I'd say our low gun crime is to do with the difficulty of obtaining weapons and the social stigma of crime. The UK is actually much more populous than the US, not that I think density necessarily has a bearing except if you were to consider that the areas of highest-population-density may often be much poorer areas with an expectedly-higher crime rate.
Like I said, one of the two... I've never researched it, but apparently it seems as if I should for future reference.
Another thing, is there much of a black market of firearms over there, or none whatsoever. I find it very hard to ship guns to an island where (to my knowledge) not many are made domestically.
According to these figures gun crime is 5 times higher in the US, my own opinion is that when people lose their temper they use whatever's to hand. When that's a lethal firearm the potential for a lethal outcome is greatly increased, it seems.
I don't deny that. I think that more people find themselves feeling more safe (in the US for this instance) when they have a lethal weapon V. non-lethal. However, the criminal aspect is much different than comparing what is in the handbag of every odd woman. Black marketed weapons are troubling over here, and they aren't going in gun safes locked away from it's ammunition, and I highly doubt away from children.
Without racially profiling anyone, I'm not sure how I can explain to you the fact of what I observe everyday on my local news channel in the mornings and afternoons. It is not flattering but it is the truth, and none of them seem to want to stop and work together with anyone else until they get what they think is theirs...
That's why the argument to deploy more guns to combat guns seems childishly flawed.
I did say it probably would never work out, but is my idea for a short-term solution. I don't find it feasible to have a metal detector at every door, nor change constitutional rights which surely would have Obama or any other president impeached over here..
In the case of Brown, for example, there's nothing about the incident to suspect that a lone, young female officer couldn't have handled the situation non-lethally. However, there seems to be a presumption that the threat of unjudged murder to fight crime is a necessary one. I feel it isn't, but there you go. If you automatically have a system where an officer of our law finds it acceptable to shoot and kill then you don't have public servants, you have something akin to roaming death squads. And when that's the case then every potential felon needs a firearm too. And so it goes on.
I doubt based on my assumption of the kind of person Brown was, that he would not have treated the female officer as if he were a pimp,
unless the officer be this woman, and still not walked on the sidewalk. Maybe a taser would have been fired, maybe the pistol. I'm not sure, I'm not a genie.
And I don't find it that every officer out there has the duty to kill someone in their career, nor do they think of themselves as "roaming death squads". The vast majority I imagine depict themselves no differently than I do, which are people who have the job to make sure others are in orderly conduct with the rest of society. National Geographic has a show of Alaskan police officers which I have yet to see or hear of a rouge cop that slays an entire village of natives. Nor do I hear of border security in the south who round up illegal immigrants and behead them at the border (if that exists than I am truly sorry). The idea that people such as those involved in Columbine, Sandy Hook, and others would join the police force to injure others is not the first thing to mind. Is it a possibility, yes. And how does someone prepare for that? I don't think anyone really knows that answer.
Should police be limited to non-lethal weapons whilst on patrol to eliminate those possibilities? I don't think so...
Quick question, are any LEOs in the UK unarmed? That is something I am also unaware of, and curious as per my answer above.
