Is it time for Red Flag laws?

[AnthonyM]

"What I think is interesting is the astounding murder rate in jolly old England now that the gun removal has taken place. Golly. You'd think now that those guns can't go out on the street and shoot people things would get better."

The horrible recent murders in London are a recent exception, and are heavily associated with a particular recently arrived demographic.  They are not typical of the country.

At the moment nobody knows how to deal with the situation, but I am sure that we will get back to something more normal.

[Farmer]

"What I think is interesting is the astounding murder rate in jolly old England now that the gun removal has taken place. Golly. You'd think now that those guns can't go out on the street and shoot people things would get better."

The horrible recent murders in London are a recent exception, and are heavily associated with a particular recently arrived demographic.  They are not typical of the country.

At the moment nobody knows how to deal with the situation, but I am sure that we will get back to something more normal.

And there's zero evidence that more guns on the street of London would reduce the murder rate just like pouring more petrol onto a fire rarely puts it out unless there's so much it all blows up and everything is completely destroyed...

[RSL]

The horrible recent murders in London are a recent exception, and are heavily associated with a particular recently arrived demographic.  They are not typical of the country.

At the moment nobody knows how to deal with the situation, but I am sure that we will get back to something more normal.

The murder rate in Chicago is heavily associated with a demographic too, and those rates are not typical of the country.

So what?

Nobody knows how to deal with this situation? Has anybody considered asking Rudy Giuiliani? He knew how to deal with this situation. Ah! But Rudy's a conservative! Can't ask HIM!

[LesPalenik]

(London) Met Police records show 37, 443 recorded knife offences and 6,694 recorded gun offences across the UK in the year up to September 2017.

That's a lot of knifes (and correspondigly a lot of deaths).

Commander Neil Jerome of the Met's territorial policing command and Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, condemned the crimes and acused the government being weak on crime for the last eight years, as well as weak on the causes of crime, but not explaining the said causes. Interestingly, the British papers list names of the victims, but not names or profile of the killers.
 
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5251268/london-stabbings-2018-knife-crime-statistics-latest/

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... The horrible recent murders in London are a recent exception, and are heavily associated with a particular recently arrived demographic.  They are not typical of the country...

Hallelujah! What I've been trying to convey all along: that it doesn't make much sense to compare the US to basically monolithic European countries, in terms of religion, ethnicity, and work and overall ethic.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

And there's zero evidence that more guns on the street of London would reduce the murder rate...

Unless you have a crystal ball, mate

Hint: how can you have any evidence of what would happen in the future? Then again, you might be right nevertheless, simply because the murder rate does not depend on the type of weapon, as some of us have been trying to argue all along.

[OmerV]

The ONLY reason London has reached the New York murder levels is because of the drop in the murder rate of New York. And the London jump was for only two months.


"One way of looking at this is to see it not so much as London getting massively more violent, but rather New York achieving an astonishing drop in its murder rate." –Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/london-murder-rate-new-york-compare-worse-stabbings-knife-crime-teenagers-statistics-figures-a8286866.html


Also, the drop in murders in New York is not because of citizens with guns, but because of good and smarter law enforcement:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/20/london-now-dangerous-new-york-crime-stats-suggest/

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Also, the drop in murders in New York is not because of citizens with guns, but because of good and smarter law enforcement:...

You mean that "stop and frisk" actually worked, the very thing the lefties are whining about?

[Robert Roaldi]

You mean that "stop and frisk" actually worked, the very thing the lefties are whining about?

Shouldn't a defender of individual rights and the US constitution be concerned about "stop and frisk"?  Just sayin.

My brother's country house neighbour is a black guy from Pennsylvania. He's in his 60s, Vietnam vet, engineer by trade. They were talking one day about various things and the guy asked my brother how many times in his life he had been stopped by police. My brother answered, 4 or 5, all either speeding or broken tail light incidents. Then he told my brother that he had been stopped 200-250 times, not once for any obvious reason (maybe a couple of speeding tickets, can't remember the conversation now for certain). Assuming he's exaggerating by 100% and he has only been stopped 100-125 times, would you say that "stop and frisk" is a valid and efficient use of police time? At which stop, 10th, 20th, 75th, would you start to think that maybe there was something not right? At what point would you say his rights were starting to be violated? At what point would you say he had a right to be a little pissed off?

These are meant as rhetorical questions. There is no need to answer. I just wanted to illustrate the inherent problem of a white middle class guy thinking that only "whiners" complain about stop and frisk, implying that there is little basis for complaint. An all too easy remark to make when you know it probably won't happen to you, even when there are lots of white guys committing crimes.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Robert, I was simply explaining that lauding “smart policing” means admitting that it worked. You can’t have it both ways: if you argue against “citizens with guns” in favor of “smart policing,” you can’t at the same time argue against “smart policing.” Which, by the way, is not just “stop and frisk,” but also “broken window” policing, another anathema for the Left, and, apparently, what London stopped doing.

As for individualism and the Constitution, things get complicated. What is and isn’t the latter, is ultimately interpreted by the Supreme Court. And they tried to strike a balance between a “minor inconvenience” for an individual and a greater good for the society. Granted, they did it for another type of stopping, drunk-driving check points, but the concept is the same.

As for “stop and frisk,” when ACLU forced Chicago police to fill in a two-page document for each incident, instead of a simple index card, the shootings quickly doubled in the subsequent period.

I’ve been stopped by the police, mostly for speeding. And I stopped the police in return, on the streets of Chicago, asking them for permission to shake their hands and thank them for their service.

[Farmer]

Unless you have a crystal ball, mate

Hint: how can you have any evidence of what would happen in the future? Then again, you might be right nevertheless, simply because the murder rate does not depend on the type of weapon, as some of us have been trying to argue all along.

You can extrapolate.  If gun ownership had been on the up and regulations down and the murder rate was in decline, all other things being equal, you might suggest there was a correlation (and vice versa).  But the gun laws and ownerships rates are unchanged, so it's not a factor.

Availability of weapons, though, can be shown to have an affect on gun and crime rates.  How?  Because in Australia we tightened controls and reduced guns and we've had no more mass shootings, as one example.

Guns are far more effective at killing than bare hands, knives, or teddy bears.  As a result, armies and police use guns.  To suggest that more guns doesn't increase the capacity to kill is demonstrably false.

[LesPalenik]

Availability of weapons, though, can be shown to have an affect on gun and crime rates. 

Guns are far more effective at killing than bare hands, knives, or teddy bears.  As a result, armies and police use guns.  To suggest that more guns doesn't increase the capacity to kill is demonstrably false.

as demonstrated last night in Indiana.

A toddler was playing with her father's handgun when she shot her pregnant mother Tuesday in a northwest Indiana parking lot, according to media reports.

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2018/04/18/toddler-shoots-pregnant-mom-merrillville/527416002/

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

You can extrapolate.  If gun ownership had been on the up and regulations down and the murder rate was in decline, all other things being equal, you might suggest there was a correlation (and vice versa)...

Extrapolation is not evidence.

Gun ownership in the US has actually skyrocketed in recent years, while murder rates continue to decline, so, other things being equal, it might suggest that either there is no correlation or that there is a reverse one. In any case, it invalidates the myth that more guns mean more murders, just as the recent London stats do.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

as demonstrated last night in Indiana...

Many things can happen when dumb (or drug-addicted - hey, it was Indiana, or just plain unlucky) parents are involved. Like a recent case when a young boy accidentally ran over his mother trying to push the car.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

..l  To suggest that more guns doesn't increase the capacity to kill is demonstrably false.

Well, duh! Agree 100%.

How could I not when you are using a truism? Of course more of anything increases the capacity of doing whatever that anything does. More cars increase the capacity for car accidents, more knifes increase the capacity for knife injuries, more men increase the capacity for more babies, etc.

Duh. But the real question here is the end result,  not the capacity for it.

[OmerV]

You mean that "stop and frisk" actually worked, the very thing the lefties are whining about?

The good and smarter is: "The force also put a huge amount of emphasis on community policing in order to build bridges between the police and members of the public." 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

The good and smarter is: "The force also put a huge amount of emphasis on community policing in order to build bridges between the police and members of the public." 

Weaseling out. if you read your own linked article, you would see that they were talking about the last 20 years and mayor Rudy Giuliani, so let's quote the whole section, not just he paragraph that suits you (emphasis mine):

Under the leadership of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and police commissioner, Bill Bratton, the NYPD introduced a zero tolerance approach to low level crime and flooded problem areas with patrols.

The force also put a huge amount of emphasis on community policing in order to build bridges between the police and members of the public.

That reference to "zero tolerance..." is the reference to "broken window" policing strategy, and everyone, at least in the US, knows what mayor Giuliani did, i.e., use "stop and frisk."

Community policing? You think that someone with intention to commit a crime and kill will be swayed by the police bringing flowers to his mom for her birthday? Or distributing ice cream to children? All worthy efforts by themselves, but effective in reducing murders!?

[Robert Roaldi]

Gun ownership in the US has actually skyrocketed in recent years, while murder rates continue to decline, so, other things being equal, it might suggest that either there is no correlation or that there is a reverse one. In any case, it invalidates the myth that more guns mean more murders, just as the recent London stats do.

That Radiolab podcast I provided a link to a couple of weeks ago (either in this thread or another, wish I had a better memory) presented data that the number of US households that own guns has dropped a bit (from 50% to 40%, something like that, but those are not the actual numbers, can't remember now), but that the number of guns sold has increased. Their claim was that household that already had guns simply bought more of them.

[Farmer]

Good, Slobo.  We agree.  More guns means more capacity.  Therefore, less guns means less capacity.  Whilst more capacity doesn't mean it will be taken up and used, less capacity must actually limit the maximum possible usage.  So less guns would result in less incidents.

You've already agreed.

[OmerV]

Weaseling out. if you read your own linked article, you would see that they were talking about the last 20 years and mayor Rudy Giuliani, so let's quote the whole section, not just he paragraph that suits you (emphasis mine):

That reference to "zero tolerance..." is the reference to "broken window" policing strategy, and everyone, at least in the US, knows what mayor Giuliani did, i.e., use "stop and frisk."

Community policing? You think that someone with intention to commit crime and kill will be swayed by the police bringing flowers to his mom for her birthday? Or distributing ice cream to children? All worthy efforts by themselves, but effective in reducing murders!?

Funny.

There's a good Wikipedia insert that is fairly comprehensive on "stop and frisk." The introductory paragraph ends, "Research suggests that stop-and-frisk had few effects, if any, on crime in New York City."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_City

The overall the implication is that it was not as effective as the political hype would suggest. As for community policing, it is a long term effort but not a panacea.

Interestingly, not only mayors but police too diverge on gun control, and unsurprisingly it is elected sheriffs that don't favor gun control while appointed police chiefs do. I guess Giuliani envisioned himself a sheriff in the Wild Wild East called New York. Hey, that could be a movie!