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I call bullshit. Even in Europe. Reality has a center/center-right bias. Even among people who claim to be liberals, most people oppose immigration and the change that comes along with it, support what they (regionally) consider to be traditional values, and have strong religious beliefs.

The "reality has a liberal bias" quip is cute. But it's bogus. You'd have to live in a hole (ivory tower?) to actually believe it.

This is wrong.

Actually the UK is one of the world's most secular societies. We also have a greater social welfare net (including free health care) and a great deal of provision of government training (including a lot of support for university level courses - I get £6000 pa from the state and £5000 pa from the University of Cambridge). We also disallow the death penalty and allow judges to impose their own sentencing for almost all crimes. The loser generally pays all legal fees so even the poor can have legal representation for SLAPP-style cases. Our police are not armed, and firearms are indeed controlled or banned for many types of firearm. In related news, our murder rate was 1.1 per 100,000[1] compared to the US at 5.4 per 100000[2]. A single killing during the London tube bombings has resulted in three separate investigations against the police and one successful prosecution of the entire force. This level of investigation is generally supported, and no major politician has attempted to argue against it.

We support civil partnerships for homosexuals that have the legal force of marraige, and indeed discrimination on the basis of sexuality in employment is illegal. We have recently had a court case that denies the ability of religious adoption agencies to deny service to homosexual potential adopting families. Pensions and other benefits are maintained between same-sex partners.

We have openly atheistic politicians - a lack of faith is also a respected choice. We attempt to integrate Islamic culture as an equally valued partner. A smear of alleged Islamic belief would not be so much of an issue here - we have Islamic MPs and it is...not really an issue. We even have members of Parliament who were aligned with terrorist/freedom fighter conflict against the UK (IRA) and therefore refuse to swear the oath of allegiance to the Parliament and Crown but are still granted offices and funding for staff within the Commons buildings.

A full one third of Londoners were born outside the UK, and immigration continues from Eastern Europe in particular. You also state that freedom of movement is opposed, but EU nationals have complete freedom of movement, employment and abode within EU countries. This is over an entire continent, and no major parties that I am aware of desire withdrawal from the EU. All of these stances are *extremely* liberal compared to US politics (I amusingly imagine the reaction to freedom of movement in NAFTA, for example - and before you say we are more economically equal consider that we have just admitted many Eastern European states).

Given that the EU is currently economically outperforming the US, I am unsure as to what here is either a) unrealistically unsustainable or b) not liberal beyond what even an Olbermann or Moore would desire.

So it would appear that reality can indeed be defined as more than merely US centrist. That is all.

[1] Home Office (undated). 'Homicide' - long-term national recorded crime trends. Available from: http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/page40.asp.
[2] Federal Bureau of Investigation (2006a). Bureau of Justice Statistics. Homicide trends in the U.S.. Long-term trends. Available from: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/totalstab.htm.

Since the US and England differ in more ways than just the gun ban, wouldn't it make more sense to compare England's crime rates before and after the 1997 ban?

First charts I could find:
http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page40.asp http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page63.asp

I'm certainly no expert, but it looks like homicide increased dramatically until 2002, where it has slowly dropped off until it reached pre-gun-ban levels. Violent crime is a bit more ambiguous, since it peaked in 1995 and was already declining. According to the BBC handgun violence rose 40% in the two years following the ban.

Since the US and England differ in more ways than just the gun ban, wouldn't it make more sense to compare England's crime rates before and after the 1997 ban?

First charts I could find:
http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page40.asp http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page63.asp

I'm certainly no expert, but it looks like homicide increased dramatically until 2002, where it has slowly dropped off until it reached pre-gun-ban levels. Violent crime is a bit more ambiguous, since it peaked in 1995 and was already declining. According to the BBC handgun violence rose 40% in the two years following the ban.

Citation needed.

Handguns were banned in the UK in 1997, disarming the approximately one in a thousand who had them. Here is the trend of homicides in the UK. It's... actually, much the same. It drifted up a bit, there's a big peak in 2002/03 which was when they caught Harold Shipman - all his victims were recorded at once, though they represented a decades-long career of serial killing. Now it's back at about the same level.

However, even when guns were legal nobody had them. One in a thousand owned pistols, and of those the vast majority left them at gun clubs and used them to shoot at targets once in a while. If you're a prospective mugger in pre-1997 Britain, you're not worrying about your victim possibly carrying a gun, because quite frankly you're more likely to be struck by lightning.

Lets see, violent crime in the UK is pretty steady at 650-900 homicides a year for a country of 55 million. The recent trend has been sharply down despite 52 homicide victims of 7/7. Of those the vast majority are domestics, killing sprees are pretty much a once a decade affair.

I don't think that you could honestly attribute more than 50 or so homicides a year to the effects of computer games in the UK if you took the most liberal interpretation imaginable.

Smoking causes about 110,000 deaths a year according to the leading anti-smoking campaign.

Allowing for the fact that ASH might well overstate the case somewhat the fact is that we don't have a single UK case where computer games are confirmed as a major factor. So I would be pretty confident in stating that smoking is at least a thousand times more dangerous than video games and the evidence points to the difference being more like a hundred thousand.

So let us imagine what the difference between the UK and the US could be. Oh yes the fact that you let every loony and criminal arm themselves to the teeth with cheap firearms. The fact that this is not even mentioned as a possibly significant issue in the article kinda shows that the entire study is worthless. Or is the idea here that controlling fictional materials in which guns play a role is somehow more politically practical than controlling actual guns?

You can tell that its a fit up job in the first sentence "After reviewing more than 50 years of research on the impact of violence in the media,". In other words this is not an objective study, its a fishing expedition through existing research. Lets take a look at his bibliography. Does not exactly look like the guy is a disinterested party here.

Sure lets talk about controlling violent video games, right after the US adopts the UK gun control laws.

It's a "simple statistical fact" that crime in the UK has been falling since 1993, even though public perception is the opposite, see here for details.

Now whether surveillance is the main reason for that is a different matter, since crime has also been falling over the same period in other western countries without as much surveillance, but it might be a factor.

These stats are a bit dated, but still suggestive:

Gun deaths per 100,000 population

US Homicide 4.08 Suicide 6.08 Accidental 0.42 [1999]
UK Homicide 0.12 Suicide 0.25 Accidental 0.01 {1999] [*slightly simplified] Some Facts About Guns

There were 765 homicides in England and Wales in 2005/2006. The numbers are small enough that the work of a single serial killer or a lone terrorist incident can be visible on the charts. 'Homicide' - Long-term national recorded crime trend

Good question, I had no idea. Drug crime is certainly very common here, but it's not handled in the same way (you don't get police running sting operations for something as trivial as cannabis though, that's generally regarded as a waste of time). Even for harder drugs it's fine and/or rehab (which is recognised as more effective, even if we don't persue it as strongly or effectively as other European countries do).

The latest crime survey says it's Theft (inc. shoplifting, car theft and handbag snatching, but not burglary or violent robbery), Violence Against The Person and Criminal Damage - which all fits very much fitting in with my preception of life here in the UK.

One thing visitors here (from Australia, New Zealand) often comment on is how unpredicable steets can be here. There are good areas - even very wealthy areas in London (where houses are over a million GBP) where there are street murders and gangs hanging around (with council estates just 5 / 10 minutes walk away) and things can turn very nasty in an area when it starts to get dark (though other cities across the UK have this problem too).

This is as a result of government policy (which has existed throughout successive governments) to prevent 'gettoisation', though it's pretty much a disasterous one IMO. It's practically impossible to live somewhere like London and not live near a crime-hotspot council estate unless you are in some exorbitant 3 million GBP per house area.

It's one of the main reasons I'm thinking of moving out of London, I just want to live in a half decent area where I don't have to watch my back at nights : I've been assaulted more than once, including when I stepped in to defend another passenger on the tube from some racist yob picking a fight on an Asian guy - while the rest of the passengers tried to hide their faces - and I've been attacked by Asian rascists in East London who don't like white people 'in their area' as they put it and that's especialy if you a woman, according to a couple of girls who work in the area. There are a couple of other occasions too. Council estate yobs who's parents are living on handouts is the common theme though.

I categorise myself as slightly left of center, or at least I did - I think I am now, TBH it's hard to tell. I'm probably slightly right of center now (though that's still to left of center by American standards).

I'm moving further to the right as I get older, I notice, and that's certainly colored by my negative experiences.

... because it doesn't seem to be in England and Wales.

You wrote: "Doesn't change the fact that, by trampling on individual rights to self defense, Blair et al have increased, rather than decreased, crime." But the crime rate seems to have been headed downward since the mid-1990s, with a slight uptick in 2006.

Crime Statistics for England and Wales

"Which part of Europe?"

Just about all of them.

"England? Where guns are banned entirely..."

You cite a old article in a rag. A much better and more current source is here:

http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/page40.as p

There were a total of 765 homicides in England and Wales during the year 2005-2006, which have a combined population of around 54 million. This includes the 52 who were killed in the 7th July bombings. There are several US cities with populations that are a small fraction of this with significantly higher homicide figures for the same period.

"Or Switzerland?"

A country whose entire population is smaller than that of London, and around 15% of the population of England and Wales. But of course, comparing Switzerland with a similar country such as Austria or Sweden (comparable populations, similar individual wealth levels, strict gun laws, and lower homicide rates than Switzerland) doesn't make Switzerland look quite so glowing, just as comparing the UK with similarly populous European countries such as France and Spain reveals that it's actually a much safer country than either. But hey, if you can cherry-pick, then so can I -- my example is Colombia, a country with extremely liberal gun laws, a population that's similar in size to that of England and Wales (40 million or so), and a murder rate of 25,000 people per year compared with the UK's less than 800. If I used your tactics, I would claim that this proves removing the UK's strict gun laws would result in their murder rate leaping to around 35,000 per year almost immediately (it does not of course prove anything of the sort).

"These make a pretty good case for arming everyone!"

They make a pretty good case for living in a country with a small and extremely wealthy, contented populace. Note also that despite everyone having guns, events like this
(http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/09/27/sw itzerland.shooting/index.html) prove that, as anyone who has actually been to Switzerland knows, Swiss people don't carry them around for the sake of it, so the probability of them being able to deal with a lunatic who starts shooting people in a shopping mall, post office, factory, or school is no greater than that other non-armed Europeans.

Wrong in places that gun controls true believers have won they see skyrocketing crime.

Ask England, it is the people that are determined to commit the crimes not what ever they use to commit them. Note that criminals by definition do not follow the laws can you explain how yet another gun law is going to keep them from doing it? When they are what? ...11k+ gun laws on the books that haven't stopped them?
If a gun is not handy they use a bat or explosives or they drive their SUBs into crowds.

Again England is a nice example, they have banned guns and now feel the need to ban knives to protect people. That is right it is not a joke they really want to ban knives.

Something that you can make with a grinder and a few minutes. Because they will protect people by banning them.

And even though the evil guns are gone their crime rate is still going up.

How about taking just a little responsibility here people?

Wrong in places that gun controls true believers have won they see skyrocketing crime.

Ask England, it is the people that are determined to commit the crimes not what ever they use to commit them. Note that criminals by definition do not follow the laws can you explain how yet another gun law is going to keep them from doing it? When they are what? ...11k+ gun laws on the books that haven't stopped them?
If a gun is not handy they use a bat or explosives or they drive their SUBs into crowds.

Again England is a nice example, they have banned guns and now feel the need to ban knives to protect people. That is right it is not a joke they really want to ban knives.

Something that you can make with a grinder and a few minutes. Because they will protect people by banning them.

And even though the evil guns are gone their crime rate is still going up.

How about taking just a little responsibility here people?

The figure seems particularly large when you consider that around 5,000,000 crimes were reported in England and Wales during the same period. Does one in twelve crimes require a wiretap? Or is it possible that at least some of the surveillance is politically motivated?

"The gov abandoned the idea of a state regulated militia in favor of a federally regulated national guard. If the right to bear arms only applies to a state regulated militia, then we lost our right to bear arms many years ago."

this is simply the national government adjusting to the fact that our national security is no longer under constant threat which is to say we are no longer under threat of invasion by the british, native americans or anybody else.
of course one could ask, "what about terrorism?". I would suggest that the threat of terrorism in this country is overblown by many and that due to modern terrorism's covert nature (in most cases) having an armed populous would not be terribly usefull anyways.

Gun confiscation leads to a loss of freedom, increased crime, and the government moving to the left

let me just say how laughable your grouping of the government moving to the left in with increased crime and the like, implying that it's as bad as the rest. talk about wearing your political bias on your sleave.

This has already happened in England and Australia. After Great Britain banned most guns in 1997, making armed self-defense punishable as murder, violence skyrocketed because criminals know that law abiding citizens have been disarmed. Armed crime rose 10% in 1998. The Sunday Times of London reported on the new black market in guns: "Up to 3 million illegal guns are in circulation in Britain, leading to a rise in drive-by shootings and gangland-style execution." There has been such a heavy increase in the use of knives for violent attacks that new laws have been passed giving police the power to search anyone for knives in designated areas.

when i look at government studies in the UK on the subject of violent crime, it looks as if these rates have fallen a significant amount over the last few years inspite of this horrible crime inducing handgun ban (source: http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page63.as p). couldnt find a violent crime timeline for australia so i cant say anything in regards to that.

everything i've ever seen in regards to gun control and violent crime is that we are far from a final verdict on the subject. I've seen studies in which it look's like one would be a fool to ban guns and i've also seen studies which would lead to the opposite conclusion.

me personaly, i think it's obsurd to give the average citizen the ability to easily doll out the death sentence at will. this is what we have the courts for (and to a lesser extent the police).

these kinds of "rage" attacks are definitely on the increase
WRONG
http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page63.as p
(And thats before taking Victorian London into account)

with binge drinking also increasing
LOL ! Getting shitfaced is obviously a new phenominon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gin_Lane

Even take violence at football games - yes, it's decreased here in the past 20 years but only because there are so many police
Nothing to do with the rise of MDMA in the late 80's & early 90's then?
http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v04n1/04122mdm.ht ml

Stop reading the News of the Screws / Daily Hate and get a grip.

We have real problems that could be solved with the money wasted on this terror bullshit.

http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/

Despite increased surveillance, violent crime is soaring yet our goverments idea of punishment is handing out an ASBO. Most ineffectual government 'evar', only appear to be in power to lay the framework for a totalitarian regime.

Well, if the NRA says so, then it must be true! :-)
(which is ridiculous - 4.5 million is 1.5% of the entire USA population!),

Which is why I decimated their numbers.

But you make the fundamentally flawed assumption that each person who used a gun that way only did so once. If you live in a ghetto where you can't even walk home from the grocery market without worry of assault, then you may use your gun in that fashion on a weekly basis.

As for "solving that problem" - well few governments have solved the problems of ghettos yet, if I were stuck in one I would not hold my breath. The ghettos where legal ownership of firearms has been banned have usually seen increases in the violent crimes rate (c.f. Washington DC, banned guns in 1973 but as of the mid-90s had a murder rate 8x the national average - sorry I don't have numbers for mid-2000s, they weren't readily available without a deep search). You can also look at over-all violent crime rate, despite about 4.5 million new firearms purchases per year, the total violent crime rate in the USA has declined by about 60% since 1993. So, I'd say that "pumping even more firearms into the hands of ordinary people" does not hurt and probably helps.

Additionally, only 6% of all violent crimes in the USA were committed by a person with a gun. Yet, almost 4 times that amount of violent crimes involved a weapon - gun, knife, etc. So, in the USA at least, less than 1 out of 15 violent crimes are committed with a gun, while more than 1 out of 6 violent crimes involve a non-gun weapon. Sounds to me like knives and such are a bigger threat to regular people than guns.

Take a look at this - in 2003-2004, according to the chart England, where handguns had been banned for about 7 year already, had a violent crime rate of about 4% of the population. While for about the same time period, the USA had a rate of about half that. The studies are different, so the numbers aren't directly comparable, but still a 100% increase in violent crime without handguns than with handguns, even if it is only 10% that's a remarkably strong argment in favor of arming citizeens.

I am 35, and have never *ever* been even remotely in the situation to need a gun to protect myself or my property. Neither has *anybody* else that I happen to know. I live in Europe.

It's nice to be a member of the upper-middle socio-economic class, isn't it? I have had just about the exact same experience here in the USA. But, I recognize that not everyone is so privileged and try not to draw false conclusions from my anecdotal experience.

From your DOJ article: "The higher volume of crime in the United States is due, at least in part,to the greater population size of the United States. A more meaningful comparison is between the crime rates of the two countries."

The UK is has a far higher density of population than the USA. There are ~65 million people in the UK, and ~320 million in the USA. 4x the people, 50x the area. A "more meaningful" comparison would take that into account.

An additional reason for the UK to have higher violent crime is that the victim often survives in the UK. Even if attacked with a knife. You are far more likely to end up dead in the USA, so the figures are artifically low when comparing the two.

The USA has just sustained a huge drop [warning: PDF] in murder rates/year (in 2002, the latest figures I could find, it was ~5 murders per 10,000 people per year). During the time period you linked to in the "higher violent crime rate", it was ~8 murders per 10,000 people per year. Or, put another way ~260,000 murders. In the UK in 2003/2004 there were 853. In the period you linked to, it was ~700.

853 x4 is nowhere near 160,000 (both recent figures). The UK is no panacea, but to paint it as more-violent than the USA is just plain wrong.

Simon

You need a simple arithmetic lesson!!! Look at the English murder statistics at http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page40.as p . Remember the population of England is approximately 50 million. The figure would be about 1.7 per 100,000 for England. If you include deaths from traffic acidents it would be about 2.5 per 100,000

it can still be used for unplanned crimes.

Which then leads directly to the other part of your first post, in other words - at what cost? Since you don't see a cost to society in pervasive monitoring (never mind the dollar cost), your answer is easy.

However, as numerous other people have pointed out in this story discussion, there are substantial costs. Since the crime rate has been decreasing in both the UK and the USA for the last 10 years or so, I don't think there is any rational justification for such a system. We are already doing pretty well as it is.

Yeah, its so bad that most crime has dropped by thirty percent or so over the last 10 years.

http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page54.as p

KEY FINDINGS
Overall, firearms (including air weapons) were used in 0.4 per cent of all recorded crimes. The proportion
excluding air weapons was 0.18 per cent.
Firearms other than air weapons were reported to have been used in 9,974 recorded crimes in 2001/02.
This was a 35 per cent increase over the previous year.
Air weapons were used in 12,340 recorded crimes, a rise of 21 per cent compared to 2000/01. Threequarters
(77%) of recorded crimes involving air weapons were of criminal damage.
There were 97 fatalities and 558 serious injuries resulting from crimes that involved firearms (including air
weapons) in 2001/02.
Handguns were used in 5,871 recorded crimes, an increase of 46 per cent on the previous year. Seventy
per cent of robberies in which a firearm was present involved a handgun.
The number of firearm robberies increased by a third (34%) between 2000-01 and 2001/02. Currently,
the number of firearm robberies is the highest since 1993. However, the proportion of robberies involving
firearms (including air weapons) has remained between four and five per cent for the last five years.
Weapons were fired in only 24 per cent of firearm crimes (excluding those involving air weapons). In
most of the cases (84%) where a handgun was present, it was used as a threat and was not fired or used
as a blunt instrument.

But let's not even do that, particularly when the facts don't support it:

Home Office statistics for burglary - Merseyside against national average

Same again, for robbery"

These figures compare very favourably with other metropolitan areas in England (something not readily demonstrated from the Home Office site without using an awful lot of links, so you can check them yourself if you want). You're less likely to be burgled in Liverpool than in any metropolitan area apart from London, which is slightly better. You're less likely to be robbed in Liverpool than in London, the West Midlands or Manchester, and about as likely as in South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire.

There are categories of crime where the risk in Liverpool is greater than elsewhere, but people nicking your stuff - stereotype or no stereotype - isn't one of them.

Sorry to go on about this. I'm pretty sure that you were simply observing that the stereotype exists, rather than trying to perpetuate it; but I live there and it hacks me off when people drag these things out when there isn't a shred of evidence for them.

But let's not even do that, particularly when the facts don't support it:

Home Office statistics for burglary - Merseyside against national average

Same again, for robbery"

These figures compare very favourably with other metropolitan areas in England (something not readily demonstrated from the Home Office site without using an awful lot of links, so you can check them yourself if you want). You're less likely to be burgled in Liverpool than in any metropolitan area apart from London, which is slightly better. You're less likely to be robbed in Liverpool than in London, the West Midlands or Manchester, and about as likely as in South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire.

There are categories of crime where the risk in Liverpool is greater than elsewhere, but people nicking your stuff - stereotype or no stereotype - isn't one of them.

Sorry to go on about this. I'm pretty sure that you were simply observing that the stereotype exists, rather than trying to perpetuate it; but I live there and it hacks me off when people drag these things out when there isn't a shred of evidence for them.