Gun crime

[4D]

 

[Doore]

Rates of gun crime in Britain are falling.  They have been for years.

[Stegenfreud]

More worrying than gun crime is knife crime. Harsher punishment for knife crime needs to be implemented. I know this inevitably leads to debate on the prison system, overcrowding... etc... but i feel the punishment for stabbing someone should be far harsher.

[Highland Robin]

Gun crime in general is not increasing.  Having lived until quite recently in Nottingham, declared the gun crime capital a few years back by the media, it was actually nonsense.  The two most recent examples (and the big ones we all remember like Dunblane and Hungerford) were of people who, for whatever reason, lost their minds because of some sort of grudge, and, although Raoul Moat appears still to be at large, these incidents tend to end with the perpetrator killing themselves.  These cases will continue to happen whatever you do to toughen things up.  They are totally tragic.  Other gun crime tends to happen within very limited communities, primarily linked with illegal drugs.  We have very few police fatalities compared with other countries, and very few 'innocent bystander' victims.  Armed robberies are actually quite rare.

More general arming of the police will do more to exacerbate things.  keeping arms limited to a small nuimber of highly-trained officers in each force is far better than issuing guns to every officer, some of whom will be tempted to use them in situations where it is not necessary....we should have learnt that from the (not directly comparable) Bloody Sunday story.  There could easily be situations on a Saturday afternoon after a Millwall match where ill-disciplined policemenn decided they were sufficiently under threat to open fire.....

[tans]

Have they still not caught this bloke yet? Proper fugitive.

Where's Tommy lee jones?

[sonicyouth]

they've discovered that he supports the netherlands though

[url width=226 height=282]http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48289000/jpg/_48289759_moat1.jpg[/url]

[Sippo]

Another shooting
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/10552410.stm