Tasing a ten year old... Wow!

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But if you were an armed robber, would you really attempt to rob a location where you knew there was a good chance that someone would shoot you in the process? I know I wouldn't. I'd pick the target of least resistance.

 

They tend to pick the targets that yield more money. Banks usually have armed guards but they're a prime target for robbers. And if they do decide for "less risk", a lot of gas stations nowadays have guns under the counter... Personnally, if I would take the risk of going to prison or getting hurt (you never know what might happen in a robbery in a small unprotected business), I'd go for the one where I would win the biggest dollars.

 

Well the sweet spot would be highest yield, lowest risk, sure. So pick the bank without the armed guard.

Think of it this way - the guy who's just looking for enough money for his next fix isn't likely to try to take down a bank for ten grand or whatever ... the convenience store will do just fine, or even better, a little old lady with her purse on her shoulder. He may not know for a certainty that the clerk or the little old lady won't shoot him, but he does know for a certainty that an armed guard won't shoot him if he sees that there isn't one around.

Mugging victims are disproportionately those who cannot offer much resistance. You don't see big burly guys getting mugged very often.

 

So the US has about five times the population of the UK, but over 30 times the amount of gun crimes. That sucks

 

It does suck, it is sad really.

There will always be gun crime, I think that the gun crime in the UK is too high when you consider that we have 'strict' gun control. bringing back to my earlier argument, security, police or innocent civillian, you never know when youll be faced with a gun.

the guy looking for his next fix may not be able to afford a gun, he robs a store armed with a plank of wood.

as Triactus said, I'd say its more likely anyone prepared to take a rap on an armed robbery charge in the US will more likely pick a target worth the risk.

 

Most robberies in the US are committed with a firearm though. As for targets being "worth the risk," if that is meant to always indicate a large take, then that conclusion is false, as day-to-day there are far more low-end robberies (convenience stores, gas stations) than high-end robberies (banks, jewelry stores).

Uncle Joe's corner store in the inner city is not going to enjoy a large and swift police response to a holdup, so the chance of getting caught is greatly reduced, and the chance of getting shot is at worst 'unknown,' whereas the downtown MegaBank with armed security carries with it the serious risk of getting shot by the security guard and/or getting hunted down by a lot of cops in very short order if you do get away. Conclusion - corner store for the win.

 

190,514 of the above were robberies committed with a firearm... Im willing to bet that a whole lot more robberies were committed in the US in a year

corner store for a small take plus image on CCTV splattered across the nation's most wanted.

 

To be fair, I've never seen someone who robbed a corner store, or gas station, or other small business on America's Most Wanted list. OTOH, if you rob a bank, that's a federal crime, and you WILL end up on the list.

 

by most wanted, I meant those programs to help catch crooks, I thought thats what is was called in the US, its called crime stoppers in the UK

 

They are usually connected with the local networks in the US, depending on if the location is city or rural. But we do have the famous show "America's Most Wanted", which is usually referencing people on the FBI's Most Wanted list, not local thugs robbing Mom & Pop stores.

 

Yeah, I would surmise that there isn't a bank in the US that doesn't have CCTV cameras, but convenience store coverage would be spotty at best. And as long as you don't kill anybody, the likely response to the latter hold-up (in the inner-city, over-taxed local police department scenario) would be the cops coming out eventually to take a report and tell you "we'll let you know if anything comes up." The take may be small, but the risk was commensurate and the offender lives to offend another day. Unlike the bank with the armed guard.

As to the stats, not sure where you got them from (and I've lost track of what we're debating in this off-shoot in the first place ), but they sound fairly accurate. My state's stats for 2006 are 14,142 robberies reported, 7,003 by firearms, 750 by knives, 1,289 by other dangerous weapons, and 5,100 by 'strongarm,' which could mean either forced without a weapon like you mentioned earlier or no visible weapon but the threat of one stated or implied. (That figure is surprisingly high, I must admit.)

My state probably has a rather higher than average crime rate, so while extrapolating from that data would mean 350,000 firearms robberies nationwide in the US, 190,500 sounds reasonable since many/most states probably don't match the figures for mine. So roughly half of all robberies were known to be committed with firearms, while another roughly 40% are 'strongarm' and may have involved the threat of firearms either stated or implied. That accounts for roughly 90%.

 

I'm not missing the point at all. What you are saying is simply not true. A stolen gun is only an illegal weapon until it is returned to its owner. A smuggled-in weapon is almost always going to be illegal, but illegally imported weapons are actually the exception rather than the rule. Even in the UK*. An illegal weapon legally sold by its owner** to a felon on the unregulated secondary market was a legal weapon until the felon bought it. An legal weapon legally sold on the secondary market to a felon who then sells it at a profit to a non-felon starts out illegal, is illegal while the felon holds it, and becomes legal again when the non-felon buys it.

* Back in 2006, it was determined that something in the area of 75% of illegal firearms used by criminals in the UK were actually replica and imitation guns imported -- legally -- from the continent. After their import, these weapons were converted in-country. It isn't even accurate to say these replica firearms were "smuggled in," since the the sale and importation of replica firearms wasn't actually banned in the UK until October of 2007, well after this little Pandora's box was opened.

** Legal only because private owners in states where the secondary market is unregulated are not under any obligation to perform background checks when making a private sale. In other words, the seller didn't break the law -- the buyer did.

 

Except that, in the UK, if the non-felon buyer doesn't have all the licenses and permissions, the gun is still illegal. And that's my (and Shoshino's) point that you seem to have missed. Shoshino said that guns aren't that hard to get in the UK. You then cited the laws and restrictions that make legal guns hard to get, but Shoshino wasn't (just) talking about legal guns. He was talking about illegal guns. Likewise with your registered gun statistics. There may be very few registered guns in the UK, but if there are a lot of unregistered guns, those official numbers are useless. The point you seem to have missed is that all your arguements only apply to legal guns, but the discussion was about illegal guns.

And, again, no one but you is making any comparisons to the US.

 

What does any of this have to do with tasers and/or using them on criminals?

 

Umm... the fact that we're not arming security guards with guns to shoot them with bullets instead? I don't know.

 

Yeah, it's been fun to see the thread completely derail..

 

I said that security is about brains rather then being armed, drew said that guns in the US are too frequent to have unarmed security.

It has since been said that US security often arent armed.... which I think kinda supports my view on security being about brains.

 

NOG, you got so much wrong here I don't even no where to begin. Like the US, the UK does not maintain a firearms registry. The UK has no database that automatically accounts for all legally held weapons held within its borders because the UK does not maintain a firearms registry. Since the UK has no firearms registry, the UK is forced to count their guns the same way we do -- doing the best they can to extrapolate a figure from the various available data streams, accounting as best they can for both legal and illegal weapons -- just like we do. It isn't exact, it isn't pretty, and their methodology is impossibly complicated, but the US and UK both make every effort to account for both legally and illegally held weapons when reporting the total number of weapons within their borders.

If you wish to argue that the methodologies that both the US and UK are forced to employ in trying to arrive at an accurate count of the total number of firearms held within their borders employ too much fuzzy math for your liking, knock yourself out -- but for the love of God stop acting like the UK and the US have some sort of database they can look to for a quick answer regarding all of the legally held weapons within their borders. No such database exists, since neither nation maintains a firearms registry. Did you even read my last post?

 

Sing it with me now!:

"L" is for the way you, . . . Look at me . . .

"O" Cause you're the only one that I can see,

"V" is very very VOLTAGE OH GOD THE PAIN

What an idiot. He musta been stoned or extremely horny. For those for whom the link doesn't work, I'll spoiler it here:

Spoiler

U.S. cop tases man in midst of lawn sex

By QMI Agency

A Thurston County, Wash., deputy Tasered a man twice after catching him having sex on a front lawn, reports the News Tribune.

According to the newspaper, a police deputy responded to a complaint about loud music at about 2 a.m., when he came across a couple having sex on the lawn.

The couple, who were described as highly intoxicated, scrambled for their clothes. The woman screamed and ran away, and the man - 21-year-old Patrick Bergin - reportedly approached the deputy, ignoring his warnings to sit down and provide identification.

The deputy shot him with a Taser, but that didn't stop this victim of coitus interruptus. According to police, Bergin ripped the Taser barbs from his chest, and kept coming towards the cop.

So the deputy shot him again with the Taser, this time in the arm. Bergin was subdued and arrested. He faces a charge of third-degree assault.

James Chamberlain, Thurston County's chief criminal deputy, told the News Tribune that it's very unusual for someone to be able to rip off the barbs from a Taser after being hit with the electrical jolt.

 

And thus, my liege, we know that sexual drive > voltage. Up the amps next time and watch'em fry.