I take your point about the Warsaw Ghetto. And the definition of genocide as it applies to the situation in North America during the 18th and 19th centuries.

But there have been genocides where the population was not disarmed. And there are many places where the population is not armed in which there are no risks of genocide. As you say: certain things need to be in place.



Read this: On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (A Call to Historians); Harcourt, Bernard E.

It's interesting. It takes a different perspective.

To suggest that someone who supports gun control in a liberal democracy 'likes genocide' is ridiculous. It is a matter of risk assessment.

We have had genocide in Britain: during the 17th Century the British engaged in ethnic cleansing in Ireland (not strictly genocide, but certainly a crime against humanity). Prior to that there was what amounted to a genocide in the late 11th century (the Harrying of the North).

The components necessary for genocide do not exist in modern Britain. To be armed as a defence against a highly theoretical and I would argue vanishingly small risk of a total cultural and political volte face does not make sense when the risks that armament would bring are very real and measurable. It would make as much sense as everybody wearing radiation suits 24/7 to guard against a potential nuclear powerplant accident.

@ Sarge:

Just to clarify: I don't think those figures mean that Americans are more violent than Brits. I just think that where violence does occur it is more likely to escalate to serious injury or death when people are carrying weapons.

If anything I suspect that at an interpersonal level we may be more violent: I have no evidence to base this on, just a gut feeling, but I suspect that you are more likely to get into a fist fight in the UK than you are in the US. But most such fights are probably unrecorded. I think the probable lack of weapons in any given situation combined with a heavy drinking culture mean that people are more likely to throw a punch in anger here than in the US. Street fights have been a part of British culture for a long time. In the 18th century the British were known for their propensity to settle arguments with a fist fight and everybody just stood around and watched, cheering them on :p I'm not sure we have changed all that much lol. Go into any city centre on a Friday night and you're likely to see a brawl.

You're also, as those figures show, marginally more likely to get knifed or glassed in the UK. Brits like their blades. They are much more a part of our culture than guns.

I also think that, weapons aside, there are other factors at play: it is almost certainly easier to police a smaller nation. Other than London, even our cities are pretty small. Most are comparable to towns in the US. When we talk about a 'no go area' in an inner city we are talking about a tiny area of a few blocks. We're also pretty tightly packed here. We live in very small houses for the most part and don't have much space between us.

But that size differential adds to my reasons for not wanting a proliferation of guns here. It really wouldn't take much for guns to become a major problem with such a small and tightly packed population. Add in the aforementioned drinking culture and I really don't think more guns would be a good thing :P

Dana - You have made some good points and I have truthfully run out of ways to refute them. Guns have and will remain a part of US society, but it does have it's downside.

A couple points as you guys go back and forth.
At times the Plains Indians were better armed than the the American soldiers. It was really a game of numbers not armaments. Emigration doomed the native culture. I'd agree that it was genocide as it was intentional policy. As a descendant of the poorly armed Irish, I'd also call that genocide. That was a case where arms could have made a difference since they had numbers. As far as political about face goes, it would be well to remember that educated populations have lost their collective mind before. The scapegoating of your Muslim population could lead to similar outcomes. It is an interesting question whether that oppression would come from a government or the armed rabble...

According to that chart the homicide rate is near zero in Iraq and Syria.

It seems the huge numbers of guns in those countries have created a perfectly safe, crime-free, non-totalitarian zone of sorts or something

In terms of deadly violence I suspect if it were to be anything it would be the latter. In terms of oppressive legislation and heavyhanded policing that's a different matter. Some wuold argue that there is already a degree of official oppression of muslim minorities in Britain through the application of anti-terror laws - up and including 'trials' of terror suspects in which the suspect and their lawyer are not given access to the evidence against them, and can be subjected to 'control orders' which amount to various forms of house arrest on the basis of those trials.

True. And as I said, the fact that such things haven't happened here for a very long time is no guarantee they will never happen again. There is, has always been, and likely always will be a strand of British society which leans towards white supremacy/anglo-saxon purity. It is of course possible that at some point that could expand out into a larger movement - it has done so before. But for it to turn into a genocide or anything more than an increase in racial tension and sporadic racial violence would require several things to happen. Not least of which would be to move further away from memories of WW2 and nazism.

Personally, I think the chances of racial tension bubbling up into outright pogroms and deadly violence would be increased by the presence of people's militias not lessened.

Awesomesauce. Let's move to Iraq for safety :p

I notice as well that despite the headline and the blurb, Britain is shown in the lowest gun ownership category and also the lowest murder category.

Thanks:) And there have been a lot of good points raised against gun control here. Certainly made me think and reconsider my own stance.

I think it does pretty much boil down to two very distinct cultures. neither one is better than the other, but what is appropriate to one is not necessarily appropriate to the other.

I do believe, that America cuold make itself a safer country and decrease the amount of gun deaths by imposing some controls. But I doubt it is either feasible or desirable for America to take the absolute stance against guns that works in the UK. There are too many factors at play - gun ownership has a huge part in your history and your sense of self as a nation, but also in modern culture. Whilst some people dohunt in the UK it is a much more prominent part of US culture - probably plays a big a role in the US as football does in the UK. By which I mean it is, for some communities, a much valued part of growing up and inter generational relationships. Learning to hunt and going hunting with Dad seems to me to have similar elements to the way many British youth take on their dad's football team.

We don't have large tracts of wilderness full of game. There are places where hunting takes place but they are far more the preserve of the landowning elite - a throw back to a much older culture. Alongside that runs a working class culture of hunting which primarily focuses on small game (rabbits) and illegal poaching of landowners game - both of which have largely fallen by the wayside with the advent of mass farming and cheap meat, and with the urbanisation of much of the country.

Ah no wait the chart says there are no guns in Syria, as opposed to Iraq where there is one for every two people

No guns in Syria. People there must be dying from malaria or something

Spontaneous human combustion?

"I think I could turn and live with the Syrians, they are so placid and self-contain'd"

--Walt Whitless

The lowered rate of gun homicides in the US is partly due to hospitals getting much better at preventing people from dying from them due to the amount of practice they get.

true story

I just realised I made an error on one of those posts. The last time Britain was successfully invaded wasn't 1000 years ago it was 948 years ago.

That is really interesting. Many medical advancements are made in warzones - wonder if there's a hidden 'benefit' to the gun injuries in the US in terms of pushing medical responses to them.

Also, forgot to mention this before:

I was going off tfe definition of it I found on a wiki about genocide. They drew a distinction between genocide and ethnic cleansing in that case. I'd always understood it as a genocide before though.

Pizza, probably killing more people than guns, but here to stay until they pry my cold dead fingers from the crust. ;)

I think Israel pretty much leads the world in treatment of traumatic injury, don't they?

Yes/No/Maybe?