Re: Somehow I thought money brought about a differ

[Marlin]

Oh, this is not funny speaking of banning knives.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm

[Hagar]

""""He could see that Mr Gizzi had a weapon. Mr Gizzi was under no conceivable threat from Mr Owen. The assault went on for quite a while." """

But there are no firearms in the UK, right. So how was this guy supposed to defend himself from a criminal?

Your views on firearms are quite obvious & you know mine. You already know my views on the subject & I have no wish to discuss this further. I would point out one thing. If you rely on a firearm for defence you would need to have a loaded weapon on your person & ready for use at all times. If not you will get caught out when you least expect it.

[Woodlouse2002]

Pistols were banned in the UK after a man went into a primary school and started shooting. That was about ten years ago and a even a similar incident has failed to occour since it became impossible to get the weapons though legal channels. Firearms are not banned in the UK. You can own shotguns and rifles. But you need a licience that has to be renewed every six years I think and you have to have fairly intense background checks and interviews before you can be issued with it. You've also got to proove that you have a safe place to keep it so that the wrong hands don't get on it.

I have little doubt that if automatic weapons had been invented at the time the american consitution was written the "right to bear arms" would be very different.

[Craig.]

gun licenses in the UK are really quite tough to get here. As Woody said, you have to be able to show a legitimate reason to own one before a police interview at your local police station.

[jordonj]

Not all millionaires are bastards any more than all poor people are saints.

Ummm...

I was referring specifically to the two named in the article...I thought you would see that...

The last time a gun debate came up, it got quite ugly (I decided to stay out of it...)

But from what I've read, there's really no correlation between the number of available guns and the amount of crime.  Poverty is one thing that has more to do with it (and in one book, Freakonomics there's a very credible theory that since women in poverty are more likely to get abortions, and since criminals more often come from poverty, then the drop in crime in the USA that came about in the early 90's was because our criminal pool was being siphoned off).

The book also asks "If drug dealers make so much money, why do so many of them still live with their mothers?"  The answer is that they make about as much as working at McDonalds.

Of course, on a similar note to Woody, I also think that the "Bear Arms" is something that needs to be reexamined.  I doubt that our founders had any idea that guns would become as powerful and destructive as they are today.

[Hagar]

Ummm...

I was referring specifically to the two named in the article...I thought you would see that...

Sorry but I didn't read it that way. I see it now. Shows how easy it is to misunderstand a written remark.

Still, it doesn't hurt to emphasize it & I stand by what I said.

[jordonj]

Oh yeah...there was truth in what you said too...

Just to add another note...the largest group of homeless are veterans.

[Marlin]

Craig said this,

[Hagar]

[quote]Hagar, I don

[Woodlouse2002]

But from what I've read, there's really no correlation between the number of available guns and the amount of crime.

In England, in a single year firearm related deaths might be 60 or 70. But in the same amount of time firearm related deaths in America are in their thousands. Tens of thousands sometimes.


[quote]This reminds me of a couple of states here in the US. so don

[jordonj]

I think we're going a bit off-topic here...

If we really need to re-visit the gun topic, we should probably start another thread.

But this thread was about a millionaire who thought himself above the law...and made a hobby of assaulting homeless people.

Remember Leona Helmsley?

[Marlin]

Don't criminal thugs count as pests?  

[Hagar]

But this thread was about a millionaire who thought himself above the law...and made a hobby of assaulting homeless people.

I can't refer to the original topic as Ben (Saitek) saw fit to remove it. From the title it's about people with money being more respectable than those without it which is patently untrue. The 'millionaire' in the linked article is a cheap crook trying to imitate big-league slum landlords like the notorious Peter Rachman. http://www.portowebbo.co.uk/nottinghilltv/revealed7rachman.htm
He didn't target his victims because they were homeless but because they were squatting in his own run-down properties. I don't know if they had ignored previous warnings but the purpose of attacking them was to to 'persuade' them to leave & send a clear message to anyone with similar intentions. These people use the same strong-arm methods to collect rent from their vulnerable tenants. Whether they use guns or some other weapon is irrelevant.

There is another topic in this forum about a group of young thugs beating a sleeping homeless man to death with baseball bats, presumably simply for the fun of it. This happened in Florida a few days ago but is unfortunately is not an isolated incident. http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20060113053909990009&ncid=NWS00010000000001