Reply to post: Re: Singapore's decision was disastrous

Data collected to promote public health must never be surrendered to police

rg287

Re: Singapore's decision was disastrous

When we were disarmed it was to prevent gun crime - which has never been worse than it is now - 20+ years after it was made illegal for someone to own a gun.

Please don't act the fool.

1. It's not illegal to own a gun. We weren't disarmed. Certain categories of handgun were banned in 1997. It was a stupid and kneejerk reaction, which flew in the face of the Cullen Inquiry which laid blame squarely at the feet of Central Scotland Police. Apparently Tony Blair found experts just as tiresome as Michael Gove.

2. Gun crime is not worse than it's ever been. It has however risen since 2010, demonstrating how in a European country with a sensible licensing regime it doesn't actually matter what you let people own (with a licence) but how well you enforce the law. Cut the Police through austerity and organised crime flourishes. Meanwhile the Czech Republic lets people own everything upto and including AK47s (with the right paperwork) and has half the number of homicides (0.6/100k people compared to the UK's 1.2/100k).

A lot of people like to compare the UK to the US, but of course you can always draw a straight line between two points. The skilled carpenter knows to measure thrice. Chart out gun ownership vs. intentional homicide for Europe, and then throw in the US at the end and it's obvious that gun ownership simply does not correlate with violent crime in any meaningful fashion.

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