In the UK we don't let a thing like "the truth" get in the way of a good story. Some bits of plastic = major news event. Manchester police should be concentrating on the real guns that are circulating in that city. Last time I was there a taxi driver told me that the police let the gangs shoot each other, and only really get involved when they turn on innocent bystanders. Sounds like they have enough to do without making problems where they don't exist.
That cannot possibly be true. In the US we are told that the UK is a utopia with no guns and everyone loves each other. You know, because guns are illegal there and all.
In many cities guns are available and besides, farmers all have shotguns. I put the low gun crime rate here down to the police not being issued sidearms, so the average low level criminal doesn't usually get into an arms race with the cops.
I've also heard that the UK collects such statistics in different ways than as compared to the US.
For instance, my understanding is that in the UK a death by gunshot is not reported as a homicide until someone is convicted of said homicide. Even then, it is reported as a homicide for the year of the conviction, not of the death. Granted, I don't recall the source for this so I could be completely wrong. On the other hand, if someone is shot to death in the US and it doesn't appear to be self-inflicted, it's a homicide. If the person was shot in self-defense, it's justified homicide. Another granted though, this is a very simplistic explanation.
Anyway, my point being is that if two countries don't collect and categorize the data the same way then any type of comparison is pointless.
I've also seen the thought tossed out there that if you remove gang-related violence from the US statistics then the gun crime rate drops dramatically. Meaning that in most places in the US the gun crime rate is mostly on par with the safest places in the world. It's just the gang problems in major cities are elevating the averages.
Well, I wouldn't necessarily dispute the claim that the UK seems to have a better handle on gun crimes overall as compared to the US. It's just that the difficulties in doing so are quite different between the two.
"Despite the handguns ban imposed under the 1997 Firearms Amendment, research carried out following the implementation of the Act saw a 40 per cent increase in the number of gun crime incidents in the UK."
