(UK) Horden shootings: killer held six gun licences

[iverglas]

4. well, I'll say exactly what I said in the thread

where you brought this tale, when I was not aware that there was a separate thread about it. You may continue that discussion here.


If we are going to use one example to proclaim a failed system, why not another example to proclaim a different system failed?

Ah, I love your arithmetic.

You have one example of the system failing in the UK.

I'm sure you don't want me to start totting up examples of people in legal possession of firearms in the US annihilating their families ... or coworkers, or fellow students, or complete strangers ... or doing any of the myriad other harmful things people in legal possession of firearms (or who got their firearms from people in legal possession of firearms) do with them in the US.

http://www.citizensreportuk.org/reports/murders-fatal-violence-uk.html

Select weapon=gun and you get 31 firearm homicides in England/Wales in 2011, 2 of them "policing" related, so that leaves 29. At a roughly 6:1 ratio, that would be equivalent to 174 firearm homicides in the US, where there have actually been about 10,000 annually in recent years.

Whose system works better to reduce the risk of homicide by firearm?

There isn't a system in the history of the world that could not be improved. The system in question in the UK looks like it needs some improvements, and the article you cite mentions some.

May I point out, again, that I consistently refer and have referred in this thread to reducing the risk of harm. I don't know by what measure one could proclaim a system under which there were 29 firearm homicides in a year in the population of England/Wales "failed", unless one were applying the wholly unreasonable standard of perfection.

That sytem failed to prevent the instance of serious harm to which you refer. Most likely, the large majority of the other firearm homicides were committed with firearms possessed unlawfully. If they originated with lawful owners within the UK, then the system failed, because someone was able to subvert it - and of course it simply isn't possible to prevent someone from breaking the law if they have the means to break it, i.e. legal possession of a firearm.

Careful screening of those who are permitted to possess firearms legally, so that they are genuinely "law-abiding", is the best way of ensuring that illegal transfers will not happen, of course. My confident guess is that very few if any firearms used in crime in the UK were illegally transferred, voluntarily, by lawful owners, let alone acquired through "legal" channels (by straw purchase, by ineligible purchasers who evaded detection, etc., let alone by unmonitored transfer) as happens all the time in the US.