Defiant rodents continue to defy strict UK gun control measures. Squirrel crime growing at exponential rates.
Posted on 12/02/2004 5:44:47 PM PST by Mr. Mojo
The fear of gun crime in the city where Pc Ian Broadhurst was shot dead on Boxing Day last year is worse than the reality, a senior officer said.
Detective Chief Superintendent Grahame Bullock said there was a division between the perception of gun crime and the reality, with a high profile killing having a ripple effect throughout the community.
Mr Bullock, of West Yorkshire Police, said: “A high-profile killing has a significant impact and the perception goes further than just the people actually affected.
“We have to work to reassure people.
“Sometimes there is a ripple effect and the perception becomes disproportionate.”
But with the equivalent of one gun crime every hour in Britain, official figures show the problem has more than doubled in Leeds in the last six years.
“Every incident of gun crime has a critical effect on communities. We are never complacent about it,” said Mr Bullock, head of the West Yorkshire force’s community safety department.
He said the problems faced by officers in Leeds were not as serious as in other major cities in the UK, but that no one could afford to become complacent.
He told the Leeds Community Safety Partnership conference in March that the rationale for the service was reassurance and preventative patrol by mostly unarmed officers.
“In the UK, we’re still very into the confidence of the public. We know that,” he said.
“The British police service still enjoys, compared to other countries, high levels of public confidence. Again there’s no room for complacency, there have been blips, and we need to tackle that.
“It’s very much about working with people rather than imposing solutions on to people. It’s about engagement with communities, familiarity.
“We should be very proud of Leeds and West Yorkshire. Given the melee of society that we have, we still see relatively low levels of violent crime and gun crime.”
But across England and Wales the number of gun crimes have doubled since 1997 with 10,000 incidents a year.
And the number of incidents in West Yorkshire is rising year-on-year, according to the force’s annual reports.
There were more than 2,145 incidents involving firearms in the county in 2003/4, up from 2,041 the year before and more than double the 947 recorded incidents in 1998/99.
Colin Cramphorn, chief constable of West Yorkshire Police, said the murder of Pc Broadhurst had overshadowed a “challenging year” for the force.
In his annual report for 2003/4, he said: “Such incidents remind us all of the terribly high price police officers may be asked to pay in protecting us from crime and disorder. We are forever in their debt.”
FYI
But..but..but..How can they possibly have a gun problem what with their gun control??? I thought the focus was now on confiscating pen knives.
good post, Mr Mojo risin'.
Those who beat their swords into plowshares will so be
plowing for the master.
by John R. Lott, Jr. Via Wall Street Journal
Defiant rodents continue to defy strict UK gun control measures. Squirrel crime growing at exponential rates.
They just don't get it do they? I wonder what it will take to make the gun grabbers realize that criminals don't surrender their guns. They just use them against defenseless people. You would think they would have noticed by now.
I've come to realize that it's not the criminals that liberals want to take guns away from.
Liberals want to control people. If you wanted to control someone, would you want them to be armed?
"I have my old service-revolver in my desk."
"You had best take it, then."
It's elementary, really.
Logic seems to be working!
It'd be interesting to see the stats a gun deaths/1000 in the UK versus that in the USA.
Now where's my Sig?
Liberals want to control people. If you wanted to control someone, would you want them to be armed?
You're exactly right. Gun control is about control, and they know they can never control us as long as we're armed. It will take them wining a revolution to disarm Americans, and we've got the guns. :)
I really get steamed when I read this... whatever. I go to Midway USA and buy more magazines and ammo. The gun/ammo vault is filling up fast. It must weigh over a ton. I bet some of the folks in Utah and Montana have truckloads of goodies pouring in.
Ahhhh. Well this has been very obvious for the last 50 years. Yawn. Been asleep long?
Gun control advocates don't realize that crime by random psychos is a miniscule problem compared to crime by organized criminals who have no difficulty at all obtaining firearms whether they are legal or not. Allowing law obiding citizens to own guns at least puts the lawful citizens on an equal footing with the mobsters.
Entirely predictable. Ban guns = violent crime WAY up!
I think we've got a very long way to go until we catch up with you guys.
From what I can find, the USA will have approx 400,000 gun crimes compared to our 10,000.
You're 5 times the population but 40 times the gun crime rate.
No 2nd Amendment for us thank you very much.
Gun crime rising every year?!?! They need tighter gun control laws I suppose. WAIT, they already banned guns hahhhahaha
Read the well-referenced link in post #5 and learn something.
A short excerpt: "The 2000 International Crime Victimization Survey, the last survey done, shows the violent-crime rate in England and Wales was twice the rate in the U.S. When the new survey for 2004 comes out, that gap will undoubtedly have widened even further as crimes reported to British police have since soared by 35%, while declining 6% in the U.S."
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