7 ms·

Touch a big fucking piece of wood with that title, BBC. Guns are much rarer in the UK than on the continent. This obviously doesn't make attacks impossible but

Touch a big fucking piece of wood with that title, BBC. Guns are much rarer in the UK than on the continent. This obviously doesn't make attacks impossible but it does make life harder for terrorists. For example, the maniac who murdered Lee Rigby with a knife tried to get a gun first. All he could get was a modified starter pistol that jammed on the first shot. The right wing terrorist who murdered Jo Cox apparently had a home made single shot pistol. Imagine if they'd been able to get Glocks or Kalashnikovs. I would like to see more restrictions on high strength peroxide as TATP seems to be the explosive of choice for terrorists.

flexie 10y ago
Good point, but it doesn't explain the Nice or Bruxelles attacks where the weapons were a truck and bombs, items that are as common or uncommon on the continent as in the UK.
- sevenless 10y ago
  Of course, but shooting attacks have been a major component of terrorism in Europe (Paris, Charlie Hebdo, Brussels Jewish Museum, etc). I have to also point out that it's still not clear at this time whether Nice was a terrorist attack. The UK may be better protected against "truck amuck" incidents as we had so many IRA car and truck bombs. Risers and bollards are very common around public spaces (and also, we don't have the luxury of miles of riviera beach front...). For example a ramming attack at Glasgow airport in 2007 was prevented by bollards. As for bombs, I certainly hope someone buying the ingredients in the UK would immediately draw police attention.
  - hammock 10y ago
    Unless the driver was asleep at the wheel and it was all an accident, it's pretty clear Nice was a terrorist attack. The question you're looking for is whether it was an act of Muslim extremism.
    - sevenless 10y ago
      As far as I know, we don't know the motivation of the Nice attack, so we can't yet say it was certainly terrorism. It was certainly a deliberate act of mass murder but that does not necessarily mean it was a terrorist attack, which implies a political or religious motivation to terrorize (as opposed to, say, mental illness or general hatefulness). For example most US mass shootings are not considered terrorism. I realize this sounds a bit like hair splitting in the face of a horrible mass murder, but terrorism has different policy implications from other kinds of mass murder, so we should be careful about language.
      - bybjorn 10y ago
        You do not believe the reports that he was shouting "allahu akbar" then? Also, check the latest news on the "cryptic sms's" sent from his phone.
        sevenless 10y ago
        The information content of "Allah Ackbar" from an Arabic speaker is essentially nil - it's used the same way English speakers use "Oh my god" - but him asking another involved party for "more weapons" via SMS, if true, suggests it was a coordinated attack and most likely terrorism.
      - DominikR 10y ago
        Yeah, I've noticed that Liberals/Socialists nowadays tend to split hairs to relabel terrorists as something else. So it's not a jihadist terror attack but instead the cause is repressed homosexuality or toxic male masculinity. I was speechless when a few days ago Obama said it was hard to "untangle" the true motives of the guy that shot 5 police officers in Dallas even though the attacker himself stated he wanted to kill as many whites and white police officers as possible. It's plain and simple denial, because these things do not fit their political narrative.
        zuminator 10y ago
        Wanting to kill as many whites and police officers as possible isn't a motive, it's a description. True motives means, what triggered this previously law-abiding man to go off like that?
Shivetya 10y ago
I seriously doubt that terrorist would have any issue smuggling an automatic weapon or crate of them into the UK. Like he stated, having that water between them and the mainland does help a lot. France has another issue besides lack of communication among its various police and intelligence agencies. It tries to enforce a very secular environment which included not allowing head scarves which just gives one side another excuse to resort to violence.
PaulKeeble 10y ago
Take a look at the homicide data alongside gun crime and none of the law changes that reduced gun ownership in the last 50 years has made any noticeable difference to the correlation. As you go around the world and you look at the number of guns per populace the rates of homicide using them vastly differs, Norway isn't a violent place nor does it have a lot of gun crime but it has a lot of guns. There is plenty of automatic weapon use in the UK, there doesn't appear to be serious problems with smuggling guns in, the only difference is only the bad guys can have them there is no sport use or recreational use at all.
- sevenless 10y ago
  > Norway isn't a violent place nor does it have a lot of gun crime but it has a lot of guns Er. Do you know what Anders Breivik did in 2011? You're also shifting straight from 'terrorism' to 'homicide', although they are not the same thing. > none of the law changes that reduced gun ownership in the last 50 years has made any noticeable difference to the correlation. How do you explain this then? http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/561817dbbd86ef195c8b5a7f-1200-900/australia-gun-deaths-bi.png http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/561817dbbd86ef195c8... > There is plenty of automatic weapon use in the UK, there doesn't appear to be serious problems with smuggling guns in Except that I've given several examples where extremely well motivated 'bad guys' were unable to get anything beyond rudimentary home made pistols and were consequently unable to kill large numbers of people. Long may it stay that way, despite gun nuts who wish otherwise. > there is no sport use or recreational use at all. This is also untrue. About 1% of the population are licensed gun owners, mostly for shotguns in rural areas. Hunting for sport is wide spread. Sports target shooters can use shotguns, rifles and long barrelled .22 pistols.
simbalion 10y ago
Banning guns from citizens doesn't make life harder for terrorists. There was a video last year of an ISIS person beheading someone using a large knife, on a city street in broad daylight as pedestrians walked by on the other side of the street, powerless to do anything to stop the atrocity taking place in front of them. In many places in the United States, if someone tried to cut someone's head off in broad daylight on a city street, that terrorist would probably get shot dead, maybe before committing the act. That makes life harder for terrorists. The problem with gun control debates and conversations about violence in the atmosphere of gun control debates is that 1/2 of the people talking have lost their f'ing minds. Violence is a problem unrelated to the prevalence of weaponry and violent people will always find weapons to use. Guns are an equalizer that empower the weak to stand up against the strong.
- sevenless 10y ago
  Why do you think that terrorist (I assume you're talking about the London guy) would be trying to cut someone's head off if he were in the USA? As I pointed out, he bought a gun and tried to use it FIRST, which very thankfully didn't work. The knife was not his first choice. He'd certainly have preferred an AR15. But don't listen to me. Listen to Al Qaeda. > A video from 2011 has resurfaced showing American-born al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn discussing how easy it is to buy guns in the United States and urging fellow radicals to do so. > "America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms," said Gadahn, "You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?" http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/11/politics/al-qaeda-video/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/11/politics/al-qaeda-video/in... > violence is a problem unrelated to the prevalence of weaponry Isn't this a bit like saying that soldering is unrelated to the prevalence of soldering irons?
  - simbalion 10y ago
    "listen to al Qaeda" yeah that makes sense, murderers always tell the truth right? You can't buy a fully automatic firearm at a gun show without a background check. Not legally. And not without an ID card. But listen to the murderers and take their word for it because they are honest people. What you can do is buy anything you want in the world illegally, and in any country you happen to be in, so arguing about the black market is a fraud.

flexie 10y ago

Good point, but it doesn't explain the Nice or Bruxelles attacks where the weapons were a truck and bombs, items that are as common or uncommon on the continent as in the UK.

sevenless 10y ago
Of course, but shooting attacks have been a major component of terrorism in Europe (Paris, Charlie Hebdo, Brussels Jewish Museum, etc). I have to also point out that it's still not clear at this time whether Nice was a terrorist attack. The UK may be better protected against "truck amuck" incidents as we had so many IRA car and truck bombs. Risers and bollards are very common around public spaces (and also, we don't have the luxury of miles of riviera beach front...). For example a ramming attack at Glasgow airport in 2007 was prevented by bollards. As for bombs, I certainly hope someone buying the ingredients in the UK would immediately draw police attention.
- hammock 10y ago
  Unless the driver was asleep at the wheel and it was all an accident, it's pretty clear Nice was a terrorist attack. The question you're looking for is whether it was an act of Muslim extremism.
  - sevenless 10y ago
    As far as I know, we don't know the motivation of the Nice attack, so we can't yet say it was certainly terrorism. It was certainly a deliberate act of mass murder but that does not necessarily mean it was a terrorist attack, which implies a political or religious motivation to terrorize (as opposed to, say, mental illness or general hatefulness). For example most US mass shootings are not considered terrorism. I realize this sounds a bit like hair splitting in the face of a horrible mass murder, but terrorism has different policy implications from other kinds of mass murder, so we should be careful about language.
    - bybjorn 10y ago
      You do not believe the reports that he was shouting "allahu akbar" then? Also, check the latest news on the "cryptic sms's" sent from his phone.
      - sevenless 10y ago
        The information content of "Allah Ackbar" from an Arabic speaker is essentially nil - it's used the same way English speakers use "Oh my god" - but him asking another involved party for "more weapons" via SMS, if true, suggests it was a coordinated attack and most likely terrorism.
    - DominikR 10y ago
      Yeah, I've noticed that Liberals/Socialists nowadays tend to split hairs to relabel terrorists as something else. So it's not a jihadist terror attack but instead the cause is repressed homosexuality or toxic male masculinity. I was speechless when a few days ago Obama said it was hard to "untangle" the true motives of the guy that shot 5 police officers in Dallas even though the attacker himself stated he wanted to kill as many whites and white police officers as possible. It's plain and simple denial, because these things do not fit their political narrative.
      - zuminator 10y ago
        Wanting to kill as many whites and police officers as possible isn't a motive, it's a description. True motives means, what triggered this previously law-abiding man to go off like that?

Shivetya 10y ago

I seriously doubt that terrorist would have any issue smuggling an automatic weapon or crate of them into the UK. Like he stated, having that water between them and the mainland does help a lot. France has another issue besides lack of communication among its various police and intelligence agencies. It tries to enforce a very secular environment which included not allowing head scarves which just gives one side another excuse to resort to violence.

PaulKeeble 10y ago

Take a look at the homicide data alongside gun crime and none of the law changes that reduced gun ownership in the last 50 years has made any noticeable difference to the correlation. As you go around the world and you look at the number of guns per populace the rates of homicide using them vastly differs, Norway isn't a violent place nor does it have a lot of gun crime but it has a lot of guns. There is plenty of automatic weapon use in the UK, there doesn't appear to be serious problems with smuggling guns in, the only difference is only the bad guys can have them there is no sport use or recreational use at all.

sevenless 10y ago
> Norway isn't a violent place nor does it have a lot of gun crime but it has a lot of guns Er. Do you know what Anders Breivik did in 2011? You're also shifting straight from 'terrorism' to 'homicide', although they are not the same thing. > none of the law changes that reduced gun ownership in the last 50 years has made any noticeable difference to the correlation. How do you explain this then? http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/561817dbbd86ef195c8b5a7f-1200-900/australia-gun-deaths-bi.png http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/561817dbbd86ef195c8... > There is plenty of automatic weapon use in the UK, there doesn't appear to be serious problems with smuggling guns in Except that I've given several examples where extremely well motivated 'bad guys' were unable to get anything beyond rudimentary home made pistols and were consequently unable to kill large numbers of people. Long may it stay that way, despite gun nuts who wish otherwise. > there is no sport use or recreational use at all. This is also untrue. About 1% of the population are licensed gun owners, mostly for shotguns in rural areas. Hunting for sport is wide spread. Sports target shooters can use shotguns, rifles and long barrelled .22 pistols.

simbalion 10y ago

Banning guns from citizens doesn't make life harder for terrorists. There was a video last year of an ISIS person beheading someone using a large knife, on a city street in broad daylight as pedestrians walked by on the other side of the street, powerless to do anything to stop the atrocity taking place in front of them. In many places in the United States, if someone tried to cut someone's head off in broad daylight on a city street, that terrorist would probably get shot dead, maybe before committing the act. That makes life harder for terrorists. The problem with gun control debates and conversations about violence in the atmosphere of gun control debates is that 1/2 of the people talking have lost their f'ing minds. Violence is a problem unrelated to the prevalence of weaponry and violent people will always find weapons to use. Guns are an equalizer that empower the weak to stand up against the strong.

sevenless 10y ago
Why do you think that terrorist (I assume you're talking about the London guy) would be trying to cut someone's head off if he were in the USA? As I pointed out, he bought a gun and tried to use it FIRST, which very thankfully didn't work. The knife was not his first choice. He'd certainly have preferred an AR15. But don't listen to me. Listen to Al Qaeda. > A video from 2011 has resurfaced showing American-born al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn discussing how easy it is to buy guns in the United States and urging fellow radicals to do so. > "America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms," said Gadahn, "You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?" http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/11/politics/al-qaeda-video/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/11/politics/al-qaeda-video/in... > violence is a problem unrelated to the prevalence of weaponry Isn't this a bit like saying that soldering is unrelated to the prevalence of soldering irons?
- simbalion 10y ago
  "listen to al Qaeda" yeah that makes sense, murderers always tell the truth right? You can't buy a fully automatic firearm at a gun show without a background check. Not legally. And not without an ID card. But listen to the murderers and take their word for it because they are honest people. What you can do is buy anything you want in the world illegally, and in any country you happen to be in, so arguing about the black market is a fraud.