Re: UK RICS report says solar takes 208 years to repay...nonsense! Help needed!

[Eeyore]

[email protected] says...


*Sigh*

What is was invented for and what other legitimate uses an item has now
are not connected. Owning a handgun for target shooting would be a
perfectly legitimate other use of a handgun. They are not, despite what
you would like all and sundry to believe, solely for killing things.

Is a target pistol incapable of killing ?

Graham

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

They those people are clearly deluded.



Eh ?

Tell that to the thousands of people in this country who held FACs with
handguns on them - there was a very good licensing system in operation,
let down by poor human intervention in the case of Thomas Hamilton.



Provided you could satisfy the criteria for a section 1 FAC, acquiring
a handgun pre the handgun ban was not specifically onerous. Acquiring a
handgun now is arguably easier if you know the right/wrong pub to
visit.



To handgun crime, yes.



Of course not. It was nothing more than PR spin.

I think we essentially agree here.

That sensible well policed licensing of legitimate target weapons is as
good a way as any to prevent free and legitimate distribution of lethal
weapons to all and sundry.

That criminals will not pursue a legal route anyway: the sole risk lies
in quantities of (legal)handguns that may be stolen. Making only single
shot weapons legal means that the quantity of others that may be used
fir criminal activities is small.

It is not especially hard to make a gun or convert a replica. Nor to
smuggle one in to the UK..

Ergo banning handguns in toto has little effect on their illegal use
that restricting them to a minority of careful users had not already done.

The actual law was a knee jerk bit of politics in response to media
outcry, not a carefully thought through bit of legislation that achieved
the needed result.

We may differ on two points.

First I can see no activity apart from target shooting for handguns.
They are specifically and totally anti-personel weapons. They have no
valid use against wildlife that could not be better achieved by other
means. A gun is ipso facto a machine for disabling living creatures -
apart from the target shooting aspect it has no other valid use for
which it is designed, apart from psycological ones. ...arguably nearly
all USA guns are sold for pyschological purposes. ;-)

Secondly, by making possession of any handgun illegal., there is a clear
and easy way to apply the law to anyone found in possession. There can
be no argument as to potential legal uses: There are, by definition, none.

So I have a slght bias towards that view. It messes up the target
shooter, BUT if we then exempt single shot small caliber weapons, the
situation is fairly clean. Single shot weapons are almost innefective in
a criminal context, ad are easily distuinguished...when you can buy an
automatic and ammo for £300 from the local drug dealer,no one is going
to bother to acquire a less effective target pistol.

 

[Steve Firth]

They're certainly not 'inherently good' !

Indeed not, they are inherently neutral as with any other object.

 

[Steve Firth]

Bollocks.

Just watch certain US TV programmes. Let me see, CSI, CSI Miami, Law and Order
(various flavours), the Shield,

You do understand that all of those are works of fiction? Or do you
think that "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" is a stunning work of
documentary film making?

any of the US 'cop programmes' with the camera in the car.

The ones that show police officers as reluctant to return fire, even
when under fire themselves. Yes, I've seen them. It's worth noting that
even in the most extreme cases an American policeman does not get two of
his friends to hold someone to the floor then pump seven soft-nosed
bullets into his skull.

They're *fucking loonies*. They LOVE being violent and getting their way
by force. Oh like Iraq too.

That would be the action that has British troops involved, you mean?

From what you've said here, I suspect you have a violent streak too.

Ah, excellent more mud-slinging and you're wrong as well. Compared to
the bile and aggression you are spitting because I dare to have a
different view to you, I'm a pussy cat.

Also I'm happy to post my views under my own name, not hide behind an
alias and I'm considerate enough to configure my newsreader to quote
properly and to avoid over-long lines in the reply. You OTOH show
complete contempt for anyone reading and replying to what you post.

 

[Eeyore]

Incitement to violence or somesuch.

It's a new law. It came into force only 2 and a bit weeks ago.

" Incitement to religious hatred will today become a criminal offence in England
and Wales with the commencement of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act.

The Act creates a new offence of intentionally stirring up religious hatred
against people on religious grounds, closing a gap in the current legislation.

Existing offences in the Public Order 1986 Act legislate against inciting racial
hatred. Jews and Sikhs have been deemed by the courts to be racial groups and
are protected under this legislation, but other groups such as Muslims and
Christians are considered to be religious rather than racial groups and have
therefore not previously received any protection under the law.

The new Act will give protection to these groups by outlawing the use of
threatening words or behaviour intended to incite hatred against groups of
people defined by their religious beliefs or lack of belief.

The new law however explicitly does not outlaw 'expressions of antipathy,
dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions'.

The new offence therefore has an even higher threshold than the race hatred
offence, recognising that religious beliefs are a legitimate subject of vigorous
public debate."

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5823

The actual Act of Parliament
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/20060001.htm

Grham

 

[The Natural Philosopher]

How many deaths resulted from legally held handguns in say 1995, before
the handgun ban ?

very few.

Mostly by police action.
Or the odd squaddy doing a naughty.

 

[Eeyore]

It was a convenient excuse yes. One bomber made an error, overshot, and
dumped its load..and happened to hot a part o London.

That was all the excuse winnie needed. Those were desperate times. We
were days away from having no airforce whatsoever.

Simply not true actually. And had it been that bad, there were other fighter groups
that could and WOULD have been brought South. The attrition rate was serious but not
impossible. The production rate of aircraft wasn't a serious problem either. The main
problem was making sure our pilots weren't killed even if their aircraft was shot down.
We wanted them back up in the air PDQ.

Indeed, but they still managed to hit rather a lot of them.

And then lost interest curiously. Because there were mobile sets of equipment in trucks
ready to stand in, most were back on the air in short order.

Graham

 

[Steve Firth]

Strawman argument.

Oh, the irony.

 

[Steve Firth]

Is a target pistol incapable of killing ?

Is a nice soft comfy cushion incapable of killing?

Actually a pistol is incapable of killing. I've seen pistols left loaded
on shelves and in cupboards or even in plain sight by silly people. At
no time has the pistol killed anyone.

What it takes to kill someone is for someone to pick up that pistol and
to recklessly point it at a human being. In that respect they are no
different from, say, bicycles.

 

[Steve Firth]

They are categorised as 'self-loading'.

No they are not.

As far as I can see they are effectively

Then you were too lazy to read the material you snipped. They are not
banned "effectively" or otherwise.

 

[Steve Firth]

He's talking nonsense. They were banned after Hungerford.

"In the aftermath, the Conservative government passed the Firearms (Amendment)
Act 1988. This confined semiautomatic and pump-action centrefire rifles;
military weapons firing explosive ammunition; short shotguns that had
magazines; and both elevated pump-action and self-loading rifles to the
Prohibited category."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom#Hungerford
_massacre

And where does that quote say that pump action shotguns were made
illegal? It mentions pump-action rifles, not shotguns.

I see you rather dishonestly stopped the quote at the part where it
became inconvenient for you, let me assist you:

"In the aftermath, the Conservative government passed the Firearms
(Amendment) Act 1988. This confined semiautomatic and pump-action
centrefire rifles; military weapons firing explosive ammunition; short
shotguns that had magazines; and both elevated pump-action and
self-loading rifles to the Prohibited category.[9] Registration and
secure storage of weapons held on shotgun certificates became required,
and shotguns with more than a 2+1 capacity came to need a Firearms
certificate. The law also introduced new restrictions on shotguns,
although rifles in .22 rimfire and semi-automatic pistols were
unaffected."

 

[Eeyore]

You've not really thought this through, have you? It could well be handgun
crime might have quadrupled or more without the ban. You are merely
fiddling figures to suit your argument.

Frankly he's just making it up as he goes along.

If he's typical of the UK 'gun lobby' I can see why they got treated the way
they did. Whiney cunts who resort to twisting your words and specious arguments
get no respect in my book.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

No one has made such a claim,

Yes you have.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

We could revisit Mr Plowman's bizarre view that javelins and swords were
not designed as weapons, if you want a laugh.

Strawman. He said no such thing.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

And?

Good Lord ! You finally accept this point ?

Graham

 

[Steve Cothran]

Where do you live ? Deer are rare in most parts of the country and it's nice to watch
them rather than shoot them !

My backyard is 300 acres of woods, and deer are a goddamned nuisance.
Come live here a year, and then post your opinion about deer. I'll
loan you a handgun

The US and UK have very different sensibilities and experience. Still,
it's fun to argue about.

 

[Eeyore]

Hmm. Guns are a very effective way of killing. Little to no skill or
strength needed and can be done from a distance. Most other methods
require close contact - where a stronger fitter opponent might have a
better choice of defence. So basically the choice of a coward.

There's more to it than that. Killing with a gun allows one to mentally distance
oneself from the act of killing since it avoids any need for personal
interaction. Doubly 'cowardly' if you like.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

We gave them some of the output from Enigma

That wasn't the technology.

And Churchill instructed the machines to be physically destroyed at the end of
the war.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

[email protected] says...

How many of the crimes committed with handguns before the handgun ban
were committed with legally held handguns ?

Both the Hungerford and Dunblane massacres were so committed. Hence the
legislation.

At the time of the Massacre, he was in licensed possession of the following:
Zabala shotgun
Browning shotgun
Beretta 92 semi-automatic 9mm pistol
CZ ORSO semi-automatic .32 pistol
Kalashnikov AK-47 7.62mm semi-automatic rifle
M1 Carbine .30 semi-automatic rifle (a rare "Underwood" model)

Ryan used the Beretta pistol, and the Kalashnikov and M1 rifles, in the
massacre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre


Eight years after the Hungerford massacre, the Dunblane Massacre was the second
time in less than a decade that unarmed civilians had been killed in Britain by
a legally licensed gun owner. On March 13, 1996 Thomas Hamilton, aged 43, a
disgruntled former scout leader who had been ousted by The Scout Association
five years previously, shot dead sixteen young children and their teacher,
Gweneth Mayor, in Dunblane Primary School's gymnasium with his licensed weapons
and ammunition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom#Dunblane_massacre

Case proven.

Graham

 

[Eeyore]

[email protected] says...


The problem is, Graham, is that there ARE stiff penalties for illegal
possession of the likes of handguns - 'mandatory' 5yr jail sentences,
but just how many people do you see receiving them ?

5 years (call it 2 1/2 with good behaviour) is a joke. It needs to more like 25-30
years. Ownership of an unlicenced gun should be seen as good as having the intent to
muder.

Graham