Alphecca

Even by your standards this is an extraordinary post.
'Most of the guns they have are stolen; from burglared homes or businesses.'
Well if there weren't so many guns around then they wouldn't be stolen from homes and businesses???
'Gun control laws only keep guns out of the law-abiding citizens who need them, not out of the hands of the mutants.'
In England where you seem to think we are getting beaten up all the time I know of no one who has any feeling at all that they need a gun.

That an anti-gun person knows "of no one who has any feeling that they need a gun" is certainly unpersuasive. Your group is self-selective for anti-gun persons. How about you ask yourself and your friends, or better yet look at the actual crime statistics, and see whether crime with guns has increased or decreased since England outlawed most firearms. I think you will be surprised to see that gun crime has increased in frequency now that the populace in general is disarmed by law. The same disarmament of the population is underway in South Africa, and the results of that effort will likely be similar to the 25 year old, identical experiment performed in Zimbabwe. Hope in 20 years England has not deteriorated to such extents....for your sake.

Jeff, I have your answer:
http://wrightwing.net/2005/09/26/02/53/20

So Dave, what you're saying is that it's the victim's fault for having so many guns, that it makes people want to rob them (whether it's 1 or 188)? That if people didn't possess objects that others desired, there would be no robberies? What do you think is the real problem here, people in possession of something other's want, or people stealing that object?

And like the second poster said, gun crime has been increasing in England, despite the gun bans. Not a small feat, considering that England is a water-locked country. Gun smuggling can't be an easy thing to do there, and yet it's still been increasing.

How about the article about Scotland being the most violent country in the world, the "booze and blades" culture? If they enact knife control, and we start hearing stories about people breaking into buildings to steal knives, will you say then "well if there weren't so many knives around then they wouldn't be stolen from homes and businesses"?

Eric, what in god's name are you rambling about?
'it's the victim's fault for having so many guns, that it makes people want to rob them'. I was merely saying that if there are less guns around then they will not be there to be stolen when a robbery / burglary takes place. I have no idea whether or not gun crime is increasing in the UK, you may well be right but guns are so rare in the UK they just don't come up on people's radar at all. A gun crime in the UK makes the national (not local) papers.
As to the knives issue in Scotland, I'm sure that there are just as many delinquants/criminals call them what you will in the UK as in the states but with the lack of guns they tend to use knives and evil as knives may be they are not as deadly as guns, hence our murder rate being just lower than yours by what was it 3 times?

What am I rambling on about? Your first post! You make it sound as if it's the gun that's the problem, and not the person stealing it.

Gun crime is increasing in the UK, despite the banning of guns, which brings up an interesting point. There aren't guns to steal in England because the police confiscated them from the citizenry. If the gun control laws passed were supposed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals (and law-abiding citizens), then why are there more and more criminals with them? Why did crime increase after the ban? It shows that even if the two aren't related, banning guns didn't decrease crime like they thought it would. Even though there aren't any (or very few) guns to steal from homes and businesses, criminals still get their hands on them (even for a water-locked country).

There are not as many delinquents in the US as the UK or Scotland. The report from the UN demonstrated that. Our murder rate has little to do with guns. Guns are used because they are available. If they weren't, something else would be instead. If guns were really the cause for us, then why, as the gun stock increased over the years, did our murder rate decline? If what you're saying is true, then our murder rate should have increased as well, which is not the case.

You bring up yet again the murder rates between the US and UK. If your stats are right, then yes, the US has just under three times as many murders compared to the UK. But while your murder rate has been going up ours has been going down, which is demonstrated by the article Jeff posted today (Quack Quack).

I wonder how much longer until the UK surpasses the US in murders if they continue at this pace.

To clarify a bit, when I said 'why did crime increase after the ban' I meant gun and non-gun crime as well.

After doing a bit of reading, I'm not so sure the police seized most of the guns from the citizens. But either way, the gun bans didn't decrease crime like they thought it would.