And “I Like Words” Didn’t Like These Words Too (3):
An Unequal Justice – and an Unequal Legacy
An Unequal Justice – and an Unequal Legacy
![wont-somebody-please-think-of-the-children[1]](https://bogeymanblog.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/wont-somebody-please-think-of-the-children1.gif?w=676)
So she DELETED these words:
“Take the Dunblane massacre, for example. In March 1996, 16 children and one teacher were killed by a single gunman, Thomas Hamilton, who then turned the gun on himself. The massacre shocked the local community and the entire country, and led to a permanent change in British gun ownership laws. In February 1997, Parliament passed a law banning private ownership of any gun over .22 calibre, and in November 1997 this was extended to all handguns. There has not been a school shooting in the United Kingdom since.”
And how many before?
Especially in Victorian and Edwardian times when gun control was effectively non-existent and ownership widespread and commonplace?!
Before firearms controls gun murders were almost unheard of (as in Switzerland now).
Neither were there many shootings in the first half of the last century when there were only limited, light touch, controls.
Then the 1967 Criminal Justice Act required licences – but not registration – for shotguns.
And hard on its heels, the 1968 Firearms Act consolidated existing laws and gave the Home Office the right to set fees for shotgun licenses.
So the Hungerford massacre in August 1987 followed the tightening up of gun controls!
Then we had the knee-jerk Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988, which banned semi-automatic and pump-action rifles; weapons which fire explosive ammunition; short shotguns with magazines; and elevated pump-action and self-loading rifles. Registration was also made mandatory for shotguns, which were required to be kept in secure storage.
These even more draconian controls were followed in 1996 by the killings in Dunblane, when Thomas Hamilton murdered 16 primary school children and their teacher with four legally-held pistols.
Deciding that the medicine wasn’t working, so more of the same medicine was required, the Conservative government drew up legislation banning handguns above .22 calibre. But following their general election victory, Labour introduced the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997, which outlawed .22s as well.
Which were followed by “a series of high-profile shootings” to quote the BBC!
So we then had the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 introduced.
Which was followed by the Cumbria shootings in June 2010.
And most of the shootings since have been with totally banned pistols and even more totally banned full-auto weapons!
And contrary to the cherry picked dozen or even half dozen [country (out of 200 to 250 of them)]* league tables the gun ban lobby present, high legal gun ownership countries have low gun homicides and vice versa.
In fact Switzerland is nearly falling off the bottom of the gun [murder]* league table.
Serbia and Israel, two other countries near the top of the ownership table, are three quarters of the way down the gun murder league table.
And even the US is around, or even below, depending on year/table, half way down.
The US isn’t even at the top of the gun deaths table, despite the massive availability of guns for suicide, usually coming between 6th to 10th!
With countries above having very strict controls on (legal) gun ownership!
You shouldn’t believe every lie you are told!!!
[……]* Correction as per also deleted follow up post
And replaced them with these words:
ilikewords23 says:
June 12, 2018 at 6:06 amI’ve deleted half your comments on this and other blogs. Please understand I welcome comments on my blogs but not to the extent of one reader picking apart every line of the blog in lengthy, separate responses and then adding a number of extra points of their own, as you seem to enjoy doing. I notice you have your own blog – can I suggest you put your own thoughts into a blog post of your own and post it on your own site? Feel free to link to it here if it is intended as a response to a blog of mine. I do appreciate you taking the time to read and comment on my blogs but it becomes a bit much when the responses are longer than the original post!
To which I replied:
But I note you have kept the half truths about Dunblane in your original post.
What I enjoy doing is highlighting hypocrisy and censorship, as with the Robinson case.
Not to mention half-truths.
The Sacred Barrister’s piece being a case in point.
And her response was:
ilikewords23 says:
June 12, 2018 at 2:06 pm
What I wrote about Dunblane was not a “half-truth” – I think you simply missed the point I was trying to make. I wasn’t aiming to talk about gun control, or to dissect all the ins and outs of Dunblane, or gun murders. My point was simply that the Dunblane massacre precipitated a change in our gun laws – it was offered up as an example of other brutal murders, besides Stephen Lawrence’s, which have had lasting impacts on our laws and society. The fact that gun laws were tightened as a direct result of Dunblane is not a half-truth; it is a simple fact, regardless of whether or not you agree with the logic of it. As I suggested above, if you wish to write your own blog post looking at any one of the issues you feel I have not covered in sufficient detail for your liking, then by all means do so – but given you are not paying me to write this blog, I would suggest your chances of getting me to rewrite my post to include all the issues you feel aggrieved about, are somewhere between slim and none.
My reply to that is:
I get the point you were trying to make.
I was addressing the point you made without trying.
The “fact” that gun laws were tightened as a “direct” result of Dunblane IS a half-truth; NOT a simple fact, regardless of whether or not you agree with the logic of it.
For a start the “fact” is that that gun laws were tightened as a “direct” result of emotive, emotionally-incontinent, emoting, guilt-inducing, emotional-blackmailing, immature, illogical, unreasonable, hysterical, won’t-someone-think-of-the-children, lobbying by the anti-gun, gun-ban lobby, which resulted in the similar knee-jerk response by the noisy minority, which in turn resulted in the cowardly surrender of both major political parties to their gun-ban MPs and those pro-liberty ones who were too weak and fearful to resist the lobbying, which in turn led to even more draconian gun controls “because” of the one-off, unique, never to be repeated, freak, outlier incident of Dunblane.
In fact the “fact” that gun laws were tightened as a “direct” result of Dunblane is not even a quarter-truth, and very far from a simple “fact”, regardless of whether or not you agree with the logic of it.
The really simple fact is that that gun murders were almost unheard of in the UK a century ago (the simple fact is a couple of centuries ago more babies died falling out of their prams than adults died by gun-homicide here, despite gun-controls being non existent and gun ownership widespread), but after each tightening of controls, things got worse.
Dunblane was simply the EXCUSE for that round of the “progressive” self-styled liberals’ salami-slicing attack on gun ownership.
I never suggested that you had not covered anything in sufficient detail for my, or anyone else’s liking , nor that I was paying you to write this blog.
And I rightly guessed my chances of getting you to rewrite your post to include all the issues I feel are grievously wrong are somewhere between slim and none.
I merely though you, and others, might like to hear some real facts.
But it would appear that guns bad – control good, while not your main point for your post, was certainly *A* point you wanted to make.
If the point you were trying to make WAS:
“…..simply that the Dunblane massacre precipitated a change in our gun laws…..”
You could have posted simply that:
“The Dunblane massacre precipitated a change in our gun laws.”
Or even if it WAS simply that:
“The Dunblane massacre precipitated a change in our gun laws – it’…s offered up as an example of other brutal murders, besides Stephen Lawrence’s, which have had lasting impacts on our laws and society… gun laws were tightened as a direct result of Dunblane.”
You could have posted simply that:
“The Dunblane massacre precipitated a change in our gun laws – an example of… brutal murders… which have had lasting impacts on our laws and society… gun laws were tightened as a…result of Dunblane…”
But you didn’t.
You posted:
“Take the Dunblane massacre, for example. In March 1996, 16 children and one teacher were killed by a single gunman, Thomas Hamilton, who then turned the gun on himself. The massacre shocked the local community and the entire country, and led to a permanent change in British gun ownership laws. In February 1997, Parliament passed a law banning private ownership of any gun over .22 calibre, and in November 1997 this was extended to all handguns. There has not been a school shooting in the United Kingdom since.” [My emphasis]
Which sounds a lot more like a statement or claim about the horrors of gun ownership, and the (believed) benefits of gun control.
You could have said he killed 17.
There was no need to stress *SINGLE* gunman (or if you really needed to establish there weren’t more than one you could have said “lone gunman”.
Or even just given his name – oh, you did!
So it sounds more like you were really saying “all it takes is a single person to kill so many kiddies if he’s armed with a gun – won’t somebody think of the children?!?!
“shocked… entire country… permanent change in British gun ownership laws”
“Permanent”?!
You do know how the British Parliamentary and legal systems works, don’t you?
Or are you assuming we’re permanently trapped in the EU?!
“There has not been a school shooting in the United Kingdom since.”
And there wasn’t one before Dunblane either, when we had no to low gun control and vastly more guns in legal circulation!
By the way, in tiny Rwanda, population around five million, and dropping off the bottom of the gun ownership league table, they managed to butcher 800,000 men, women, and children in a mere hundred days (that’s THREE TIMES the kill-rate of the Holocaust!), using nothing more lethal than an assortment of blunt kitchen utensils and rusty garden implements, plus the odd sharpened stick, or blunt object!
And in Asia, mass killings with bladed weapons (literally running Amok – cf going Berserk) are commonplace, especially where firearms are banned!
Oh, and modern mass school shootings in the States started in 1999.
Guns have probably been around since around the year 1000.
Oldest surviving example dates to around the year 1100.
Revolvers go back half a millennium.
Full-auto weapons go back centuries.
Mass production of revolvers started in the early 1800s.
And mass production of full-auto weapons in the late 1800s.
And they were effectively banned for ordinary civilians in the 1930s in the US and UK.
Oh, oh, and “Assault RIFLES” are full-auto rifles and so have been banned since the 1930s.
“Assault WEAPONS” are simply (NON full-auto) modern sporting rifles made with similar materials and in similar style to “modern” (ie WW2 and later) military weapons, as opposed to iron, wood, brass and silver musket style (WW1 and earlier) rifles, that the gun ban lobby try to confuse the public into thinking are full-auto military weapons and so should be banned too!
And they, and all other legal for general public purchase, rifles, are only used in a tiny proportion of gun murders (but frequently for self defence) in the States!
So if people were REALLY thinking of the children they would be ignoring guns, which have been around for a Millennia, they would be ignoring Assault “Weapons” (the real thing, actual full-auto weapons, were available legally for half a century a century ago, and there were no mass school shootings with them, and Assault Weapons have been available for half a century before modern mass school shootings started):
And trying to find out what has happened since the turn of the century to cause mass school shootings.
One thing cries out for investigation:
Prescription and illegal mind altering substances.
Yes, not everyone who uses them goes crazy.
But everyone who goes crazy seems to have used them!
(And you never hear the Won’t Somebody Please Think Of The Children lobby telling us that most people who drive over the speed – or even alcohol – limit never ever kill any kiddies – or anyone else for that matter!)
Has there been a significant change in drugs available, chemistry, typical dosage, number of people drugged, cocktails of drugs taken……. since a little before the turn of the Millennium?!
