Am I to understand that in normal circumstances a person may be subject to an ABSO and basically banished from a place without being able to confront his accusers? Or are the complaints the basis for police officers to go witness the allegedly offending conduct and thus they become the accusers (which is how it often happens here)?

Banishment is an awesome punishment, btw, and we should do a lol more of it here. But there should be some due process attached to it.

Pelvic Splanchnic Ganglion: cman: Its a shame that these fine citizens have very few means to defend themselves.

They've solved that problem by simply making it illegal to defend yourself, with or without a weapon.

You are an idiot.

Do i really need to post all those stories of homeowners killing burglars and avoiding prosecution again ???

cptjeff: I love how the gun nuts here are completely ignoring the statistics posted very clearly in this thread that show how totally and completely wrong they are and still try to act smug.

But I suppose you shouldn't expect much more from people who fetishize things designed explicitly to kill other people.

I'm not a gun nut, I like them but hell I don't even own one anymore. You cannot assume that you can take all the gun stats out of the picture as if the people committing crimes with those weapons wouldn't have used anything different had a firearm not been available. I see the stats and they tell me that people in this country are so brutal that we still beat the U.K. in homicides if you take all gun crime out of it. Think about that for a second. Even with guns readily available, many people here choose to use a method other than a gun. So many in fact that the percentage would be higher than all of the U.K.'s murder rate.

/Again I say we have had more non-gun homicides than the entire murder rate of the U.K.

sharkbeagle: One possible upside of the coming of insanely fundamentalist Sharia to the UK, which is maybe 5 years out at this point. Just round up all the people who've ever touched any drugs and liquor and hang them all in public w/o trial. Also kill all the Jews, women who can read, gays, rape victims, and such. I bet you could get George Galloway on board with nearly all of it and The Guardian as well.

The hell are you on about?

The council is... contacting every single person who is on that list - in total 51 people - to offer our apology"

I'm sure the surviving relatives will be comforted.

NewportBarGuy: Maybe you can hand them 51 gun permits? Eh?

Either that or you can unleash Michael Caine.

Not a bad movie, the ringleader kid really creeped me the Fark out.

I find it amusing that people are only looking at the murder rate, and not other violent crimes...

Looking here the US has almost 12 million crimes reported. The UK is in the number 2 slot, with just over 6.5 million. The US has a population around 312 million, while the UK has roughly 63 million people.

The chances of being a victim of violent crime is something like 1 in 26 for the US versus about 1 in 9 in the UK. Makes me wonder if there's something about the possibility of facing a firearm that makes people decide not to harass others...

RatMaster999: I find it amusing that people are only looking at the murder rate, and not other violent crimes...

Looking here the US has almost 12 million crimes reported. The UK is in the number 2 slot, with just over 6.5 million. The US has a population around 312 million, while the UK has roughly 63 million people.

The chances of being a victim of violent crime is something like 1 in 26 for the US versus about 1 in 9 in the UK. Makes me wonder if there's something about the possibility of facing a firearm that makes people decide not to harass others...


Could be, could be. Could be that far higher murder rate in the US makes people stop and think.

cptjeff: I love how the gun nuts here are completely ignoring the statistics posted very clearly in this thread that show how totally and completely wrong they are and still try to act smug.

But I suppose you shouldn't expect much more from people who fetishize things designed explicitly to kill other people.

One of the things I find most baffling and amusing is how quickly hoplophobes bring sex into the argument. Tobacco-haters frequently do the same thing.

sharkbeagle: One possible upside of the coming of insanely fundamentalist Sharia to the UK, which is maybe 5 years out at this point. Just round up all the people who've ever touched any drugs and liquor and hang them all in public w/o trial. Also kill all the Jews, women who can read, gays, rape victims, and such. I bet you could get George Galloway on board with nearly all of it and The Guardian as well.

RatMaster999: The chances of being a victim of violent crime is something like 1 in 26 for the US versus about 1 in 9 in the UK. Makes me wonder if there's something about the possibility of facing a firearm that makes people decide not to harass others...

Makes me wonder whether the statistics are compiled on a like-for-like basis and also to consider whether that might have something to do with the fact that he US has a population density of roughly 32 people per square kilometre compared with 253 people per square kilometre in the UK....

Link

So let me see, UK is nearly 8 times more densely populated than the US but you're only 3 times more likely to be a victim of violent crime. Doesn't sound so bad when you put it like that...

Good for them. I hate being the middle man between two non-compromising groups. The best answer is to introduce them to each other, and that's exactly what they're doing. Chances are that both sides need to adjust their views. It's easy to have strong beliefs when you're not willing to face the situation yourself. The folks that rant at councils about how they should come down on other groups have just as much of an addiction problem if not more - just not to a physical substance.

The UK has gone full crazy it seems. You have more surveillance cameras than any other nation in the world, have removed the citizens ability to defend themselves and a police force that is unwilling to actually answer in a timely manner.

Yay progressives!

Nemo's Brother: The UK has gone full crazy it seems. You have more surveillance cameras than any other nation in the world, have removed the citizens ability to defend themselves and a police force that is unwilling to actually answer in a timely manner.

Yay progressives!

Removed our ability to defend ourselves?



And I'm not sure you should be lecturing anyone on full crazy

/other half is from Kentucky
//I think Kentucky has more crazy per square mile than anywhere else on earth

Nemo's Brother: ...have removed the citizens ability to defend themselves and a police force that is unwilling to actually answer in a timely manner.

TWO citations needed please.

Nemo's Brother: The UK has gone full crazy it seems. You have more surveillance cameras than any other nation in the world, have removed the citizens ability to defend themselves and a police force that is unwilling to actually answer in a timely manner.

Yay progressives!

Leaving alone for the moment the fact that if someone breaks in the homeowner does have a right to defend himself. The only difference between the UK and US is that our police don't just go "oh was he? OK then, cya", they investigate to make sure, as a result this leads to some people being arrested for it because not everyone who says they killed in self defense are telling the truth.

The main issue I want to address is that if you make guns very hard to obtain, like in the UK then it doesn't mean that innocent people are defenseless, it also means it's much less likely that the criminals are going to have guns with which to shoot people. Sure, dedicated people can still obtain firearms, but by not allowing every nutjob to procure one it means that it's less likely you're going to be shot. So the homeowner isn't rendered defenseless and impotent by not being able to buy any gun he or she wants from the local Tesco.

I quite like the fact that I am far less likely to get shot coming home from the shop with a pack of skittles.

Though of course if I were to be shot, and provided I don't die there and then, I can also rely on free health care.

Yay progressives!

Heb: I think Kentucky has more crazy per square mile than anywhere else on earth

You are very,very farking correct especially the more the southern areas. I live in an area where there are people who post signs stating NO TRESPASSING,WILL SHOOT and they farking mean it. Or the guy who made the news this morning for being drunk and shooting at cars passing by for no reason other than I guess he was drunk. I've seen one of the places you can get a CCW permit here......yeah let's just say when you're running a hunting store/pawnshop/what the hell are all these baby chicks doing in the building kinda place AND you ask me to help you fix your IE homepage back to what it was you shouldn't be in that business.
/My London sucks

cirby: BarryJV:
A lot of people have been charged, but they don't get jailed.

Juries don't jail people for defending themselves.

Tony Martin says you're a liar.

Who cares what Tony Martin says, he's a nutter.

But, for the record, he wasn't put in prison for defending himself. He was put in prison because, five minutes after he had shot and incapacitated a burglar, he went back and performed an execution.

I'm pretty sure that even in the states that shiat isn't allowed.

You'd turn it off when I was halfway across: I'm pretty sure that even in the states that shiat isn't allowed.

You should look at the politics tab for the stand your ground thread going on.

cirby: Tony Martin says you're a liar.

Really? Seriously? "Use an illegal weapon to shoot the kid in the back while he runs away" Tony Martin, or some other Tony Martin who wasn't quite as mad and who didn't possess an illegal gun?

English law allows one to use reasonable force in defending yourself. In the Tony Martin case, the jury didn't feel blasting a 16 year old in the back with a shotgun when he was trying to get away from you constituted reasonable force. Or indeed defence.

I mean if he'd been holding a packet of skittles then maybe...

cirby: Tony Martin says you're a liar.

Other's have covered it, but it was addressed to me,so I'll repeat it.

Tony Martin wasn't jailed for defending himself, he was jailed for pursuing a fleeing burglar and shooting him in the back.

I pity Tony Martin, he was the victim of multiple burglaries and the legal system had really failed him, but it's unlikely a jury would have convicted him if he hadn't shot a boy who was already running away.