Farage In Favour Of Lifting Handgun Ban !

[mikey4444]

Incredible but true ! :::

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2545312/Now-Farage-wants-lift-ban-handguns.html

Farage and his Party are rapidly losing their grip with reality...is there anybody left that thinks giving this bally shower their vote is a good idea ?

[naomi24]

And Mikey ... you can bet your boots the skiers' training isn't confined to the Alps.

[LazyGun]

"LazyGun, that’s an insult to our sportsmen."

What is?

[naomi24]

//No, it just means I have grown up. //

^^ That is.

[LazyGun]

@Naomi How is that an insult? I was referring to me growing up, not those people who shoot competitively.

[jim360]

In the case where it could end up with guns in the hands of those people who easily lose temper, I'm not all that sure that an Appeal to consequences is as much of a logical fallacy as it usually is.

Relaxing the laws on guns tends to mean not so much that more criminals will get hold of them (but it will, really, even if many would have got hold of them already there is presumably the class of "opportunist criminal") -- but rather that people who, for whatever reason, lose control will suddenly have a weapon capable of killing at a distance and in an instant. This, for me, is the issue, no? In the US we see that a large proportion of gun-related violence is down to people with, say, mental health issues with suddenly the easy opportunity to go down in a blaze of glory, or domestic incidents when one party or both lost their temper, or even accidents when no-one was trying to kill anyone but someone ended up dead nonetheless. Gun control has done a great deal to stop that, and keep the level of violence down, and I'm thankful that we have such tight laws because of that.

Outside the Olympic shooting team -- which, you'd have thought, ought to be able to obtain a special licence independent of a change in the overall law (and even if not then practising abroad is no great hardship)-- there is practically no-one who has any reason whatsoever to need a handgun. So why do we need any form of blanket lift in the ban? We don't.

And if criminals are getting hold of guns anyway, well, presumably it's not the easiest thing in the world despite that -- so why make it easier?

[ChillDoubt]

Lifting the ban on handguns wouldn't be the end of the world. The OP headline does seem a tad sensationalist.
Bar Dunblane, there has never been a massacre involving handguns in the UK, but there have been several that involved shotguns, hunting rifles and semi-automatic assault rifles.
Thomas Hamilton had 4 handguns. With new, tighter and extremely stringent legislation why not make it 1 handgun per person or even one per household?
I doubt there'd be a stampede to own such weapons anyway, only from those with a vested interest i.e. sports shooters etc.
Bar one full magazine's worth of rounds, keep all other ammo under strict control and accountability at gun clubs or even the local Police station.

As for assualt rifles (SLR's, AK47's etc) the ban should remain, there is absolutely no requirement for any civilian to own one and there never will be.

[chrisgel]

Jim - I've no axe to grind on this particular subject but if the ban were relaxed or even lifted it seems to me that we would return to the pre-ban situation which, as I recall, didn't involve millions of handguns lying around in kitchen drawers.
Gun control in this country even before the ban was stricter than any other country that I'm aware of.

[THECORBYLOON]

As the ban applies only in Great Britain, there is no need to go abroad when then can stay in the UK and practise in Ulster.

[jim360]

I'm not expecting the number of gun deaths to go up to US levels. A lifting of the ban on handguns still, presumably, implies a ban on most other types of weapon and at least some decent controls. I would expect the number of gun-related deaths to rise in some way, even if it's a small but consistent increase of say 50-odd more deaths per year -- which would represent an approximate doubling. I don't have to hand any pre-ban statistics and would have to go digging, but gun-related crime of all sorts has been falling for the last seven years (apparently, anyway), and it seems likely that any form of relaxation of gun control laws will go some way towards reversing or slowing that trend.

[ChillDoubt]

But if it's stringently regulated I don't see how gun crime involving owners legally licensed to hold firearms will increase?
Lets put it in persepective. Most of us can recall 3 gun massacres: Hungerford, Cumbria and Dunblane. Including the perpetrators, 96 died in total. The same amount died on that dreadful day at Hillsborough.
And yet, despite that horror there is a growing concensus that many fans want a return to terracing in the higher leagues:

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/356927/We-want-to-stand-up-Football-supporters-want-a-return-to-the-terraces

As I say, IMHO the OP was being a bit too eager with the sensationalism and anti-UKIP agenda and were the laws relaxed I don't envisage handguns being available to a select few as a major source for panic. Shotguns are far more readily available to the general public, with some people owning a vast range of such weapons.

[ChillDoubt]

Apologies, I meant to say 48 died in total, half the amount that died at Hillsborough.

[jim360]

I think I'd generally agree with the assessment that a relaxing of a single part of our gun laws shouldn't be met with panic and that it was a bit of an exaggeration to talk about "millions" of handguns lying around. I do think that any increase in the number of guns makes us less safe, not more, and I just don't see a need for it.

[naomi24]

//IMHO the OP was being a bit too eager with the sensationalism and anti-UKIP agenda and were the laws relaxed I don't envisage handguns being available to a select few as a major source for panic. //

^^That's common sense.