Violent crime in Australia

[pacmania_2001]

Also I think you need to rethink the comparision of Australia becoming wimps and the going to war analogy.

[gmatov]

Pacman,

I see. Those 8 kids in the post above were specific terrorist's targets. You are not.
Besides which you have all these big government figures visit your house. Because of a small problem your father had.

Glad they didn't have any of those nasty, bulging, anyone can tell you have a gun on you, guns on them. 'Specially when they pass the laws that tell you you are a fool if you have a gun in your home, you are 44 times more likely to kill a loved one than an intruder.

What fishes we got in this world. Blind as bats. You read something in your own papers, can't be so. You read something in a foreign paper, they're all a bunch of bloodthirsty killers, we'd never do anything like that.

Maybe the authorities are right in your case (Aus) as you were allowed to hunt and kill the indigineous population after it became illegal here.



Innyhoo, you youngsters seem to think the world is on your side,and us old farts, although not paranoid, damn well know the world is out to get us.

Good luck, pal,

George

[pacmania_2001]

I don't know if I would call a local council representative a 'big government figure'.

Personally I don't feel the world is on my side but I'm also not stupid enough to believe that me carrying a gun is in someway going to tip it in my favour.

I'm not entirely sure about your fixation on the leg of lamb either. :P

[vitualis]

By the way, watch to Australian TV some time. Apart from the odd occasions (e.g., the Prime Minister overseas or speaking to the gun lobby after the Port Arthur massacre), our political figures don't have bodyguards with them. I've met multiple members of parliament over the years (not personally, usually at some sort of official event) and usually the only people with them would be an aide and sometimes a driver. Certainly no one with a gun.

And, what is your obssession with a frozen leg of lamb anyway??

Regards.

[gmatov]

The "frozen leg o' lamb" is a metaphor.

You outlawed guns, the bad boys started knifing each other. Soon a few people will be bludgeoned to death with a leg o' lamb, and either freezers or legs o' lamb will be outlawed.

It's known a "zero tolerance". Here 6 year olds have been suspended from school for dressing as firemen for a school party and having a 6 inch rubber axe on their belts.

There's a whole site devoted to this insanity.

I'm sure your politicos don't have bodyguards in their presence when out amongst the unwashed. None of those guys with the thing sticking out of their ear, black suits, dark glasses, Kevin Costner types.

Just one or two good ole boys with 'em, shows they are "a man of the people"

Can you say naive?

Even your local city councilman might think twice about going out to press the flesh after passing yet another restrictive ordinance without some muscle or police protection.

What is your local police reponse time? I read recently, in the Telegraph, of a response time of 31 minutes to get a bobby to the scene after a call came in. Their reasoning was that the crime had already been committed, what's the rush.

True, in the city it might be faster, but from all I read it is those outlying areas that are having problems. They're already so far out as to have a long response time. I can imagine hollering through your locked bedroom door, "I've called the police! You'd better get out of here."

Ah, well.

Cheers,

George

[pacmania_2001]

The "frozen leg o' lamb" is a metaphor.

You outlawed guns, the bad boys started knifing each other. Soon a few people will be bludgeoned to death with a leg o' lamb, and either freezers or legs o' lamb will be outlawed.

It's known a "zero tolerance". Here 6 year olds have been suspended from school for dressing as firemen for a school party and having a 6 inch rubber axe on their belts.

There's a whole site devoted to this insanity.

We don't have that problem though. You won't see kids in our schools walking through metal detectors or having everyday items taken away from them because they are weapons.

Thats because we don't have school shootings, we don't allow kids access to guns because we don't have guns in our homes.

It's called the 'flow on' effect. By reducing the number of guns in the ordinary household it stops people who shouldn't have access to guns. How many legitimate guns a year are stolen and used by criminals? How many legitimate guns (read: parent's) guns are used in school shootings.

I would much rather have an encounter with a burglar that isn't armed with a gun even if that means I don't have a gun. Why? Because whilst I may be a sensible, sane and rational thinking individual whats to say the person in my home is the same?

The same situation if I am out in public and we didn't have gun control. I wouldn't be stupid enough to take a gun out with me but whats to say some moron won't. If I look at him the wrong way or some other reason he gets in a fight with me, his first reaction might be to pull a gun.

If we take away that gun, the best weapon he may have at his disposal is a knife and its a hell of a lot easier to run from someone with a knife then a person with a gun.

[pacmania_2001]

What is your local police reponse time? I read recently, in the Telegraph, of a response time of 31 minutes to get a bobby to the scene after a call came in. Their reasoning was that the crime had already been committed, what's the rush.

True, in the city it might be faster, but from all I read it is those outlying areas that are having problems. They're already so far out as to have a long response time. I can imagine hollering through your locked bedroom door, "I've called the police! You'd better get out of here."

Didn't you just contradict yourself with those two examples? The first related to the response time of a crime that had happened. Why should a police person be on the scene within 5 or less minutes (and that is the time it takes in an emergency) if a house or car has been broken into?

Their resources are much better spent being available right there in an emergency (like the one you said where the person is still in the house), which they are, then rushing to a crime scene simply so they can dust for prints.

[ChrisX]

What is your local police reponse time? I read recently, in the Telegraph, of a response time of 31 minutes to get a bobby to the scene after a call came in. Their reasoning was that the crime had already been committed, what's the rush.

I remember in New York City, near Times Square at 8th Ave there was a violent fight between two men with weapons in a restaurant spilling out on to the sidewalk. The men in the melee were injured due to the confrontation.

I was just opposite, across the street on the sidewalk and then all of sudden police cars come all over the place surrounding the two men and a very quick action by a matter of a minute to the scene of the crime.

At the time, I never before seen police action took so fast. I think NYPD response time was only 60 seconds to the scene of the crime.

I remember another fast response in time, this time in a Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst where an armed robbery at a gas station had taken place.

This one was also in a matter of minutes. The police surrounding the offender very quickly disarmed him and arrested him, then taken into police wagon and gone.

The response time was probably 3 minutes to the scene.

This is to show that not all crime will have a slow response at any place and at anytime depending on the location of the crime and police resources to get there.

This also depends on the seriousness of the crime, the danger and the circumstances and this would be a consideration of how long action would be taken to the scene.

If a minor crime such a house broken into would take longer to attend than an armed robbery or in an armed siege in the neighborhood.

In both cases above, the police were only nearby and especially so at Times Square where NYPD were in a very heavily presence in this area of New York.

[gmatov]

Not proofread. Too tired. Keys are double clicking d's and s's, so don't just gape at the spelling, interpolate.

Chris,

Your response sounds a lot like what I have written before. The function of the police is to keep businesses from being damaged, or robbed..

The Supreme Court of the US has ruled numerous times that the police have abolutely no responsibility to come to your aid. Look it up.

As far as "Shoot-outs at the OK Corral", the Brady Bunch predicted blood in the streets when Texas passed Shall Issue. Fact of the matter is a fraction of a percentage point of legally carried weapons have been involved in any crimes whatssoever, and most of those were what is called "brandishing", making known that you have a weapon, drawing it to tell some one not to f**k with you.

Here's a quote that surprised me, possibly will surprise you "guv'mint is our friends" people:
In the United States and Australia, many gun-owners view the fundamental purpose of the right to bear arms to be resistance to a tyrannical government. Most gun-owners in Great Britain, Canada, and New Zealand, though, would chide their American and Australian cousins for placing guns in the context of resistance to authority, rather than innocent sporting purposes.

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~confiles/overseas.html

You should read this page. Debunks all kinds of theories you have all espoused here.

Here in the US, 99.98% of CCW holders have not abused their legitimate right, yes, right to carry a weapon.. That means that only 2 in 10,000, in the one jurisdiction that has seen "so many" violators has done wrong and had his permit revoked.

The page linked to above should give you a tickle if you read it. It gave me a laugh, thinking of a few possters whose natural response is to demean and ridicule. "Oh, you think you should have a "right" to have your own atom bomb?"

The Swiss require every male from 20 to 50 years of age to serve in the state militia, issue fully automatic "assault rifles", subsidize ammunition, encourage, nay, require shooting proficiency, allow their citizens to buy anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft guns, whatever, maybe if Switzerland was a nuclear power, would allow tactical nukes, who knows?

Japan disarmed its citizenry (citizenry may be the wrong word. They were the warlord's chattels.) because, as follows:

The almost complete prohibition on guns in Japan has been strictly enforced ever since 1588, when the military dictator Hidéyoshi announced the "Sword Hunt," and confiscated all firearms and swords from the peasantry. Hidéyoshi's decree perceptively observed that "The possession of unnecessary implements makes difficult the collection of taxes and tends to foment uprising."

As to England, and, by extension, the British Empire, which must include you Aussies:

Britain's Decline

The evidence from other nations is consistent with the Swiss-Japanese experience. At the turn of the century, Great Britain had no gun controls at all. Convicted violent felons, the criminally insane, and anyone else could buy and carry anything from a derringer to a sawed-off shotgun to a Gatling gun, with no registration and no licensing. The only requirement was ready cash. And yet Great Britain had almost no gun crime, as the constraints imposed by the Victorian code of behaviour provided the most effective "gun control" system the nation ever experienced.

As the 20th century has progressed, laws in Britain have grown increasingly severe, so that only about 4% of households today legally own guns, and those households are subject to arbitrary "inspections" by a police force with the announced goal of eliminating civilian gun ownership. And while Britain remains generally safer than the United States, violent crime and gun crime have skyrocketed compared to earlier decades. While Britain, in the name of public safety, has abolished or drastically constricted many rights that Americans take for granted--including the right to bear arms, the right to a criminal jury trial, the right to grand jury indictment, the right of a criminal defendant to confront his accuser, and (by the most recent government proposal) the right to silence--the concentration of ever-greater power in the hands of the government has proven a poor antidote for the steady decline in the socialisation of children into responsible behaviour by the community.

Ah, well, I really am not trying to convince any of you that you should be clamouring for a right to bear arms. You are what your society has made you, and your professors, and your politicos, regardless whether you think they walk among the great unwashed with no personal protection or not.

Hey, by the by, isn't Sweden one of the least dangerous places to live? And isn't that where a maniac chased a high ranking politician through an upscale store, stabbing her repeatedly, till she died, and the shoppers turned away, more or less as a New Yorker would say, "I don't wanna get involved", as they did a few years back when one of "our" maniacs killed a woman in broad daylight, on a busy street?

Here's another good one from the same page, will help those who ddo not want to read 20 pages of print on the one link:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~confiles/overseas.html#Canadian%20Police%20Opinion

Thi one rebuts those among you who keep saying you have to register a car, why not a gun?

Done for now. Much too long a post as is.

Again, not to get you to my/our side. More like "Engage brain before putting mouth (2 typing fingers) in motion.".

Naturally, the measure of one's intelligence is how much he thinks like you, so there are a couple on this thread I will give kudos to. Most of you, however, spout aphorisms as though they were gospel, without having lived long enough to know what is what in the world. You will grow out of that if you are not totally brainwashed before then.

Here's hoping.

Cheers,

George

Forgot about the response time. "No injury. We'll send a PC around sometime next week.".

I don't think I like that. Do you?

[gmatov]

Pacman,

I know I said the last was too long, was done for the night, but the following:

How many legitimate guns a year are stolen and used by criminals? How many legitimate guns (read: parent's) guns are used in school shootings.

isn't as germane as you have been led to believe.

There have always been "school shootings" but never have they been so well publicized.

And not as many guns are stolen and used in murders as the press, again, would have you believe.

You know that good news does not sell papers. So dramatize the bad. Make it sso horrendous that even the most liberal will say, yes, we gotta do something.

How many of those mass shootings has Australia had? I believe I have heard of only the one, but then I am American, so maybe we don't get all your news of atrocities here. If the rest of the world, with super stringent gun laws has such problems, then what hope would we have of making ownership even more burdensome than it is.

So long as everything is peaches and cream in the tightly controlled countries, there is hope of getting them outlawed altogether. If the most oppressive laws are not able to eliminate gun crime, but do cause a rise in injury to the ddisarmed peons, they might "take up arms", read votes, and dump the "Ins".

So let's just pretend that the rest of the world lives in perfect harmony, because guns have been outlawed.

Hell, without the NRA and the internet to read your papers, I would be inclined to think you guys never had a malicious thought toward one another. I would have thought you were all "flower children".


Am done for sure, now. Need my sleep.

Cheers,

George

[vitualis]

BTW, I think I know much better than you whether our pollies have bodyguards with them or not.

As I've stated, I've met quite a few. They did not have bodyguards. For example, quite a few members of parliament would drive themselves to and from work (and there aren't MIB tailing them just in case they need help).

As for local counsellors, they definitely would not have bodyguards. I'm sorry, but the whole idea of our local counsellors "requiring" bodyguards would be considered here to be ridiculous.

Sorry, but it is obviously a different world here George.

Regards.

[rhegedus]

Their resources are much better spent being available right there in an emergency (like the one you said where the person is still in the house), which they are, then rushing to a crime scene simply so they can dust for prints.

That would seem to make sense, but that assumes that police take longer to attend less serious crimes because they are busy attending more serois crimes. And no doubt, when the time comes to investigate the lesser crime, something 'more serious' will have just occurred...........

This way, anything that the police don't want to spend thier time on will not be investigated until the trail is stone cold and future victims will be put off from reporting crimes. Indeed, police now refuse to come out to attend arguments between neighbour or domestic arguments siting reasons that didn't prevent them from attending such disputes in years past. Pretty soon, non-violent crimes will be off loaded to private investigative organisations.

Where do we draw the line? A burglary may be non-violent, but the perpetrator will almost definately still have the evidence on him a few hours later as opposed to a murderer who stabbed someone and threw the knife away immediately. Which trail of evidence will be 'hotter'?

More shootings:

Robbers shoot pregnant woman

[gmatov]

WARNING!!! DO NOT GO TO THIS LINK!!!

http://jpfo.org/ragingagainstselfdefense.htm

A psychiatrist has written this page. It is not for the faint of heart.

It may be suitable for vitualis, who seems to have angered Will with a slightly "smarter than the average person" note a few posts back.

I personally did not take offense, as I understand "where you are coming from". A " layman", of which I am one, does tend to think of "The Theory of...." as being just that, a theory, an educated, or, worse, religiously dictated, dicta or guess.

I've been too busy reading on this subject myself to post some of the arguments I've found. Per the above link, they would be useless anyway to those with a victim mentality.

Rheg,

Tragic post. After all is said and done, they throw her to the floor, she gets shot in the face. Sounds quite a bit as though it was meant to be a shot to the head to kill. I guess since the perps were gone, the local PC took his time getting there as they were no longer in danger. Maybe medical response team did rush, but no need for cops at that point..

Cheers,

George

[gmatov]

Sorry, folks, this one is strictly for Dr. Vitualis:

book reco and some thoughts
Added by cda on Wednesday, March 27, 2002 at 11:44 AM

Lots of good comments posted. You might see if she will read Armed & Female by Paxton Quigley. If she is open to looking at others ideas and maybe some insight as to why you think guns are useful.
I believe many anti-gun folks need to be able to convince themselves that a gun can be useful. Arguments no matter how rational are not likely to sway many.
Massad Ayoob in "The Truth about Self Protection" relates the moral issue to triage. (He has a lot more to say on the issue) My interpretation:
In a crisis where lives will are and will likely be lost the medical care resources available focus on saving the victim(s) with "the best chance to be a viable human being again". This selection process is called triage. It is a moral judgement. You are in a similar situation with the doctors in triage. Your goal should be to salvage as many viable human beings as possible (given scant resources of doctors in triage or prepared good guys in an attack). It is simply a triage decision that the burglar about to bash you and your wife to death with a crowbar in your bedroom has less value to contribute to society and that you and your wife would make better contributions.
No normal human wants to take another's life. No responsible doctor wants to lose a victim's life. Both can be required in triage. Stay free. -cda

[Will Hay]

More shootings:

Robbers shoot pregnant woman

I live 20 miles from here.
Beeston is not a desirable place to live, but this is shocking as far as England goes.
It's reported this was a robbery gone wrong but granted the burglar's did have loaded guns with them.
This doesn't suprise me in Beeston.
Beeston is a run-down, typical inner-city town with a (higher than national average) unemployment rate and significant drug problem.
Had this women not been pregnant (was it easy to tell, would someone really shoot a pregnant women if they knew?), had been shot in the stomach (in the face is shocking) and been a man (apparantly she was late home or something and stumbled in on her family lying on the floor whilst the robbery was taking place) this wouldn't have necessarily have been the big news it was, although it still would have made the nationals (as it did).
I firmly believe had the victims produced a gun there would have been a massacre.
Now I know this is no comfort to the family of this terrible tradegy and yes, maybe one or two of the robbers would have caught a well deserved bullet, but where's the good in more family members being put a risk?
I don't give two shits for the robbers, they deserve to die (I'm a huge fan of the death penalty; murder, rape and serious sexual child abuse) but this appears to be a robbery gone wrong, and the women seems to have been a victim of a terrible accident.
Yes (George), I can imagine your reaction now, how you would love to see my face if it should happen to me but these terrible crimes do not occur enough to warrant mass gun ownership.
More will die as a result, in my opinion.
Isolated cases such as this are exactly that, isolated.
Generally the ones that die are the small number of unlucky ones and the ones that deserve it, the criminals.
Where do we draw the line, give bank employee's weapons?
Will


(repeated) observation: would this topic still be open if it hadn't been started by virtualis

[Will Hay]

It may be suitable for vitualis, who seems to have angered Will with a slightly "smarter than the average person" note a few posts back.

I personally did not take offense, as I understand "where you are coming from". A " layman", of which I am one, does tend to think of "The Theory of...." as being just that, a theory, an educated, or, worse, religiously dictated, dicta or guess.

I'm assuming you're referring to the 'theory' post, so...
...it would help me a great deal if you didn't try to second guess my mood when I make a ******* post, as you regulaly get it wrong (as you have in this case) and make yourself look a complete prick.
Still, you're the guy who thought my 'dvd business' thread was real, until the less anal members among us participated in the theme and added to the original intention.
Thanks George, like I say it'll be a big help.
Will

[Will Hay]

Tragic post. After all is said and done, they throw her to the floor, she gets shot in the face. Sounds quite a bit as though it was meant to be a shot to the head to kill.

You are laughable George.
Where on earth did you dream this one up from.
You are clearly a product of your own inane ignorance.

Quote from the BBC website:

"This startled the two men who grabbed her and forced her onto the ground. Then a gun was fired."

The rest of her family had been forced to the ground earlier, all ten of them.
Were they shot?
No George, they weren't.
For once, take your head out of your arse and try take a balanced opinion on a topic regarding gun control.
God forbid this incident was an accident, would totally **** with your mind that guns are your friend, right?
Nice baby cot/crib by the way.
Will

[vitualis]

(repeated) observation: would this topic still be open if it hadn't been started by virtualis

Perhaps you are right...

I believe my ORIGINAL question was answered... "NRA billboard".

Topic locked.

Regards.