in the U.K. 5.6 own a firearm, whereas in the U.S. there are 90 guns for every 100 citizens (1994 statistic). That's almost one gun for every man, woman, and child in America. This country is awash in guns. To suggest that has no relationship to our much higher rates of gun-related deaths than the rest of the First World, flies in the face of common sense.

Yes, guns don't kill people, people kill people.

But when one person wants to kill another person, a gun is a very effective way to get the job done.

"Guess you've never heard of the long-standing gun ban in D.C. Not to mention it is a VERY violent place and mostly due to guns that are *banned*."

I think you'll find those guns weren't orginally purchased in D.C. They were purchased someplace else and sold from somebody's trunk.

Cricket bats! Every cricket bat taken off the streets is possibly a child saved! It's for the chil-dren!

I agree with your basic point entirely but you have to concede that gun bans should eliminate the type of innocent casualties we see in drive by shootings:

Uh, no. The only people who wouldn't have guns because of a gun ban are those who wouldn't perpetrate drive-by shootings to begin with.

It's a very simple rule: if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have them. Why is this so difficult to understand?

Dave Noble-

You neglect one basic premise...

After the invention of black powder, the refinement of its use to propel an object, and the eventual refinement of that projectile's accuracy and lethality, to imagine that any governing body could outlaw firearms is absurd. Short of un-inventing the firearm, and subsequently black powder, no governing body has within the capacity or ability to eradicate guns. In fact, the basic principles that allow a factory in Indiana to produce a chunk of metal that can throw a lead ball a distance of 1000 yards with superb accuracy, the same principles of construction and physics that govern all of our lives allow for me to go down to the metal yard, pick up a piece of pipe, weld a cap on one end, drill a hole in that cap, throw powder and a ball of lead in the open end and put a fuse in the drilled hole(yes, quite a rudimentary cannon). Thus, I reiterate that to believe control of knowledge deemed dangerous by a governing body will only result in fringe "citizens" utilizing arcane methods to create their own unrefined and highly dangerous, shottily constructed versions of firearms. These are the same fringe members that now use stolen or ill-gotten firearms to carry out their desires.
In a world where all guns are outlawed, the price for a gun will be very high. Imagine the huge power an underground network of gun manufacturers would have, supplying guns to the highest bidders, those willing to take that risk of owning a gun because he or she has no qualms about what they plan to do with said gun.
If you are seeing parallels between this scenario and the drug cartels, that would be because we can't un-invent drugs....
The easiest way to curb drug and gun abuse is to educate those who would use them to harm others. To prohibit the use of the gun is not the answer....the answer is quite simply to create an atmosphere where criminals don't feel they are in control. Where they no longer feel brazen. Evil will always exist, to curb evil, one does not remove the tool used to commit evil, one removes the will to commit the evil.

A man may use a spade to chop off his wife's head....do you outlaw spades? No, you simply determine why he chose to do this and you attempt to stop recurrences.
Sure the gun makes it easy to murder...
But the same thing that makes the gun easy for criminals to use, that same thing makes the gun an ideal tool for law-abiding citizens to protect themselves from whatever tool evil chooses to attack them with, be it a spade, gun, knife, etc....

One last question...If a knife is lethal when used as a weapon, would you suppose that a gun would be overkill as protection to deal with a knife-attacker? I ask, because without the gun, you are vulnerable to the knife's lethality...with the gun, you have some buffer or protection.
I'm just curious if you are one of those fellows who thinks that humans have no right to protect themselves? It seems that the gun is, at the moment, the best personal crime prevention device available to the public, perhaps because it is also the best personal crime tool on the street. You don't match pepper spray against an armed gunman.

Would scissors be considered knives? They are just as lethal as knives. Oh wait teenagers aren t supposed to know how to use those yet.

The whole argument about banning weapons is ridiculous. What we need to be discussing is personal responsibility. If you commit a crime, you need to be punished accordingly. Murder someone, we hang you. Steal, you go to jail. Drive drunk and kill someone, we use you as a crash test dummy. Every person should be held accountable for their actions, not what tool they used to accomplish it. A responsible person with a machine gun is less dangerous than an irresponsible thug with a box cutter. If average citizens had firearms, training, and aggressive attitudes in Mumbai, how much lower would the death toll be?

Dave Noble: Using your statistics, it appears that the incidence of gun deaths is actually much higher in the UK than in the US.

The math works this way: if you have 1.4 deaths per 100k with a total gun count of 5600 per 100k, the deaths per gun is equal to .00025.

In the US, the numbers work out to 8.95 deaths per 100K, 90,000 guns with a result of 0.000099 deaths per gun or only 40 percent of the UK figure.

The odds of a gun being used to kill someone is 250 percent higher in the UK than the US.

It seems likely that the issue isn't the gun. If the gun is the problem, the numbers should be similar. They aren't. I would also be very interesting to know how many of those gun deaths are related to suicides and back those from the calcs - my guess is that the disparity grows larger as guns are a preferred method of male suicide in this country.

It would likewise be interesting to note how various regions of this country stack up (though I think that has been previously done by a PhD type from Tennessee - Lott?).

"In a world where all guns are outlawed."

That's not the world I advocate. Please note my comments on regulation. I support sensible gun laws that regulate gun ownership. I oppose laissez faire interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as a (uniquely) unconstrained right.

"the same principles of construction and physics that govern all of our lives allow for me to go down to the metal yard, pick up a piece of pipe, weld a cap on one end, drill a hole in that cap, throw powder and a ball of lead in the open and put a fuse in the drilled hole(yes, quite a rudimentary cannon)."

I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your post, but as a practical matter, an AK-47 is just so much more efficient a weapon than your rudimentary cannon. In particular, there is less chance of collateral damage. In inner cities, the victims of gunfire are often innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire, often children.

"The odds of a gun being used to kill someone is 250 percent higher in the UK than the US."

Interesting math, but I'm not sure where that gets us. If I'm living in the U.K. or the U.S. I am not concerned about the chance of a gun being used to kill someone, I am concerned about my chance of ending up a gun death, or to extend the scope of my concern to social responsibility, that one of my fellow citizens ends up a gun death. That chance is over six times greater in the United States.

Sorry,incomplete thought,there:

There is less chance of collateral damage with the rudimentary cannon.

Dave Noble Says-

"That's not the world I advocate. Please note my comments on regulation. I support sensible gun laws that regulate gun ownership. I oppose laissez faire interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as a (uniquely) unconstrained right."

The problem is that once you start down the road of "sensible gun laws", the anti gun legislators keep pushing and pushing and pushing. The next thing you know your doing time for getting caught carrying a 4 inch knife, when the law clearly states 3 inches is the max. It is the same with free speech. Some people want hate speech laws, next thing you know, you end up like Europe, where you can get thrown in jail for "historical revisionism".