UK Street Crime Rise Blamed on iPods

CNET reports that the British Government today attributed the country's 22% rise in street crime to iPod robberies. This has hit CNET close to home. Guy Cocker, a CNET (Gamespot) journalist based in London, was mugged last week. The muggers held 'a semi-automatic weapon to the back of Cocker's head and told him, "we're taking all your stuff"'. CNET's solution to the problem is suggestions on how to conceal your iPod from attackers. These include 'The gaffer tape method,' 'The Coke can method,' and 'The Christopher Walken method.'

Comments

Thank god in a contry

[JamesP]

wthout those baaad baaad guns this would have never happened!

Oh wait...

Re:Thank god in a contry

[0123456]

Why is being murdered with a gun somehow worse than being murdered by having your brains smashed out of your skull with a blunt object? There are far more crimes committed with guns in the UK today than there were a century ago when anyone could buy a gun over the counter and anyone with ten shillings to spare could get a permit to carry one, no questions asked.

The simple fact is that British people murder each other less than most other countries, regardless of what weapons are used. Guns are irrelevant.

Re:Thank god in a contry

[Ginger Unicorn]

there were less people living here 100 years ago, and i would think the crime statistics figures from that period would have questionable reliability so you cant really make a sweeping statement like that. also different things were illegal then, so saying there are more crimes being comitted today might not be an indication of a more confident criminal, but perhaps there are more laws to break.

plus, you can't hold up a bank with a blunt object, you cant kill people at (much of) a distance with a blunt object, and you cant take out a room full of unarmed people with a blunt object.

if the american gun lobby is so sure that giving the general population guns will stop the government misbehaving, why isnt anyone storming the whitehouse with uzis, taking out the unelected emperor that stole control of their country 7 years ago?

Re:Thank god in a contry

[operagost]

if the american gun lobby is so sure that giving the general population guns will stop the government misbehaving, why isnt anyone storming the whitehouse with uzis, taking out the unelected emperor that stole control of their country 7 years ago?

Because the average gun-owning American is better informed and more level headed than the average Slashdot troll.

Re:Thank god in a contry

[glesga_kiss]

The simple fact is that British people murder each other less than most other countries, regardless of what weapons are used. Guns are irrelevant

Nonsense. Guns make it so easy to kill that any retard can do it. That's the ultimate problem. It's the same interface as a camera; point and click.

To murder someone with a knife or club you have to:

1. Have big balls
2. Get close
3. Be strong enough to actually do damage
4. Get covered in your victims blood(!)

Compare that to shooting someone in the back from 10 foot away. Very easy in comparison. That's why people who cannot fight for themselves love guns. They are the pussies weapon of choice. Mine? Check my username... ;-)

In terms of damage, dying from a knife wound is rare. You generally need multiple wounds or a lucky shot to a key artery or nerve. For a club you need to literally cave in some part of their body. A gunshot on the other hand will easilly pass through the rib cage into a vital organ. Or get one in the head to almost guarantee a kill.

America's specific problem is the glorification of them in popular media. Guns are cool apparently. Hell, I'm mostly a pacifist but I'd love to fire off a few rounds on a range if I'm ever stateside. Thanks Hollywood!!

Re:Thank god in a contry

[thatguywhoiam]

Because the average gun-owning American is better informed and more level headed than the average Slashdot troll.

No, they are more easily controlled by their gov't, because as long as you give them their precious little guns, they will vote for you and not complain about anything else (mentioning God doesn't hurt either). One good troll deserves another.

Blaming the iPod?

[blcamp]

Really, now... is this the fault of the iPod and not the punk-ass thugs doing this crap?

Re:Blaming the iPod?

[BenjyD]

I think it's mainly confusion on the part of Labour - they just don't seem to know what to do about crime. One set of reforms boosts the importance of probation and attempts to replace long prison terms with better handling of offenders once they leave prison on licence, then the next reforms reverse that. None of it seems to be based on evidence or research, they're just guessing and reacting to whatever the tabloids say.

My favourite quote that sums up Labour is "Labour see a problem and a headline, and they address the headline".

Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace the earplugs with ones with black cables.

Here's a thought

[DrXym]

How about walking around without listening to music the whole time?

22%??

[Proud like a god]

98,204 - 90,747 = 7,457 More

7,457 / 90,747 = 8.2% Rise from the original level

22%? WTF?

Weapon?

[MichaelSmith]

Summary:

The muggers held 'a semi-automatic weapon to the back of Cocker's head

TFA:

His assailants held what felt like a semi-automatic weapon to the back of Cocker's head

For all I know an opened glass coke bottle feels exactly like a semi-automatic weapon when it is pressed into the back of a persons head. The words felt like make all the difference.

Re:How About the "Stick a Gun in Their Face" Metho

[vidarh]

Yes, it is the UK, where practically noone ever get hurt by guns. Go read the WHO's World report on violence and death and compare the per capita firearms related violence in the UK compared to the US.

(Before anyone turns this into a matter of gun control alone, note that countries like Switzerland and Norway, with HUGE amounts of weapons in private ownership, including AG-3's in about 1/3'd of homes in Norway, have firearms related violence rates not much different from the UK - it's much more complicated than gun control or not)

Re:The Solution

[Bogtha]

This is must be why this story is about crimes in the UK and no in the US.

Yeah, because letting people run around with guns really solved the USA's violent crime problem, didn't it?

a Londoner writes ...

[ElephanTS]

As a Londoner I'm pretty sure there was no gun involved. This guy was the victim of the classic 'banana in the small of the back' scam as portrayed in so many movies. It can be scary if the guy looks mad enough. Happened to me once, 5 years ago and I never saw the gun - just a 6'4 crackhead. In the end I just walked away with half of me just waiting to be shot in the back. It didn't happen fortunately.

As someone else said, if you've got a real gun in London you're not jacking iPods with it - you're doing something a little larger in scope. However, I'm not sure that this isn't changing with some younger people - gun crime is certainly increasing.

Re:Oh, what a wonderful idea.

[LiquidCoooled]

I would reword the grandparent as:

When walking through dodgy parts of town, best to keep your wits about you.

Pumping loud music through your ears when you should be using your senses for protection and information is idiotic at best.

Re:a light touch with the clue stick

[jcr]

this is largely an American idea "the right to bear arms"

Actually, it's an idea from the English common law, which was preserved in America while England abandoned the traditional rights of Englishmen. Before the suppression of the Jacobites, there wasn't much dispute in Britain that free men are entitled to posess arms for their own defense.

In America, we wrote it into our bill of rights, because having just overthrown our king about a decade earlier, we decided that placing a monopoly on armaments in the hands of government was a very dangerous idea.

-jcr

Re:So who is to blame

[theStorminMormon]

Poverty does correlate to higher crime rates. So do a lot of things - like lack of education. Poverty and education do not steal iPods, however.

The GPs point was that even if you have a situation that may be favorable for increasing crime rates, the crimes are still committed by PEOPLE. If you have a libertarian bent, or if you belief in human autonomy at all, then in any given crime you blame the criminal FIRST.

There's a belief out there that those with a more liberal bent tend to eclipse personal responsibility and act as though being poor somehow makes you less responsible for your own actions - less human. The response from those with a more conservative bent (e.g. me) is that if you're poor you have more to gain and less to lose from crime, but this means you have incentive to commit a crime. Having incentive to commit a crime is not the same as being forced to commit a crime. And so I, and many others, would consider the mugger to be responsible for the mugging.

So poverty - which creates incentive - really should be listed as a separate issue then the personal responsibility of those who commit the crimes.

-stormin

Re:So who is to blame

[vidarh]

Well, I'm not "liberal" (whether under the European or US definition - here in Europe "liberals" are far from left wing).

But that's beside the point - no, you are not being "forced" to commit crimes. However poverty breeds desperation, and desperate people do desperate things.

That does not mean that they are not responsible. However it's just downright stupid to point the finger at the choices of individual criminals for the crime rates, which is what I responded to. The criminals are responsible for their individual crimes, not "street crime" in general.

Society is responsible for the conditions that drive these people to make these choices, and poverty is the largest single driver for this kind of low level crime.

If you want to discuss a single crime, then sure, we can discuss the choices of that criminal. But as long as the issue is street crime in general, the criminals individual choices are not relevant.

Re:Ipod ppffft

[Sentry21]

If I had to listen to bagpipe music all the time, I'd probably buy a gun too.

Re:The Solution

[goldspider]

Because NOT letting people run around with guns really solved Washington DC's and Chicago's violent crime problem, didn't it?