Brown says knife-carrying "unacceptable"

[NiteShift]

Then the land use regime sounds just like ours; NCT's post implied that yours was more liberal.

Well I missed that. Our land-use regulations are usually set by local authorities, and NCT's local situation may differ. Being local doesn't necessarily mean they are good regulations, since the folks who serve on planning commisions tend to be those who have a personal stake and are pro-development of all sorts. But overall we have no lack of zoning and land-use laws in the US.

 

[David Lamb]

The majority of shootings that occur here are gang-related. If you took that out of the equation then I guess that our murder statistics would not look much different from yours. It's also one of the main reasons that law-abiding citizens want to protect their right to bear arms. Self-defense you know.

Why should gang-related murders be taken out of the equation? We have gangs here too, though probably not on the scale you do. And is a "gang-related murder" any the less murder?

 

[North Carolina Tentmaker]

Our land use restrictions are more liberal than most. They are still to restrictive to me. The example Matt used of

allowing me to build a concrete skyscraper in my backyard that blots out my neighbours' view and blights their properties' values? After all, it's my land, surely I have the right to do whatever I want on it...

is much closer to what I believe they should be. If the land belongs to you then I think you should be able to do whatever you want and I would include strip mining or the disposal of toxic waste. The only restrictions I would put would be if it affects neighboring land like if I pour clorine in a stream on my property and it kills fish downstream. To me that is liberty. Now if the land doesn't really belongs to me but belongs to the King or the "People" (communism) then you can put any restrictions you want on it. But if its my land I should be free to do what I want.

When we talk about loosing our freedom in small steps I think land use restrictions are a great example of how we in America are loosing the rights earlier generations worked so hard to win and protect. The fact that emminent domain can be used to condemn and seize my land scares me a lot more than the idea that Nancy Pelosi will take away my revolver.

 

[Revmitchell]

I see the right of self defense equal to landownership.

 

[Matt Black]

I can't agree with the sort of free-for-all land usage you're espousing here, NCT. "One man's meat is another man's poison": I for one would be greatly unhappy if my neighbour was allowed to do that sort of thing on his property; quite apart from adversely affecting my enjoyment of my own private property, it would drastically reduce the value of my property, and I would expect to be compensated for my resulting losses on both fronts. Now, if I'm a rich man, that's perhaps not too much of a problem: I can launch a civil action in the law courts against my neighbour for nuisance and get my money that way. But what if I'm a poor man? It seems to me therefore that this kind of free-for-all can only benefit the rich and powerful, and I seem to recall that the Bible has quite a bit to say on that issue...

 

[NiteShift]

Why should gang-related murders be taken out of the equation? We have gangs here too, though probably not on the scale you do. And is a "gang-related murder" any the less murder?

People in gangs are usually there because they choose to be. A lifestyle choice you could say, and killing rival gang-members is part of the deal for them. Sort of a private war, and not related to mainstream life. Yes I'm sure there are many more gangs here than in the UK.

 

[NiteShift]

Our land use restrictions are more liberal than most. They are still to restrictive to me. The example Matt used of is much closer to what I believe they should be. If the land belongs to you then I think you should be able to do whatever you want and I would include strip mining or the disposal of toxic waste.

When we talk about loosing our freedom in small steps I think land use restrictions are a great example of how we in America are loosing the rights earlier generations worked so hard to win and protect. The fact that emminent domain can be used to condemn and seize my land scares me a lot more than the idea that Nancy Pelosi will take away my revolver.

Yes sir, I generally agree. The thing is that in high density areas, everything you do affects lots of other people. My parents were country people, and they pretty much built what they wanted, and used their land as they saw fit. It's not the same in a city though.

 

[poncho]

OK, I'll try to respond to all the above points.

Tinytim and just-want-peace, the point I was making was that in these teen fights, very rarely is it the settled intent of the protagonists to kill their opponents, but rather to beat him (usually) up. Such fights are rarely fatal with bare fists but often become so when knives are involved. Your argument is based on the assumption that the protagonists set out with the intent to commit murder; however, few do so. These are in general 'fights which went wrong', the common factor in the 'going wrong' being the knife. Your argument that all weapons should be banned and we should thus be 'consistent' is analogous to saying "because we can't cure cancer, we're not going to try to cure heart disease". Banning knives in public would be a massive step in the right direction.

sag38, I have a large set of kitchen knives and golf clubs in my house with which I can defend me and mine, should the need arise. I just don't carry said items round with me in the street, which is what this thread is about.

poncho, the answer to your question is that the risk of a fatal stabbing is halved. BTW, both sets of boys in your example are acting in a criminal fashion (committing the offence of affray for starters). If you arm both sets of criminals with knives, you get double the number of stabbings! Happy?

abcgrad94, you raise an interesting point which applies I believe more in the UK than anywhere else in Europe (the Swiss, for example, still retain the notion of the levee en masse and require each household to have a firearm; other practices vary from country to country although the emphasis tends to be on guns for hunting rather than self-defence; that said, one of the factors behind the bloodiness of the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s was the high prevalence of gun ownership). In the UK, we do have a fear of guns; one of our 'proud boasts' is that we have one of the few police forces in the world who don't, as a rule, carry firearms. We tend to associate gun ownership with the more 'nutty' end of the spectrum (guys who go beserk and shoot up schools, those sorts of people) and there is a widespread consensus that the more liberal the gun ownership laws, the more likely that kind of thing is to happen; we look at your more liberal laws but also take note of the higher prevalence of mass shootings (Columbine, Virginia Tech etc) and heave a sigh of relief each time that our own laws are much tighter and that, as a consequence, we only seem to have incidents like that about once every ten years or so. The 'gun hatred' thing is most pronounced amongst Christians; most if not all of the Christian parents we know (including us) won't even allow their children to play with toy guns or weapons.

Re the Hitler comment, I can't really comment in detail but I do know that gun ownership in Germany in the 1930s was more prevalent than today, and yet Hitler still asserted his tyranny (there were gun battles for example between the communists, social democrats and nazis in Berlin in 1933, which the nazis won because they were more numerous; conversely the SS managed to slaughter the (well-armed and much larger) SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934) whereas today Germany is a democracy. Likewise, the UK has very low gun ownership, but has never in recent history been under a dictatorship. So I'm not sure there is a correlation.

No...I asked a series of questions. You only gave one answer, you tried so you get points for that. "the risk of a fatal stabbing is halved" From what I'm reading you're okay with the idea that individuals who seek to obey the law and get stabbed like half of our boys here so long as the numbers of stabbings are reduced. Is that about right?

What about this question?

"If a ban on knives fails to stop stabbings from taking place in a locked down population under constant supervision (prison) how is it supposed to work any better in a "free" society?"

BTW, I've been in a few fist fights and don't consider myself a criminal. I never started one but I never shied away from defending myself to the utmost of my ability either. Could be our law abiding boys were fighting to defend themselves. Surely you don't think one a criminal for defending himself?

 

[Matt Black]

Depends how the fight starts; usually over here they are drunken brawls on a Friday or Saturday night where all parties are committing a number of criminal offences. So, yes, anything that reduces the number of fatal stabbings is to be welcomed. Surely you don't want to increase the numbers?

 

[David Lamb]

What about this question?

"If a ban on knives fails to stop stabbings from taking place in a locked down population under constant supervision (prison) how is it supposed to work any better in a "free" society?"

I tried to find any statistics about stabbings in prison, but failed. All I can say is that it seems a very rare occurence indeed here, compared to what appears to happen in America.

 

[poncho]

I tried to find any statistics about stabbings in prison, but failed. All I can say is that it seems a very rare occurence indeed here, compared to what appears to happen in America.

Maybe because America has one of if not the largest prison population in the world.

We're "tough on crime" here even small non violent infractions may get you locked up.

Today the United States has approximately 1.8 million people behind bars: about 100,000 in federal custody, 1.1 million in state custody, and 600,000 in local jails. Prisons hold inmates convicted of federal or state crimes; jails hold people awaiting trial or serving short sentences. The United States now imprisons more people than any other country in the world—perhaps half a million more than Communist China. The American inmate population has grown so large that it is difficult to comprehend: imagine the combined populations of Atlanta, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Des Moines, and Miami behind bars. "We have embarked on a great social experiment," says Marc Mauer, the author of the upcoming book The Race to Incarcerate. "No other society in human history has ever imprisoned so many of its own citizens for the purpose of crime control." The prison boom in the United States is a recent phenomenon. Throughout the first three quarters of this century the nation's incarceration rate remained relatively stable, at about 110 prison inmates for every 100,000 people. In the mid-1970s the rate began to climb, doubling in the 1980s and then again in the 1990s. The rate is now 445 per 100,000; among adult men it is about 1,100 per 100,000. During the past two decades roughly a thousand new prisons and jails have been built in the United States. Nevertheless, America's prisons are more overcrowded now than when the building spree began, and the inmate population continues to increase by 50,000 to 80,000 people a year.

The nearly two million Americans behind bars—the majority of them nonviolent offenders—mean jobs for depressed regions and windfalls for profiteers

SOURCE...

So we see that crime does pay. Think of all the people who'd be put out of work here if the crime rates suddenly fell. Less crime, less jobs and opportunities. More crime, more jobs and opportunities. Outlawing objects like knives and guns turns otherwise law abiding citizens into criminals and would be cash cows for the state and certain private business interests.