EPTNo. It's your reality I fear. Fortunately in my reality it's a fair bit harder to kill random strangers because as a society we decided that tools which serve only to end human lives prematurely weren't very constructive.
Knife crime and social dysfunction in Britain - Page 4
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KwarK
United States42821 Posts
No. It's your reality I fear. Fortunately in my reality it's a fair bit harder to kill random strangers because as a society we decided that tools which serve only to end human lives prematurely weren't very constructive. | ||
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caution.slip
United States775 Posts
the wiki article doesn't explain it as well as Malcolm Gladwell does in his book "The Tipping Point" Basically it says the although nuture and nature plays a role in our psychology (therefore our intent or willingness to commit crimes) what really affects our behavior is our environment. For further reference look up The Stanford Prison Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment Basically they took normal people with no history of violence or malice but in the situation that they were in they filled those roles and did so rather well. Following another experience by princeton http://www.rasmusen.org/w/04.02.01a.htm the key line being the subjects were told either that they were already late for the talk and had to hurry, that they had just enough time to get to the talk, or that they had a few extra minutes......Whether the experimenter instructed the subjects to hurry or not, however, mattered a great deal. Subjects in a hurry were far less likely to stop and provide assistance than the other subjects. What this shows is that people are heavily affected by context and not by upbringing or philosophy. So my solution to britain's crime problem is to remove all context of crime, be it graffiti, pickpockets, peddlers, vandalism, littering, whatever | ||
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Hypnosis
United States2061 Posts
Im from the US, and i think it would benefit us too. edit: and no im not rich, lower middle class (60k/year for whole family). | ||
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0xDEADBEEF
Germany1235 Posts
- parents often aren't there for children/teens - media influence: gangsta rappers are idols, stupidity is cool, education is gay, life is only about money, drugs, violence and bitches - bad friends, and parents don't care - sit too much in front of TV or comp games -> less sense for social life, less respect etc. - almost no discipline, they don't get stuff done and just hang around. No real goal in life - stupidity and apathy are increasing -> less participation at elections, loss of interest in democracy and politics in general Same development in many countries atm. | ||
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Funchucks
Canada2113 Posts
On July 08 2008 12:44 Kwark wrote: No. It's your reality I fear. Fortunately in my reality it's a fair bit harder to kill random strangers because as a society we decided that tools which serve only to end human lives prematurely weren't very constructive. With a gun, or a knife, or a car, or a brick, if someone just randomly decides to kill you, they will probably succeed. Here in Canada, it may be a crime for an ordinary citizen to carry a loaded pistol on his person outside of a gun range, but anyone who takes a short course can buy whatever pistol they like. And of course, pistols are easy to conceal. Anyone could be carrying one at any time, if they felt like it, and could probably go their whole lives without getting caught unless they decided to shoot someone. Canada's murder rate is nearly identical to the UK's. My "reality" isn't any more frightening than yours. On the other hand, the rate of non-firearm murder in the USA is considerably higher than the UK's total murder rate. (and yes, I mean "rate", as in murders per 100,000) It's a matter of culture more than anything else. Some groups of people in some areas of the USA have very violent cultures. There are people like that in the UK, too, and since they can't easily get guns, they often just carry knives and stab each other, but they aren't as large a proportion of the population as in the USA, so the statistics aren't as high. I think a case could be made that the guns make the USA much safer and more orderly. Criminals are constantly in fear of being shot by a victim. I do believe there is much more violent culture in the USA, however, there is more crime in every category, including violent crimes other than murder or rape, in the UK than there is the USA. In the UK, young, strong criminals have very little reason to fear for their lives, as long as they pick weak victims. If you look at the Rwanda massacre, about a million people, about one in seven of the total population, were hacked to death with machetes. That's society: you live among people, mixing with them defenselessly, and if they decide to just kill you, you die. There are lots of ways to do it. They can run up and stab you. They can run you over with a car. They can make a simple but powerful bomb with ordinary household materials. They can just grab you from behind, throw you down, and kick you to death. If you believe that people can't just kill you whenever they decide, you're living in a dream world. It is just part of the reality of society. It is the basis of society: we stop worrying about defending ourselves from each other, we ignore the obvious threat we pose to each other, so we can all go about our business. You can face that like a man, and reason starting from the truth, or you can distort your logic and make yourself vulnerable in order to feel safe. | ||
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zachmorris
United States106 Posts
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Hypnosis
United States2061 Posts
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HeadBangaa
United States6512 Posts
On July 08 2008 12:44 Kwark wrote: No. It's your reality I fear. Fortunately in my reality it's a fair bit harder to kill random strangers because as a society we decided that tools which serve only to end human lives prematurely weren't very constructive. So you basically want more government to protect you from other individuals, based on a vague distrust. Totally reasonable... for me to poop on. | ||
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HamerD
United Kingdom1922 Posts
On July 08 2008 12:44 caution.slip wrote: What this shows is that people are heavily affected by context and not by upbringing or philosophy. So my solution to britain's crime problem is to remove all context of crime, be it graffiti, pickpockets, peddlers, vandalism, littering, whatever I would tend to agree with you here. Like I say in my OP (I think), no matter how good your parenting, a lot must be done to clear up peer pressure. But like I don't say, you are advocating literally cleaning up the neighbourhood? It's an interesting solution, but I'm not sure it's feasible. It's something that's done in some neighbourhoods in very rare initiatives. It definitely does help, but requires huge resources. Is it really a good idea to perhaps make even more community service sentences rather than prison time to get prisoners to clean up graffiti? Or much tougher laws to put pickpockects and peddlers away? Btw pickpockets really don't encourage violent crime. I think everyone has to accept that there will be opportunism crime forever. But we don't have to accept the level of violence and anger so many people and especially so many of the new generation have on streets. | ||
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HamerD
United Kingdom1922 Posts
On July 08 2008 13:16 Hypnosis wrote: I think it all comes down to values that are taught by your parents. For example, my parents being jewish and very anti-violence/pro peace (everyone is "pro peace") made a very strong impression on me. Sure I listen to scary music and like to play shooting games, and "raping" people on sc is fun too, but would i ever want to kill someone for the thrill of it? Would I ever want to just start fights on "da streets". No... why? because i have had education from a good school AND from my parents, which is where it all stems from. The problem is very slippery because how can we possibly erase bad impressions from kids with moronic parents? Once the ball starts rolling it is very hard to stop. I think we just need to look at education to save us all. Make education the major financial priority in society and great empires will be constructed and MAINTAINED. Sweep education aside and empires rise and fall.. Teachers need to be paid exponentially more, and funding needs to be increased 10 fold for schools everywhere. Good post. I totally agree with that solution. I disagree that it all comes down to the values taught by your parents, but agree that parents as role models are very very important. My dad is a lawyer. I can remember always watching the way he dealt with trouble causers or rude staff members at a shop, or any matter of issues. Then replicating his actions amongst friends to seem knowledgeable or at least experienced. I'm sure the same thing is done for kids of violent dads, and for kids who don't have a dad and rely on a gang leader with strong resolve and experience in the gang world. I have seen plenty of kids with great parents go completely off the track after having gone to a state school which is rife with violent culture and intimidation. I think making schools more of a priority is an excellent idea. More money into the teacher faculties similarly sounds like the way forward. Education is society's only way of really getting through to kids, and we need to make it count where there are so many parents who lack communication and parenting skills to do that job for society. The only problem is: what do you divert money from? | ||
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HamerD
United Kingdom1922 Posts
On July 08 2008 13:44 Funchucks wrote: With a gun, or a knife, or a car, or a brick, if someone just randomly decides to kill you, they will probably succeed. Believe me, this is completely wrong. There are situations all over the country where people try to kill people with even more than 1 stab wound and fail. It really is SO much harder to kill someone from a knife wound than a gunshot. Guns will always break the ribcage, break the skull, create more disturbance in areas they hit, possibly severing arteries. Fatal torso wounds are much higher in frequency from guns than from knives. If everyone were armed, there would be far more killing and potentially lawlessness. There is no way our country would allow undiplomatically qualified members of the public to carry guns on the streets. The thought blows my mind. You need to come here. Because I've been to Canada 4 times and I never felt more safe in my life. And I'm certain it's nothing to do with the weapons. Weapons don't make people safer. You touch on it in your post, I'm happy to see. The only times when street crime really gets near people having to defend their homes is in the case of Gary Newlove et al. He went outside his house to break up some youths causing trouble, and then when they refused they smacked him one, knocked him out cold and beat him to death. If he had pointed a gun at them, and then they responded by pointing 4 back, would the situation have resolved more peacefully? In Manchester, in the estates, and well in every big city's estates; there are huge battles every day. Sometimes up to 100 members on either side gang up to fight with weapons and fists. They capture each other, torture each other for information and spring ambushes on the other estates. I really don't like the idea of them all having pistols and uzis. It's interesting because what Americans have 'in the hood' is far less savage and violent (talking beatings and rudimentary weapon usage, not deaths) than what goes on in the mean streets of Glasgow or Manchester. That's actually just my guess. I think you really have to just come and observe the culture here. The problem we have is hate and division. I'm sure you have it all in USA too but, it definitely feels different. I think that if you gave people in England the capacity to do drive by's, it would make our murder figures shoot up through the roof. I think. I will never get to find out because there is no way our government would de-criminalize drugs, because the streets are definitely safer without them. And your point about anyone just trying to kill you in the streets doesn't help for much. If someone wants to kill you, then you have done something wrong and you're in trouble. If they are in a gang, I doubt a colt .45 is going to help you anyway. The second someone wields a pistol in most areas of London, the rapid response police cars will be there in a few minutes. And the police in England, although they usually only carry truncheons, become mobilised with submachine guns and sniper rifles VERY quickly, the second there could be a riot or disturbance involving violence towards innocent members of the public. It's theoretically impossible for the whole of the country to suddenly rise up and start attacking its fellow man. What you are doing by advocating gun ownership just for the purpose of defending yourself in that situation, is allowing irrational fear to dictate your policies. The police in England actually defend the innocent. It might be a difficult concept to grasp in America. They are bastards sometimes, often on power trips, but they can kick ass. Having the police as the only seriously armed visible organised force is rather useful for a society I believe. It's all speculation though. Though I get annoyed by people who say gun control laws have failed. No, they haven't failed. We have less deaths per capita than the USA by a country mile. We really do, it's staggering. After a brief look at some figures, I pulled out a stat of the overall USA homicide number to be around 15-20k a year. In England, it's almost always less than 1k. The gun crime deaths in USA are usually 2/3s of all deaths, however it's staggering to see that non-gun crime deaths in the USA are also disproportionately high compared to Britain. One might speculate that actually this is because of its god-awful, amoral healthcare. Regardless, though the UK has similar crime numbers, proportionally, to the USA, we have a lot less killing. And sir, that is because we don't all have mac 10s. | ||
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RowdierBob
Australia13029 Posts
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HamerD
United Kingdom1922 Posts
![[image loading]](http://teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/lolcat-annoyed.jpg) this cat successful conveys my appreciation for that cheap shot | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7890 Posts
The other day I've been attacked by two guys in the streets. They ran at me, they punched me a lot and then took everything I had => broken Biff. You know, I'm sorry, I don't want to be a patriotic idiot, but when I got robbed in France, people ask before punching. They hit if you resist. That's how it should be in civilized country. Here in England, they punch before robbing and if you resist, they stab. My opinion is that English society is incredibly individualistic, nihilistic and exists by and for profits only. Newspapers are amongst the worst in the world (read the Sun, you want to puck). Transports suck. Health services suck. Education sucks A LOT. London is a good place to live if you are a dollar, but the most awfull city I know if you are a normal person, even worse a student. When you are at the top of this over-capitalist society, I guess it's all right. You make a crap lot of money and you don't think further than that. But when you were born and have to live all your life in one of London's ghettos... well... you have large chances of not really understanding which place you have in this world and what you future should look like. Especially when you know that you parents are poor and you don't even have a chance of going in a decent school or university, which are obscenely expensive. Then comes teenagers gang-culture and criminality. Next step is the answer given by the society to this criminality. Which is: repression. Putting CCTV everywhere (you are recorded hundred times a day in London, which create an ambiance of constant suspicion), hardcore sentimentalistic crappy media coverage of the problem etc etc... nobody ever thought that MAYBE, something deeper had to be done with that. That's very British by the way: the criminal are the bad ones, everything else is perfect, and we, the good ones, are not responsible for anything. So well, the problem is, imo, that at a certain very advanced stage of capitalism, there is no place for humans anymore. So, fair enough, humans behave like animals. | ||
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evandi
United States266 Posts
Guns changed the balance of power from professional soldiers to average citizens. Artillery changed it back... but it is still fundamentally the case that guns are the easiest weapons to use and thus make a vulnerable woman who walks by herself the equal of Fedor Emelianenko. The way in which guns are fundamentally associated with civilization is that they make thugs and bullies powerless. They also make defense trump offense in that even if ten guys try to rob a house, one guy properly positioned could kill all of the ten robbers without suffering a scratch being hidden or under cover and knowing where they are while the robbers don't know where he is at first, and have to at some point leave cover once a firefight erupts if they are going to make progress. Guns also make bystanders more powerful, in that the average weakling witnessing a crime can pull out a conceiled pistol and end a particular source of crime forever without being concerned about their own physical frailty. (the frailty they have because they don't lift weights all day and talk about their biceps.) One average person who doesn't waste tons of energy working out and supporting a bunch of normally worthless muscles can defend him/herself while excelling at other things. With knives, it is more about numbers and less about strategy. Women and men who perform quality jobs using their brain fair less well. With nothing but fists, its all about size. Most Women fail completely and every nerdy man has to start working out and avoiding "worthless pursuits" like Nuclear physics, Starcraft, etc... Take everything away that equalizes us and start worshiping huge ogres. Get ready to start practicing ****-sucking. | ||
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PobTheCad
Australia893 Posts
They don't produce enough things anymore , their debt as a % of GDP is higher than the USA and the resources in the North Sea are running out forcing them to become a net importer of energy. The standard of living in that country is going to drop quite substantially and i see unemployment being very high for the foreseeable future. | ||
Jibba
United States22883 Posts
On July 08 2008 13:44 Funchucks wrote: With a gun, or a knife, or a car, or a brick, if someone just randomly decides to kill you, they will probably succeed. Here in Canada, it may be a crime for an ordinary citizen to carry a loaded pistol on his person outside of a gun range, but anyone who takes a short course can buy whatever pistol they like. And of course, pistols are easy to conceal. Anyone could be carrying one at any time, if they felt like it, and could probably go their whole lives without getting caught unless they decided to shoot someone. Canada's murder rate is nearly identical to the UK's. My "reality" isn't any more frightening than yours. On the other hand, the rate of non-firearm murder in the USA is considerably higher than the UK's total murder rate. (and yes, I mean "rate", as in murders per 100,000) It's a matter of culture more than anything else. Some groups of people in some areas of the USA have very violent cultures. There are people like that in the UK, too, and since they can't easily get guns, they often just carry knives and stab each other, but they aren't as large a proportion of the population as in the USA, so the statistics aren't as high. I think a case could be made that the guns make the USA much safer and more orderly. Criminals are constantly in fear of being shot by a victim. I do believe there is much more violent culture in the USA, however, there is more crime in every category, including violent crimes other than murder or rape, in the UK than there is the USA. In the UK, young, strong criminals have very little reason to fear for their lives, as long as they pick weak victims. If you look at the Rwanda massacre, about a million people, about one in seven of the total population, were hacked to death with machetes. That's society: you live among people, mixing with them defenselessly, and if they decide to just kill you, you die. There are lots of ways to do it. They can run up and stab you. They can run you over with a car. They can make a simple but powerful bomb with ordinary household materials. They can just grab you from behind, throw you down, and kick you to death. If you believe that people can't just kill you whenever they decide, you're living in a dream world. It is just part of the reality of society. It is the basis of society: we stop worrying about defending ourselves from each other, we ignore the obvious threat we pose to each other, so we can all go about our business. You can face that like a man, and reason starting from the truth, or you can distort your logic and make yourself vulnerable in order to feel safe. How truthful is this website? I'm guessing it's associated with the NFA. The general notion from down here is that Canadian hand gun laws are much more strict and somewhat effective. | ||
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Jayson X
Switzerland2431 Posts
It's not about guns or knives it's about the whirl of violence that a part of the society build up and they threat it like everyday business to the point where it gets very very hard to step out of it. My tip: Dress so you can run anytime as fast as possible. And if you have no obligation to the place you're at just run. I've seen enough people who tried to act tough and then draw the short straw. | ||
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HighTimes
Taiwan342 Posts
It fits just perfectly  | ||
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white_box921
United Kingdom967 Posts
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