Greetings ‘kats. We are once again delving into the topic of guns and gun crime, and a few related topics. This started out as a conversation via another site, and I’ll be focusing on the words and comments of one Paul Gray (who has a website, which you can find here). In deference to Nan’s wish that their site does not become something of a sparring ground between Paul and myself, I’ve decided to reproduce some of Paul’s comments here. He is welcome to address them through whatever avenue he sees fit, be it via his site, or by commenting here. Paul’s text shall be blue, mine shall be green, and we shall go from there:
Gun and knife crime is on the increase in the UK.
Worst thing about it is nearly all the weapons found are illegal.
But, do knife and gun laws work?
If you are a law abiding citizen probably.
Until you get taken out by one.
If you are a criminal or terrorist?
Have you stopped laughing yet?
Paul,
To expand upon a few points I made elsewhere (on an alt-right blog that shut my comments down when I shared links to facts showing them up), the UK’s current murder rate is 1.2 per 100,000 people, of which, 0.5 involve knives. Knife crime is certainly a problem, but compared to US gun crime? The US murder rate is currently 5 per 100,000 people, and that’s with guns *only*. Guns make up 80% of US murders. Therefore, we can see that we are statistically far more likely to be murdered with a gun in the US, than murdered with a knife in the UK.
That’s before we even get into the subject of mass shootings.
Statistics again? What is it about people that they believe official statistics.
Who gathers them, who interprets them, who decides what to release?
Statistics are like weather reports, at best a guess, at worse political BS.
Politics love them as they can prove whatever they want. If they don’t they simply change the parameters.
Anytime you want to walk with me round some of our less salubrious cities and townships, you let me know. Only bring your statistics with you as I know the rabid would love to read them as they are mugging you.
Bottom line here? People die, people get maimed, or injured.
You can dismiss them all you want, but you haven’t actually demonstrated they are incorrect. They don’t exist in a vacuum – there are all sorts of ways in which data gets collected. If we are to judge the state of crime based on our personal experiences, I will draw entirely different conclusions to you, as will each and every single person out there. How would *you* propose we assess the seriousness and frequency of different types of crime, and thus assign appropriate resources to dealing with them?
Oh go away, people like you justify what you want how you want. Blindly believing authorities, but have you spoken to victims families? Do you know of anyone personally who had a loss? Have YOU lost someone. Did my friends wife deserve a knife in the stomach because all she had was small change.
Go away.
The aggression ramped up a notch here.
How about *you* justify your notions? If we are to cast doubt upon every piece of information to come our way, what’s next? Shall we let personal experience determine the age of the universe, or whether or not the earth is flat? F
Shall we assume that what happened in Texas was all a performance, for the benefit of a narrative?
Like I said, if you’re pouring scorn on the recorded information, it’s up to you to demonstrate that information is false. And for the record, yes, I *do* know people who’ve suffered because of knife crime. They suffered a terrible loss, and I don’t pretend it’s not a serious issue. However, that doesn’t alter the facts – we are a lot safer here, than in the US. I don’t know about you, but if we had loads of guns on our streets and in our society, I think that would make things a lot more dangerous, don’t you?
Ben, stick to writing.
I have and am still living in the real world where people are hurt, maimed, or killed at random, by the rabid, or no reason whatsoever, or following orders of lesser or feral beings.
I care little for those who quantify things without the experience of being involved in what happens in real life.
That would include some of the officers or legal council in courts or government. Few have experienced life in the raw. Yet feel capable of judging life’s actions in a sterile theater.
You say “it’s up to you to demonstrate that information is false.”
No it’s not.
The world of real knows the lies but, if you believe everything a politician says is honest, that all laws are applied equally, and nothing is ever massaged for political reasons. Good luck to you.
As said, stick to writing, where the pen can make heroes and villains and the outcome an author desires.
The aggression goes up another notch.
Paul had previously asked me if I know someone who has lost someone to knife crime. The answer is yes. I know someone who lost a beloved cousin, who was a young woman, with so much to look forward, to a random knife attack. As I have said to Paul, I consider knife crime to be a problem here in the UK. However, the facts remain facts, whether Paul’s experience marries up to them or not. His ‘real world’ is not the same as mine and my experiences, which won’t be the same as my neighbour’s, or my brother’s, or of the customers who came into the store for a design, earlier today. Paul appeared to gloss over what I said when I mentioned I am acquainted with people who’ve lost loved ones to knife attacks, just as he appears to want to gloss over facts, in order to support a narrative.
As he is the one arguing so passionately that the facts are false, it is indeed upon his shoulders to demonstrate why they are not credible. If he going down the rabbit hole of assuming every source, every agency, every compiled bit of information from a government source is misleading, where does that end? I am not enamoured with how our Tory government blunders around, but to suggest that every last person working within civil services and government agencies is being dishonest is a bit of a stretch.
So, as per Paul’s remarks, I’ll continue to write – about whatever I damn-well please. That will include continuing to write about gun crime, and how gun crime in the USA is a bigger problem than knife crime here in the UK.
Even Fox News has acknowledged that the US murder rate has been on the increase over the last couple of years – to quote: ‘The murder rate was estimated to be 6.9 murders per 100,000 people in 2021 – just 0.5 lower than the 1996 murder rate of 7.4, according to FBI data examined by data analyst Jeff Asher and shared by the New York Times. It’s the closest the nation has come to the high-crime scourge of the early 90s.’
The UK homicide has, as of 2020/21, been recorded as 9.9 per 1 million people, which would equate to 1 per 100,000 people, if we round up. In other words, the US murder rate is around seven times higher than the UK murder rate. In the UK, knives account for the biggest percentage of murders, around 40% or so, which would place the UK murder rate with knives only at 0.4 per 100,000 people. The US murder rate with guns only would be about 5.5.
In percentage terms, the US gun murder rate is 172% higher than the UK knife murder rate.
This is clearly a dramatic difference. The UK has its flaws, and there are obviously serious crimes outside of murder, but murder has to be considered one of the most violent of violent crimes, and the UK is considerably safer in this regard. It doesn’t all come down to gun control – some of it is around gun culture. We do not have the same love affair with guns that exists in the USA.
The facts speak for themselves. It is up to Paul to prove otherwise, and whilst his personal experiences are not invalid, he should consider that other peoples’ experiences are not invalid either.
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I always find it strange when people are adamantly anti-statistics. Statistics are just a way of expressing things in numbers rather than words, and when we count things, we count them with numbers. It’s also very strange to think personal experience gives a better view of the bigger picture than objective data. I don’t think I would ever be so arrogant as to assume that my personal experience is representative of what’s happening on a national or international level.
I agree. I don’t ever intend to tell someone their experiences don’t matter, but if they are trying to tell me their experiences override information, collected across various means, or worse, that their experiences invalidate my own, then we’ll have words.