Those Dumb Democrats

[KL-666]

Guns or no guns for the public makes no difference for organized crime and terrorism, i think. But for domestic killing it makes much difference. Let me give a perspective from a virtually gun less country.

In The Netherlands we believe that defending ourselves with guns will only get us in an arms race that we can not win, and probably one day will cost our own life.

Here burglars go to work without guns. If you see one, he runs away (i also had it at hand once). In the US the burglars come with at least a heavier weapon than they may expect from home owners. If you see a burglar, he shoots you. Why? Because he fears to be shot by you if he runs. Is it worth the lousy few goods that are simply replaceable?

And now what? Buy heavier weapons yourself? Where does it end? A tank? Also the police has to keep up with the arms race. In the US i see them often carry quite heavy weaponry. The police here just carries a girls gun that a housewife in the US probably laughs about.

Apart from burglary, when there are guns in the house, statistically there are more deaths by accidents with them, than when there are no guns.

All in all we do quite well in not getting killed here. In countries with guns, the people that try to defend themselves with them get killed more.

Kind regards, Vincent

[HJ1an]

In The Netherlands we believe that defending ourselves with guns will only get us in an arms race that we can not win, and probably one day will cost our own life.

Good in theory, and I'm glad in Netherlands you manage to keep it up. But here in my country, guns are essentially banned (we'll ignore those exclusions for now, ie bodyguards, hunting etc.), but what actually happens is that weapons are smuggled in to be used, or these people build their own. So the upperhand is now in the criminals actually. While it is rare, it still does happen.

And also, if we include those that are the exception (extremely few % of the total population), there have been cases where hunting rifles were used, or hunting shotguns were stolen and tips sawed off, even people who do have licenses to operate them lose their guns in a robbery, or the police losing their gun because they took it off and "forgot" to take it with them.

But, because they are all rare, most people who go berserk on other people use other things instead, knives, machettes (a favorite), vehicles, etc. and the news coverage on them are not so sensational..

[Lydiot]

Guns or no guns for the public makes no difference for organized crime and terrorism, i think. But for domestic killing it makes much difference. Let me give a perspective from a virtually gun less country.

In The Netherlands we believe that defending ourselves with guns will only get us in an arms race that we can not win, and probably one day will cost our own life.

Here burglars go to work without guns. If you see one, he runs away (i also had it at hand once). In the US the burglars come with at least a heavier weapon than they may expect from home owners. If you see a burglar, he shoots you. Why? Because he fears to be shot by you if he runs. Is it worth the lousy few goods that are simply replaceable?

And now what? Buy heavier weapons yourself? Where does it end? A tank? Also the police has to keep up with the arms race. In the US i see them often carry quite heavy weaponry. The police here just carries a girls gun that a housewife in the US probably laughs about.

Apart from burglary, when there are guns in the house, statistically there are more deaths by accidents with them, than when there are no guns.

All in all we do quite well in not getting killed here. In countries with guns, the people that try to defend themselves with them get killed more.

Kind regards, Vincent

I think I agree with all of the above.

[Lydiot]

A very liberal newspapaer in NY had nothing better to do than to publish lists of registered gun owners in an attempt to paint them as kind of reckless rednecks. They got a lot of interested readers and in the following two years not one of those gun owners was burglarized while the burglary rate for those not ton the list increased by more than ten percent in the same neighborhoods. Police was of course to late in all cases, people were killed and injured, a couple of dozen rape cases during home invasions added to the mix and most of those cases are now, almost three years later, still open. So, even if you are against guns, even if you don't want to won a gun, you definitively want in NY on the lists of registered gun owners published by newspapers in acts of felony (because actually, by law this is a non-public register so newspapers shouldn't have that information and if, they shouldn't publish it).

I'd like to read that study. Do you have a link to it?

If it's the one I can think of, in Westchester, there was at least one burglary of a gun owner's residence, and the burglars went straight for the gun safe but couldn't get it open. So, no, you probably don't have an unequivocally positive net effect by publishing it. It'd just give those looking for weapons a much easier time. Find someone who has one, wait until they're out, break in and try to get the weapons.

Here is another thought. You can only ban weapons bought legally. They may be traded and there are some loopholes that needs some treatment (a transfer form would probably sufficient to keep registration up for weapon fair trades). The real problem is, there are millions of illegal weapons already around. A whole black market. So career criminals will get their weapons. They give a damn about any law you can write. Adn we have open borders. With every container ship comes at least one container with drugs. No problem to get another container with guns on it and bring it in. The last modern weapons instead of six-wheels and standard automatics. By banning legal weapon dealer,s you give the business to smugglers. And since the prices will be increasing, the need to commit more crimes to stay adequately armed will cause especially bigger gangs to up drug trade as their main income source. So you get an increase in firepower and an increase in crime. Drive-by shootings will upgrade from old Mac10 or 11 to MP-6 and MP-6 or Mini-Uzis. Higher impact force, better cadence, more reliable and able to shoot through someone to kill the one behind him as well. Congratulations!

I don't think that's a certain outcome at all.

OTher illegal weapon users, namely the occasional nut job and lone wold terrorist can't afford rifles anymore. That doesn't mean, they will stop doing what they do, they will change to explosives, primitive C-weaponry and, since the smugglers are more and better, be finally able to get their hands on love packages for example from Syria. We talk Anthrax, Spanish Flu and other nice things, they got from the old Iraqi and Syrian depots.

I don't think that's a good argument argument at all. Nut jobs typically don't have the capacity to acquire what you're talking about, because, well, they're nutcases. And a lone world terrorist won't end up getting that stuff from Syria, because in order to get that they'd have to be not lone terrorists. And the international terrorists we've seen have for some reason still stuck to fairly conventional means despite the desire to kill plenty of people, with the exception of airliners.

So I don't think it follows at all. Biochemical weapons are far more difficult to manage than you imply, and if they were that easy to get a hold of then by now it would have been used against some nation.

But then, the cynic in me says, let those gun banners have their will. Statistically, most of them live in places like New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and so on. Big cities, or in other word primary target zones. If terrorists ever get a hand on A-, B-, or C-weaponry and be able to smuggle it in our country because someone enabled the build up of secure smuggling routes by profit increase, it will hit those places first. So ... actually it is the faction of gun banners who live their, the more conservative Midwest or parts of the South where you fidn more conservatives have no primary target zones. So, ethically, one could argue, those guys ahve a right to decide by themselves how they and their families want to die ...

New York already had a big attack. Remember what type of flying gun that was?

[jwocky]

Lydiot, it was not a "study", it was an the New York Times publishing the list and the crime reports of NYPD. But then, I have this unfair advantage to be in contact with many law enforcement authorities due to my other "hobby".
And otherwise, God may preserves your naivité. Remember James Holmes? He had rigged his apartment, so he was obviously able. The Columbine shooters set up explosives, but didn't ignite them because they got already what they wanted. The San Bernadino shooters had faked pipe bombs which proves, they already thought about it, but didn't pull it off (I wonder why, you can get schemata from every Islamic Terrorist website). The German train bombers had one little design error, that prevented that they succeeded and that one was based on a little translation glitch from the schemata. The Times Sqaure Bobmer had a vehicle full of explosives parked at Times Square.
Now, most of those attacks failed ... but then schematas and recipes you find in the Internet are perpetually updated. The pressure cooker bombs of the Boston Bombers worked.
Now, here is an ethical corundum for you: A liberal who by rolling things up in the wrong order opens the door for more and more lethal attacks while lives in a primary target area is either stupid or stupid and honest ... but what is a liberal who opens the door and takes the protection from other places and other people because he doesn't live there? Now what do you call a person playing poker with other people's lives?

KL-666: By what I hear via someone from Interpol, guns are not very often used in domestic homicide in the Netherlands. Strangling, beating to death and stabbing/slashing on the other had seems to be quite popular. And then running to the former Dutch colonies which si why Interpol has so long lists with Dutch citizens the Dutch courts want to see ... so, it is not that one really has the choice to be killed or not killed, more like, to be shot or to be strangled to death. And there was this study from Nieusweerth or something like that in 2009, that more than 64% of all Dutch females fear to go out at night alone. I have to look it up again.
Things are nowhere perfect. If the Dutch say, they don't need guns to defend themselves, that's fine and good for them. However, if you call the police in the Netherlands, how long do they need to come? How much does the population trust the police? What is the solution rate for murder in the Netherlands?

[KL-666]

Hello Jwocky,

The "normal" killings and even an occasional gun killing are happening here too. And a lot of organized crime guys killing each other with guns. In almost all cases the participants know each other, so we do not need guns against total strangers.

What we do not have, are the unnecessary killings by burglars. A burglar here has no reason to fear his life and just takes off when seen.

Kind regards, Vincent

[jwocky]

Humm ... errr ... Vincent?
Did you ever hear one of the following names?
- van der Sloot
- von Zon
- Swanenburg
- van Eijk
- Hertoogs
just to name some? Those were Dutch serial killers and a good reason why people may think they have to defend themselves occasionally. And in fact, they represent entirely different types of serial killers, just to show, the Netherlands have the same wide variety as any other country.
And I love this "we don't have home invasions" thing. You see, I grabbed just in that Interpol pile on the laft side of my desk and what do I find? Yep, two home invasions in Amsterdam in July. In both cases, a gang of several men forced their way in and beat the victims with hammers, thus leaving behind four seriously injured persons and it was pure luck, they survived because they were found relative quickly. There is actually a third similar case in which three were injured in Utrecht and fourth, that is also maybe connected over the Belgish border. Well, there is another country with people who don't need to defend themselves.
In August, four men were arrested for a home invasion in Rijnsburg. THe victims were a couple 58/57 years old. A gang of four invaded their home, harrassed the victims and beat them and ransacked the home. The husband died from his beating injuries, the wife survived seriously injured.
Early in January a burglar stabbed an 11 year old child while escaping from a burglary in Roozendal. The case is still open. The boy wasn't injure too seriously, but not for lack of trying ... so, yeah, violent burglars don'T exist, home invasions don't exist, right!
In February, someone actually defended himself with a knife in a home invasion on a houseboos in Amsterdam. When two man forced their way in, the owner took a knife. The residents of the houseboat were injured, but the robbers gave up and fled after one of them was stabbed. After the injured robber was arrested in a hospital, he gave up his accomplice, but there is atill an investigation going on whether those two clowns are maybe involved in some other home invasions in which victims were seriously injured or killed ... Amsterdam police has at least six homicides in home invasions on houseboats open, so ... a valid question, I guess.
So, only because you don't know about it, it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Since 9/11 the Netherlands were targeted in more than 20 terror plots, but you probably heard of one, the Theo van Gogh murder? Because the other one were prevented and people never heard of them. Don't be worried too much, it's worse in other countries.
But there is actually a difference. Since I have a little bit more access than media only, I looked up the response times after the police was called. Actually, the Dutch police in all the cases of home invasions was on the scene in less than five minutes. Ambulances needed in the slowest case 8 minutes and in the fastest 2 (and I really would like to know how they managed that!). Not like 15-30 minutes while the victims bled out.
The average average serial killer over the cases active in the last decade makes it in the Netherlands about 5 1/2 years after detection. That sounds bad, especially if you are neighbouring countries where a serial killer has an average career time of some months, but it is pretty good compared to the US where we can't calculate numbers for a decade anymore because the average career time is nowadays 17 years, slight longer than a decade. However, the best country in the world if you are a serial killer is still Cuba. They claim, SKs are a problem of the degenerated capital US and so, they simply cover every case up instead of catching the guys and they do so since 50 years. So all cynical jokes aside, the Dutch police is actually quite good in what they do and thus, people have a lot less reason to defend themselves. But nevertheless, as the cases above show, it happens.

[HJ1an]

A few years ago, a friend of mine whose neighbor was robbed, and my friend called the police (he only knew about it when their 5 year old boy wriggled out of family being tied up with ropes and went over to him for help). The police? One *@#$%* hour to arrive..... (I'll point out that this is from a country that took 4 days to figure out a passenger jet went the other way, but I REALLY wish to not be associated with them)

So.. we do precautions. Which is essentially turning our homes into something looking like cell blocks. (My house still looks like a house, but some people make them look like bunkers with all the barb wiring)

[KL-666]

Yes, bad things happen, also with terrorism. But must we give in? End our lives by retreating in bunkers? If i had to live as HJ1AN describes, i might as well hang myself.

Once i saw a documentary about an American city, possibly Detroit. It had a Canadian sister city just over a river. The Americans were all feared up and lived behind 10 locks with 12 guns. The Canadians did not even lock their door all the time. They feared nothing. What went so badly wrong in America, and not in Canada? The guns maybe?

I really see now how fear is a bad advisor, and make you go the opposite of a human life. What does it say about how you approach your fellow human, when you retreat in a bunker with a gun at every window? It is just not the way to go. Root causes for this must be found and eliminated, and then slowly everyone can move back to a fearless human life. But people must stay realistic. 100% security can never be guaranteed in life.

My motto is: Live until you die, and treat your fellow human as yourself. (No matter what fear mongering crime tv programs try to instill in you) And yes, maybe i will one day walk into one of Jwocky's statistically low serial killers. So be it. I refuse to stop my life for that chance.

Kind regards, Vincent

[HJ1an]

I have family in Canada, and while I don't know _for sure_, but they sure look to be doing really well over there.

I have patterned grilles inside my windows to prevent an 'easy' break in. Standard "feature" for all homes. Some people have barbed wire, or, broken glass over the walls. Most have recorded CCTV. Anything as a deterrent. Some people literally bunker up their homes, either that or they have no taste. Or both. It also depends on which area we live in, which I guess is pretty consistent this way throughout all countries. ie burglary is common occurance in the densely populated low income areas. If not a break in, even small items outside the house can go missing for some people.

Suicide rate by hanging however, isn't common.