(This is a continuation of the debate I was having with mdma about a gunshot incident involving a musician on another thread)
mdma said:
You made an incorrect assumption.
I was assuming the handgun was stolen to give weight to my argument, that if guns were illegal then there would be less chance of someone having one upon their person. Therefore less chance of someone getting shot.
If a bloke feels the need to carry a gun, then in my opinion they are soft as sh!t and couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag. If somebody this soft didn't have access to a gun then they wouldn't be able to carry out a gun related crime.
There are less gun crimes in the UK for this very reason.
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You've made the same incorrect assumption again. A stolen gun is an illegal weapon, and it may as well be one that has been smuggled into the country. In this case two parties should be liable: the guy who allowed his gun to be stored in such a manner that it could be stolen, and the guy who did the shooting. Nowhere in the US constitution do they say that a citizen has the right to bear illegal arms. And that is what I took issue with, was your immediate reference to the right to bear arms. If you want to make this an issue about the safe handling and storage of firearms, and the responsible use of firearms (whether enforced by competency tests, licensure etc) that is a different issue, but I cannot accept that the 'right to bear arms' is an invitation to commit gun crime.
Now as for the UK situation: there is more going on here than you would be aware of. Back in 2001 I contacted the Forensic Science Services laboratory in Lambeth and I spoke to their head firearms and toolmarks examiner and we discussed various aspects of what hospitals should be doing to preserve evidence in live gunshot cases. He told me that thus far (it was about August) his department had processed more than 2500 firearms which were the subject of investigation. This figure also includes accidents where the weapon's integrity was questioned by one or more parties to the incident, so the crime figure will be lower than 2500, but it is more than you would think. On the 17th of March this year I was involved in a double shooting outside my hospital here in North London. I saw the assailants get away on a bike and I made the 999 call. I also protected some evidence that was about to be run over by a bus. In the last two weeks we have had two gunshot victims, and before that we had one shotgun injury and a gunshot abdomen from two separate incidents. We aren't even in a hospital that deals with many gunshot wounds. Gun crime is on the increase in the UK, most crimes being committed with handguns which are illegal, no exceptions, in the UK. Where did these guns come from? They were smuggled in from Eastern Europe and other places in Africa and the West Indies. The rise in gun crime in the UK has been of such import that the General Medical Council issued hospital doctors in the UK with guidelines on how to contact the police about these incidents. That letter went out on the 6th of October last year. Several papers have been published on gunshot wounds in the UK, and many trauma surgeons go to SA to get experience in managing these injuries. A group of them recently published a book called Ballistic Trauma:
http://www.springeronline.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,5-10063-22-29399423-detailsPage%253Dppmmedia%257CotherBooks%257CotherBooks%2526seqNo%253D1%2526CIPageCounter%253DCI_MORE_BOOKS_BY_AUTHOR0,00.htmlI have worked with some of the UK authors and attended lectures with them. If it wasn't such a big deal, nobody would have come to my lectures either, and I would have no market for my current textbook.
What I'm trying to tell you is that if a guy wants to get a gun to kill somebody, he'll find a way to get it or even make his own like they do in SA out of two plumbing pipes and a one Rand coin.
I agree that greater care must be taken to ensure that an individual is competent to own a gun (psychometric and competency tests) and that he has facilities that are proper for the storage of a gun, but I don't accept that just by having a gun (legally) a guy will be more likely to kill someone. If that was the case I (and many of my colleagues in the hospital in SA) would have wiped out some people by now.
As for whether 'a bloke who feels the need to carry a gun being soft as sh1t', you'll have to explain that a little more. Do you mean a bloke in the UK, SA, or USA? Your choice of country will greatly affect my response.
