Posted on 08/19/2005 12:28:00 PM PDT by neverdem
The government has been urged to relax gun laws which make it illegal for Britain's top pistol shooters to train in England, Scotland and Wales.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke has given special permission for pistol events to be staged at the London 2012 Olympics.
But British team members face having to do all their 2012 preparations abroad.
"It would be fantastic if they were given the ability to compete on a level playing field," said British shooting's performance chief John Leighton-Dyson.
"I would like to think reasonable people will be able to have reasonable discussions and come to reasonable conclusions about this."
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We must be allowed to train on the same level as other athletes if we're to have a reasonable chance of competing effectively
British shooting's performance director John Leighton-Dyson
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Laws banning most types of handguns were introduced after gun enthusiast Thomas Hamilton killed 16 schoolchildren and their teacher at Dunblane Primary School in March 1996.
As a result, British shooters who compete in the rapid fire, 50m pistol men and 25m pistol women Olympic events can only train in Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands or Isle of Man.
Team members currently spend about 20 to 30 days a year training in Switzerland, and receive no funding because their events are illegal in the UK.
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The Home Office agreed to relax the law so the three events can be staged in 2012, as it did for the 2002 Commonwealth Games events, although stringent security measures will still be required.
But the government's current stance is that there will be no further concessions for training in the build-up to the Games.
Japan, which has similar gun laws to Britain, gives its elite pistol shooters a special exemption.
And Leighton-Dyson is keen to set up talks with the government, the British Olympic Association and London's organising committee in an attempt to broker a similar compromise.
"It is very difficult for us to get young people to come into a sport they can't practise domestically," he told BBC Sport.
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The banning of handguns wasn't a matter of eroding personal freedoms
Home Office spokesperson
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"The British team in 2012 will be the biggest we can possibly put out because we are playing at home.
"We must be allowed to train and prepare on the same level as other athletes if we are to have a reasonable chance of competing effectively."
The International Olympic Committee has received letters from various parties since London won hosting rights for 2012 asking it to push for changes in Britain's gun laws.
But IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said: "We are totally comfortable with what has been put in place for Games time."
A Home Office spokesperson said the laws had been voted in by an "overwhelming majority" of MPs.
"The banning of handguns wasn't a matter of eroding personal freedoms, it was a matter of ensuring that what had been shown to be a terrible, if statistically small, risk was removed," she said.
Just compare the figures per 100,000 people for the USA and the UK and tell me who is safer...
This is from Canada Blames Us
The experiences in the U.K. and Australia, two island nations whose borders are much easier to monitor, should also give Canadian gun controllers some pause. The British government banned handguns in 1997 but recently reported that gun crime in England and Wales nearly doubled in the four years from 1998-99 to 2002-03.
Crime was not supposed to rise after handguns were banned. Yet, since 1996 the serious-violent-crime rate has soared by 69 percent; robbery is up 45 percent, and murders up 54 percent. Before the law, armed robberies had fallen 50 percent from 1993 to 1997, but as soon as handguns were banned the robbery rate shot back up, almost to its 1993 level.
The 2000 International Crime Victimization Survey, the last survey completed, shows the violent-crime rate in England and Wales was twice the rate of that in the U.S. When the new survey for 2004 comes out later this year, that gap will undoubtedly have widened even further as crimes reported to British police have since soared by 35 percent, while those in the U.S. have declined 6 percent.
Excellent source data.
Bookmarked
No, you're wrong, you're not safer, you only feel that way. The UK is as vulnerable to internal violence as it was to invasion in 1940. Pardon me, but I don't find any bragging rights in being disarmed. Furthermore, if one removes the gun homicides of black and Hispanic males between 15 and 25 years of age, the rate becomes insignificant to the US population and the number of US firearms.
There may come another day when Britain has to ask Americans to send them guns as they did in 1939-40. BTW, we'd like some of them back.
If you remove blacks from the UK figures too, the real gun crime rate becomes nearly non-existent. Almost all UK crime with real guns is committed by black drug dealers against their fellows. Frankly, no great loss to society. I'm reliably informed that gun handling and care is poor: the guns are largely fashion accessories. There's nowhere they can legally do target practice, ammo supply is erratic, and carrying a gun brings an AUTOMATIC 5 year jail sentence on top of whatever other crime was committed.
The British gun crime figures also include crimes committed with imitation firearms, toys and airguns/BB guns, so are artificially inflated.
Violent crime takes in mainly low-level street brawling, pub altercations, domestic strife. No big deal, and almost never fatal, precisely because nobody has a gun. Drunken brawls like this are part of British culture.
Anybody who can't defend himself without a gun is a wuss anyway.
As it happens, though, I agree that the legislation was over the top and needs reform, particularly given the target shooters' plight. But I certainly would't like most of the UK population being able to purchase a gun, because that means criminals can get them too. I'm not scared of anybody armed the same as me: i.e. boots, fists, broken bottles/clubs etc.
In America it's different, and you're welcome to buy as many guns as you want. Hell, you can even buy bazookas and hand grenades for all I care - but you're not THAT free, are you?
But in Britain we (or most of us) are very happy the way things are. The only people with guns are the army and the police, and if you ask me the latter are already out of their depth with them.
See my post to Elbucko.
You have to look at the UK statistics carefully. Violent crime covers a multitude of sins in the UK. "Gun crime" is also often not with guns.
There has also been an increase in people reporting crimes that they previously wouldn't have bothered with.
Study the statistics! And remember that society is different here. British people in my view are far more prone to low-level violence than Americans, and it's always been that way, guns or not.
Did Mr. Lott unfairly manipulate thr data?
Did Mr. Lott unfairly manipulate thr data?
What? Lott? Who he? Is this some American joke?
Going offline for this weekend, back Sunday evening.
Leftists always try to use the USA's high murder rate to justify gun control laws. However, the murder rate by knives alone in the USA is greater than the UK's total murder rate! In 1981 the American murder rate was 8.7 times the UK rate, in 1995 it was 5.7 times higher and by 2002 it was only 3.5 times higher. Besides, a study comparing New York and London over 200 years found the New York homicide rate was consistently five times the London rate, but for most of that period residents of both cities had unrestricted access to firearms.
Swiss reservists (almost the entire male population between 20 and 42) keep semi-automatic rifles in their homes and conscripts are issued with fully-automatic rifles to keep in theirs, however, the murder rate in Switzerland is regularly lower than it is in Britain!
Yeah right, apart from the fact that in the UK a much higher proportion of people are kicked to death than shot and they along with many victims who suffer "Grievous Bodily Harm" could have been saved by a CCW system.
Several American states with the most liberal gun laws have the lowest murder and violent crime rates. For example, FBI statistics show that Vermont (which has a genuine right to carry law, i.e. it requires no permits), boasts the 47th lowest murder rate among the 50 states (its rate is about the same as the UK's), and enjoys the 49th lowest violent crime rate in the USA. If gun ownership rates are directly proportional to murder rates then why was Britain's murder rate lower between 1900 and 1920, (when it had no gun control laws at all), than it is now?
Anybody who can't defend himself without a gun is a wuss anyway.
Yeah those elderly, female and disabled people don't deserve to live because they can't fight as well, yup, that's a great attitude.
But I certainly would't like most of the UK population being able to purchase a gun, because that means criminals can get them too.
For goodness sake, criminals can get them even though they're illegal! See here.
I'm not scared of anybody armed the same as me: i.e. boots, fists, broken bottles/clubs etc.
Will you stop thinking about yourself, what about people who are outnumered, female, weak, ill, old, disabled etc?
Check out this "ukman" guy. His gun control arguments make me want to puke.
Pay no attention to the elephant in the room.
What elephant?..............................................;^)
"Violent crime takes in mainly low-level street brawling, pub altercations, domestic strife."
Well, it is pretty simple. If I am about to be attacked, I'll defend myself by any means necessary, including putting a hole through a soccer hooligan weilding a broken bottle.
"Anybody who can't defend himself without a gun is a wuss anyway."
Anybody who would attack somebody else is a degenerate and not worth not keeping alive. JMO.
"The only people with guns are the army and the police, and if you ask me the latter are already out of their depth with them."
People who cannot defend themselves by any means necessary are not free people. Then again, I could really care less about Britain.
Just compare the UK numbers with the Saudi Arabian numbers. The UK has 2X the murder rate and 25,000X the burglarly rate?
Whiny Socialist Voice:What does that say about you as a Sooo Cieee Uhhh Teee
When will you be adopting Sharia?
Now wait just a minute! On one hand you're trying to shoot down US gun owners with a comparison of British crime statistics, now you claim that the UK stats are artificially inflated with toy guns. In other words, what you're really saying is that you, or the government, doesn't really know what the hell you're saying.
Violent crime takes in mainly low-level street brawling, pub altercations, domestic strife. No big deal, and almost never fatal, precisely because nobody has a gun.
I've spent time in the UK every two years since '86, I am familiar with British "pub society" and nobody had guns before the gun ban either. What they did have, especially in the working class and ethnic neighborhoods was knives. I am willing to bet my lucky gun that there are more people killed with knives in the UK and the US, in the last 15 years, than have been killed by guns. A knifing just doesn't make the news. Fox or Thames TV.
Anybody who can't defend himself without a gun is a wuss anyway.
True, but only a fool would bring a knife to a gun fight.
In America it's different, and you're welcome to buy as many guns as you want.
Not since 1968.
Hell, you can even buy bazookas and hand grenades for all I care - but you're not THAT free, are you?
No, so what's your point? Should the US be less free or more so?
But in Britain we (or most of us) are very happy the way things are. The only people with guns are the army and the police, and if you ask me the latter are already out of their depth with them.
So we've noticed. That's because you do not have a competent "shooting class" to draw competent gun handlers from for police. It takes steady nerves to face another man with another gun and shoot, or not shoot, accordingly. This I know and it's not from watching the tele.
Cheers.
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