Of interest to everyone in the uk

[LeeN]

[QUOTE=LongReinette;5673676]Its possible that gun crime would have risen at a higher rate with out the ban. It may even be probable. But what the figures indisputably show is that legally held firearms are not the primary drivers behind the use of firearms in crime.

The anti-gun brigade always like to point to the US and the high crime and murder rates there correlated with the high level of gun ownership there. But across the border in Canada, they have a very low murder and violent crime rate and gun ownership dwarfs even that of the US. Hell, most houses in Switzerland contain assault rifles, yet its one of the safest places to live in.the.world.

Gun crime is only loosely linked to gun ownership rates. Its more about a culture of criminal violence than anything else.



Is that true? I would have thought the majority of gun crime involved replicas, fake guns, toy guns, bananas in soc

Hi

Switzerland has a much larger number per head of population than the UK it seems. Also looks like if guns are available they tend to be preferred for suicide
What is really worrying is the massive difference in unintentional death........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ted_death_rate

[fridgemann]

Swiss servicemen are given the opportunity to buy their automatic rifles on leaving the service which most do, but they must be adapted by law to semi automatic, it was actually a legal requirement in Switzerland for many years to own a rifle if one wished to get married, and airgun laws are different in that co2 and air powered guns that produce more than 7.5 joules (5.5 fpe) are considered to be firearms.#

Back to the speed issue...

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), road traffic accidents kill more people around the world than malaria, and are the leading cause of death for young people aged five to 29 – especially in developing countries. Each year up to 50 million people are injured in traffic accidents, globally.

I don't think speed alone can be blamed for people dying on our roads, if you look at the number of reported deaths from road traffic accidents per hundred thousand of population (source: World Health Organisation(http://www.theguardian.com/global-de...angerous-roads) in 2012 there were 5.4 reported deaths in the UK and 6 in Germany. Given that the Germans have an advisory speed limit on their Autobahns of 130kmh and we have a maximum of 112kmh, if speed were the only culprit in road deaths then surely there would be a lot more reported deaths in Germany than what the WHO have stated in their report? No?

I have driven in lots of countries throughout Europe and, the one in which I felt most at risk to myself and my vehicle was Romania. That was in 1994 and we couldn't drive fast because of the state of the roads and the traffic, lots of horses and carts with no lights.

Maybe we should stop blaming speed and start looking at what and how we teach our young drivers, my wife is German and whilst learning she was made to drive on the Autobahn at 200kmh, now she hates it if I do 160kmh!

And you don't have to take my word for it, but thanks for reading anyway...