The British want their guns back...

[Steve]

That is usually the mistaken response to one of these non-shooting events. That it is better that no one have a weapon, except the attacker, because there might be an accidental shooting...and better to let the criminal go on about his business even though we know that there was for sure one killing on the scene. I don't understand the willingness to rely on the good will of the guys who just used a meat cleaver to kill an innocent man. The people at the scene were lucky these guys didn't go on a further rampage and attack more people.

How many people do you think he could run down? Or was this a special boomarang machete, which he could throw and would come back to him, akin to Mjolner, Thor's hammer?

There would have been nothing they could have done to stop it. The first police on the scene couldn't have stopped it either, considering they had to call for "special," police, the ones allowed to use guns. It took them 14 minutes to get to the scene...that is a long time to let a nut job with a meat cleaver run around loose. There are people being brutalized around this country and Britain and it is better for us to just accept their being brutalized because there "might," be a chance someone will be accidentally shot...vs. the people who are unaccidentally being targeted for murder, rape and robbery.

Wasn't there a thread somewhere talking about police response times? I could swear you participated in that thread. Frankly, 14 minutes seems pretty darned good compared to what we can expect here in the USA from even the regular old police. Why are you holding the UK to a standard we can't even meet?

It would probably be better as well if we were to teach classes in schools for witnesses to crimes of a brutal nature. In the class we could teach the school kids to immediately kneel and touch their heads to the ground if they happen to see an attack, that way the authorities can be sure there will be no accidental injuries incurred by anyone other than the brutal attacker. Also, if the attacker decides to attack more people, it will be less chaotic if they simply submit to whatever he decides to do by kneeling and exposing their necks...yeah, I can see that point of view.

I can see it...the woman who "chatted up," the killer should have dropped down and quietly waited for whatever he decided to do next instead of increasing the likely hood that more injuries might be created by her "engaging," the attacker with conversation...I wonder if she was ticketed for aggravating the situation?

I wonder why you study martial arts, if you believe that people are helpless victims unless armed specifically with a gun. Unless you're a bad guy. In your world, it seems that bad guys are capable of anything, regardless of how they are armed. A bad guy with a machete can go on a killing spree to put any mass shooting to shame. But a good guy... well, you might as well kiss your *** good bye unless you have your trusty AR-15 with a 30 round clip at your side.

Edit: Since when do you put so much stock into polls anyway? If you put so much stock in this one poll, then how could you be against background checks when polls put support for them up over 90%? It's partisanship, pure and simple. Once again, you're finding information to support a partisan position.

 

[billc]

We did have mass shootings in the past but 'luckily' none since we got rid of military style weapons.

Yeah, most of our shootings involve handguns...not military style weapons either...go figure.

How many people do you think he could run down?

Depends on where he decided to do his attack. That woman and those around her were extremely lucky this guy didn't choose to continue killing, because no one there could have done that much against the two of them without probably being serioualy injured themselves.

Why are you holding the UK to a standard we can't even meet?

I Didn't hold anyone to any standard, I simply stated how long it took for the police with actual guns to arrive...14 minutes is an eternity considering that in mass shootings most of the killings take place in the first 5-10 minutes the attacker is on the scene...ask the police at Sandy Hook.

I wonder why you study martial arts, if you believe that people are helpless victims unless armed specifically with a gun.

Firearms are a martial art in the most effective sense of the word first of all...also, never said they were helpless, just at a massive disadvantage against an armed attacker or two. The gun is exactly as it has been reported...and equalizer. So much so that if that woman had had a gun, she could have actually saved herself if the two killers had continued attacking. I don't think this woman could have stood a chance of surviving against two full sized men, armed with knives and a meat cleaver no matter how many hours a week spent in a BJJ class or a Kraz Maga class. Fighting being fighting, she "might," have been able to do it...but it is highly unlikely. Put a gun in her hand, with training...and she would be equal to the two full sized men with the meat cleaver...and she could have been in a wheel chair, or on crutches, or had a broken arm to boot...

In your world, it seems that bad guys are capable of anything, regardless of how they are armed.

In general...the bad guys are armed or come in numbers using surprise against an opponent they usually target because they think they will be defenseless...and they are capable of anything because once they decide to use a weapon to enforce their will on someone else, they have crossed a line that regular people do not cross. They are capable of rape, murder, torture and maiming to get what they want, and the law doesn't constrain them.

A bad guy with a machete can go on a killing spree to put any mass shooting to shame.

Odds are the damage a guy with a machete can do will depend on where he sets up his killing ground...say a chinese school where over 20 children were killed...or say the bus that pulled up to the scene of the attack in Britain. If he had forced his way on the bus he could have done serious harm to a lot of people.
I personally don't think you are required to accept a hack to your body by a guy with a meat cleaver or machete just because it may not kill you, therefore you aren't entitled to use deadly force to stop it from happening...but hey, if that's something you would accept...more power to you.

f you put so much stock in this one poll, then how could you be against background checks when polls put support for them up over 90%? It's partisanship, pure and simple.

As I have posted before, most people only hear the word background check without knowing what the gun grabbers actually mean. Ask that 90% if they support background checks that would mandate a gun registry and see how high that 90% stays. Ask that 90% if they want to pay huge fees to have that background check done...and see how high that 90% stays...or if they want to be required to do a background check when they give their kids their guns...or if the guns they have from 10 years ago will become illegal because they don't have reciepts for them and doiing a background check would require proof that the gun was purchased legally...the partisanship comes from the fake question that the 90% are asked without follow up.

The funniest thing I have seen in a while is when you guys thought Ballen and Tgace would support background checks...until you asked them and they said that any backgroung check that required a registry was a non starter...you guys must have cried...

 

[billc]

Correction...the knife attack I was thinking of killed 7 children and 2 adults...so a guy with a knife could kill seven children and 2 adults...before he was stopped. Another attack left 23 wounded.

Is that body count to high or too low for a knife killer...and is it more acceptable because he didn't use a gun?

Like I said, I don't think anyone is required to accept a knife stabbing or cut just because some people don't think they should be allowed to use lethat force...but if you do...more power to you...keep in mind to run away...if you can...perhaps slower people will use up the attackers time...

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57559179/china-school-knife-attack-leaves-23-injured/

A man wielding a knife attacked students Friday at a school in central China, leaving 22 children and one adult injured, according to state-run media reports.

The following month, on May 12, a man named Wu Huangming killed seven children and two adults with a meat cleaver at a kindergarten in Shaanxi Province. That attack was followed by an August 4 assault by Fang Jiantang, who killed three children and one teacher with a knife at a kindergarten in Shandong Province.

Hmmmm...he attacked kids in a gun free zone...I guess killers are smarter than gun grabbers even in China...

 

[billc]

Oh, See...they just don't use meat cleavers in Australia...they use knives...what is the word in the article...an "epidemic," of knife attacks in the Land Down Under...

http://www.smh.com.au/national/knife-epidemic-concealed-20100108-lyvm.html

Knife epidemic concealed

DateJanuary 9, 2010

• Read later

Statistics show blade attacks rising in line with assaults, but those who work at the front line think a lot goes unreported, writes Andrew Rule.

By the time Ben Thomson got to the emergency department at 4am last Sunday, one stabbing victim was dead and the lives of two were teetering on a knife edge.
The surgeon on call, Susan Shedda, had been operating all night - as she would for another four hours - and a dozen tired police milled around a crowd of shocked relatives and friends in the waiting rooms.
It was the tail-end of another bloody Saturday at Royal Melbourne Hospital. The usual tally of bashings and car crashes was predictably tragic enough, but it was three serious stabbings over the new year weekend that had prompted Thomson to be dragged from bed by a phone call at 3.30am.
Apart from being a trauma surgeon with 15 years' experience, Thomson specialises in liver surgery. And all too often serious knife attacks require liver surgery.

The perception that knife crime is a growing menace was sharpened because two of the three serious knife attacks in Melbourne last weekend were newsworthy - Garg's and the apparently premeditated stabbing of a man in a Fitzroy street after his 44th birthday dinner at a nearby restaurant.
Understandably, knife attacks catch attention. Knives are nasty, potentially deadly, and cause instinctive revulsion - particularly in a country where their use as weapons was rare.
But statistics do not overwhelmingly support the perception that knife crime is rampant or even that is growing worse quickly.

Knife attacks have roughly doubled over the past decade, but so too have all types of assault; attacks by knife are still only a small part of the whole problem.

One unintended consequence of tightening the gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 is that knives have tended to fill the gap.

You were saying?

 

[arnisador]

Like I said, I don't think anyone is required to accept a knife stabbing or cut just because some people don't think they should be allowed to use lethat force...

Who are these people who think you shouldn't be allowed to use lethal force against a knife attack?

 

[billc]

The ones who don't want to allow people to carry concealed firearms...considering a gun is the most effective means of self-defense that individuals have at their disposal, require little practice to be effective, and can be used by people in wheelchairs, on crutches, with a broken arm, pregnant without fear of endangering the baby, a senior citizen....

 

[billc]

Hmmm...a highly trained police officer in Melbourne...killed by a knife...in 2012...

http://melbournecrimewave.wordpress...n-brutal-knife-attack-friday-december-7-2012/

A highly respected police officer was killed when he was allegedly stabbed in the neck while trying to break up feuding neighbours yesterday.
Detective Inspector Bryan Anderson, 45, was fatally attacked moments after he and a colleague arrived at a rural property at Oaksville, near Windsor in NSW, after a call-out about a man firing a bow and arrow over a fence.
Police were called about 2 pm and, as a senior officer, Inspector Anderson arrived a couple of hours later when the situation escalated. He had been at the Scheyville Road property only a few minutes when he was allegedly knifed from behind.
It is understood he had walked over to the fence to speak with the neighbour on the other side, when a 19-year-old man allegedly attacked him.

I guess this isn't so bad since only one person was killed...

 

[arnisador]

The ones who don't want to allow people to carry concealed firearms...

It doesn't at all follow that such individuals--whomever they may be--oppose the use of deadly force when appropriate.

 

[arnisador]

I guess this isn't so bad since only one person was killed...

Weren't you one of the ones arguing that children dying of accidental gunshots was negligible at only 70 or so per year?

 

[K-man]

Hmmm...a highly trained police officer in Melbourne...killed by a knife...in 2012...

http://melbournecrimewave.wordpress...n-brutal-knife-attack-friday-december-7-2012/

I guess this isn't so bad since only one person was killed...

What point are you trying to make Bill? This is a case that bites you on the bum. This policeman WAS armed. Just that in Australia our police don't shoot first and ask questions after. In this case carrying a firearm didn't help. Oh! Just for the record. It was Sydney, not Melbourne!
:asian:

 

[billc]

I was responding to this...

I must admit we have had no mass killings with meat cleavers in Australia despite us not all running around with guns.

You just have people running around with knives...which my post pointed out...

This policeman WAS armed.

He was attacked from ambush by an armed attacker...as I pointed out was the way criminals usually attack their victims...now are you going to tell me that his colleague, and his fellow officers apprehended this guy with polite words to surrender...or did they use guns to capture him?

Weren't you one of the ones arguing that children dying of accidental gunshots was negligible at only 70 or so per year?

Actually, Bob argued something like that, and I agree but not with the tone you use. 70 children dying from accidental gun shot wounds is terrible and tragic...but can't be used as an excuse to deny millions of lawful gun owners the ability to excercise their constitutional right to bear arms, especially considering how many lives are saved by using firearms for self-defense each year.

 

[billc]

It doesn't at all follow that such individuals--whomever they may be--oppose the use of deadly force when appropriate.

I guess if they approve of deadly force, they expect you to use a "Rapier," wit, to kill the meat cleaver, wielding maniac, because they don't want you to use a gun to do it...so what are you supposed to use to make the guy stop breathing? ...let's see how that works out...

 

[arnisador]

I guess if they approve of deadly force, they expect you to use a "Rapier," wit, to kill the meat cleaver, wielding maniac, because they don't want you to use a gun to do it...so what are you supposed to use to make the guy stop breathing? ...let's see how that works out...

As usual, it suits your agenda to recast gun regulation with gun elimination. It's different in the real world.

 

[K-man]

You just have people running around with knives...which my post pointed out...

Yes, we do. But it is a relatively small number and no justification for putting guns into the hands of everyone walking around. And, BTW, the reason most people don't carry knives is because it is illegal .

He was attacked from ambush by an armed attacker...as I pointed out was the way criminals usually attack their victims...now are you going to tell me that his colleague, and his fellow officers apprehended this guy with polite words to surrender...or did they use guns to capture him?

And the point I make is that even with a gun you can still be killed by a determined attacker. Even at a distance of ten metres you can't draw aim and fire a gun if a guy with a knife rushes you, and that is for a trained person!

Your question is absurd. I have absolutely no idea as to how the arrest was made as I wasn't there. However, I would be surprised if the officers arresting the suspects did draw their weapons as it was the police back up who made the arrest. By that time people would normally just give themselves up. The bit that makes your question absurd is that our police ARE armed and no one is suggesting they shouldn't be.

Bill, even you might admit a meat cleaver is an unusual weapon on the street. I might even suggest it was carried in this instance for a specific purpose. Sure we have gangs of young people running round with knives and machetes and our police do a great job in the main keeping the situation in check. If guns, particularly handguns, were readily available I can envisage the same sort of problems occurring that you have and accept as normal. I live with the reality that criminals have access to illegal firearms. To me, that is a minute risk to me or my family.

But the OP was that the British want their guns back. That implies that they actually had their guns taken away which is not the case. Nor is it the case here. I can own more guns than I could ever use, if that was my desire. I can even own handguns under certain conditions. Most of us just choose not to. :asian:

 

[Flying Crane]

The funny thing here about all this is...whenever those who advocate certain gun controls point to nations such as the UK or Australia as successful examples of gun control, those who are most militantly against gun controls dismiss those examples on the grounds of, well, THEY are not US, and we here in the USA are our own unique culture and we don't care what other people around the world are doing with their guns, we will make our own decisions about is, so shove off.

But now, Billc wants to bring the UK and Australia into the argument, and point to examples and suggest that THEY need to be carrying guns too.

well, ya can't have it both ways, I'm afraid. It just destroys what little credibility he had in the first place. Given the problems with the original survey that Billc linked to, well...

Oh, and last weekend I purchased a Ruger Gunsite Scout rifl e in .308, comes with a 10-round box magazine. I've submitted the paperwork, expect zero difficulties in the background check, and can pick it up as of the 11th of this month. I still need to select a good safe box, but I need to pick up the item by the end of the month or else we need to re-do the paperwork. Looking forward to it, and taking it to the range and seeing what it can do.

 

[Sukerkin]

But the OP was that the British want their guns back. That implies that they actually had their guns taken away which is not the case.

I'll be sure to tell my friends that and see if their guns magically reappear in their cabinets. I take your point, my friend but in this case the reality is that if you wish to own a weapon in this disarmed land you are instantly treated with suspicion by the authorities and the 'sheep' have been so brain-washed that they see any person with a weapon of any sort as crazy and to be reported. There is a reason I cannot practise my Iai in my own garden :shakes head in disgust:.

 

[billc]

But now, Billc wants to bring the UK and Australia into the argument

Actually, I brought attention to the poll in the U.K. and K-man brought Australia into it. I responded to his post about meat cleavers in Australia. It would be interesting to see a more scientific poll on the gun question in Britain...there are a lot of crime victims there and I would like to see what they have to say about being able to defend themselves.

the UK or Australia as successful examples of gun control,

I know Britain has the highest crime rate in Europe, so how is it an example of successful gun control...? Sure, criminals are shooting fewer people, but they are stabbing, clubbing and beating a lot more people...so I guess the victims have to consider how successful gun control is from their hospital beds...or morgues...

The interesting thing to me is that the first police on the scene were unarmed. Did they rush the two guys with the meat cleaver, machete and knives, and engage them with British police unarmed combatives...? No. They waited an additional 10 minutes for armed police, with guns, to arrive for a grand total of 14 minutes. They are really lucky those guys didn't continue attacking people.

 

[K-man]

I'll be sure to tell my friends that and see if their guns magically reappear in their cabinets. I take your point, my friend but in this case the reality is that if you wish to own a weapon in this disarmed land you are instantly treated with suspicion by the authorities and the 'sheep' have been so brain-washed that they see any person with a weapon of any sort as crazy and to be reported. There is a reason I cannot practise my Iai in my own garden :shakes head in disgust:.

Are you saying that your friends who lost their guns cannot replace them with other guns? I was under the impression that, like us, you can purchase a weapon if you have a legitimate need and you are of good character and sound mind.

As to the sword, yep, we need permits for them also, not that that is an issue for genuine martial artists. :asian:

 

[arnisador]

Nunchaku were illegal in New York state when I was growing up (maybe still). Switchblades were made illegal but other types of knives weren't. There's no figuring some of these things. But guns are responsible for a lot more deaths than katana.

 

[billc]

But guns are responsible for a lot more deaths than katana.

As are cars...