Flinders wrote:Forgive me, and believe me I do take your point, but some of the more recent firearms incidents involved legally held firearms, didn't they?
Can you help me by identifying a few? I do not recall many such.
Flinders wrote:In fact, my biggest concern with legally held firearms is how often they are used in suicides/murder-suicides, as that's by far the greater number of deaths from legally held firearms.
Very few people use a firearm to beat someone to death.
Flinders wrote:I know some people need to have them at home for emergencies (farmers for instance, and vets) but I do wonder if some kind of dual key system would be practical.
Suicides and murders rarely involve legally held firearms. It does of course happen. The figures I have researched were for 2011,2012,and half of 2013. From reports available I discounted all the incidents involving illegally held firearms. What I was left with for those two and a half years was about (I've mislaid the analysis I wrote) 36 deaths in total where legally held firearms were used. This was not 36 separate incidents as some were murder/suicides. Interestingly, not one of these incidents involved a S.1 firearm (rifles) but involved S.2 shotguns, which have a less onerous licensing system than do rifles. Interestingly, the figure would have been halved had not the police returned shotguns seized as a result of domestic violence.
Given the number of firearms and shotgun certificates held, and the number of firearms in circulation legally, these figures are extremely low. When you add in the level of incompetence displayed by the police in their management of licensing procedures, it is remarkably low. The two most terrible incidents, Hungerford and Dunblane, would not have happened had senior police officers taken notice of the objections of police on the ground to both Ryan and Hamilton having certificates. Both had police officers who knew these men recommending, in writing, revocation of their certificates. In the case of Hamilton, there are good reasons to suspect he received favourable treatment because he was involved in a paedophile ring which included politicians and senior police officers.
A dual key system, which I can only imagine, would be impossible to manage on a practical basis. I could go on at length about this and other aspects of firearms ownership, but I won't until we can justify the production and open sale of cars that can drive at three times the speed limit, allowing cars unnecessary journeys. the avoidance of manslaughter charges by using 'death by dangerous driving' instead, as if the victim is somehow less dead because he was killed by an idiot in a car and it was somehow the car's fault, the deaths caused by exhaust pollution, the minimal training required of new drivers, allowing a group of teenage males to drive around in hot hatches impressing each other, and the assumption that car ownership is some God given right to which the stupid, the incompetent, and the careless, are equally entitled. And don't get me started on idiots on bikes.
Hmmmm.... that didn't end up quite how I thought.
Pacifists cannot accept the statement "Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.", despite it being "grossly obvious."
[George Orwell]