Tasing a ten year old... Wow!

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I completely agree T2. Both were stupid.

 

If the Phils were so upset about the tasing, why didn't they ask the officers to not use tasers? I have to imagine Phillies management were aware that cops were carrying tasers, and therefore would conclude that they would use them if the situation merited such. (Not only for some kid running out on the field but some druken fan who started a fight.)

One thing I agree with is this: The kid told his father prior to doing it that it would be a once in a lifetime experience. It was, even if it wasn't quite the way he imagined it.

 

Aldeth, the scenario was never in the mix as nobody was ever Tased for running onto the field. The idea of them tasing someone was probably never even brought up. Once it happened though, they pulled the cops/tasers off the field. I wonder why?

As for the kid, your'e right, he will never forget this one. But I bet if he thought their was even the remotest chance of getting tased, he wouldn't of ran out there. Agreed?

 

Not always Blades ... people are willing to do some pretty stupid things for their 15 minutes of fame.

 

Okay, okay, enough. You two are brow-beating me down worse than the wife ever could.... plus I'm too damn stubborn to back down.

 

Sure. That doesn't change the fact that the UK has .00102 guns per 100 people and the US has 61, nor does it change the fact that it is harder to get a firearm in the UK. I can go to Wal-Mart and buy a shotgun right now. You'll have to get a firearms certificate first. You'll have to submit to a background check (which isn't very different from here) as well as giving the police access to your medical records (!) and the name and number of your GP. You'll also have to demonstrate a legitimate use for your gun, like membership in a shooting club or pest control. You aren't even done after that, since the police will also visit your house to make sure that your house is secured and that you have a gun cabinet firmly mounted to a wall that meets the the accepted British standard (BS7558:1992). I can buy a gun right now. No one will visit my house, no one will ask for the name and number of my employer, and I won't have to find "...a Member of Parliament, Justice of the Peace, minister of religion, doctor, lawyer, established civil servant, bank officer, or person of similar standing" to serve as a counter signatory on my behalf.

You have conceded yourself that unarmed security will have little recourse against an armed assailant. Given the fact that the US has 60,000 times as many guns per capita as the UK*, you should probably concede that US security officers are also far more likely to be put in such a situation.

* Rounded up. 59,804 times would be more exact.

 

I agree that if that were the case, then Tasers are an excellent means of keeping fans off the field. Bring the cops back!

 

But, there not. The next night, another idiot ran onto the field. Though, I think if they tased him as well, you wouldn't see anyone else do it, that's for sure. Nobody wants to get tased. Well, almost nobody.

 

There's plenty of armed robbery in the UK, a post ofice close to me was recently held up at gun point. Im not arguing that gun crime isnt prevalant in the US, but I also believe that armed security inspire gun crime, in that fact, you wouldnt try to hold up a store which has armed security without a gun.

As I also said in my post, if a person is committed to a killing, whether youre armed or not they have that power.
I wonder how many security officers have been shot by a crook who had no intention of firing his weapon, simply because they reached for their gun.

 

Shoshino, you still fail to account for the availability gap between the US and the UK. Our criminals don't carry guns because of armed security. In fact, most security officers in the US do not carry guns. Easily concealed handguns are all but banned in the UK, but I can go buy one at Wal-Mart right now in many states. In the states that have instituted waiting periods for handguns, I can still buy one in the unregulated secondary market without a waiting period. Our criminals carry guns, usually handguns, because they are inexpensive, available, concealable, and they increase their chances of success -- and where the causal relationship is concerned, you have the tail wagging the dog. We don't have 61 guns per 100 people because our police officers (and some of our security) are more well armed than yours are. Rather, our police and security personnel tend to be more well armed because the American people tend to be more well armed.

 

According to Hollywood it happens every day. My guess is in reality it doesn't happen so often. In general a crook who shoots a security officer is going to shoot him whether of not the guard reaches for a gun (any crook willing to commit armed robbery when armed security guards are present is typically very willing to kill).

 

Nowadays many criminals don't apply particularly judicial standards for using firearms or commiting other acts of violence. It is, for example, not uncommon to be murdered as an afterthought to a mugging or robbery. So the notion that a robber would engage an armed security guard in a gunfight only because he was provoked is a bit suspect. He may just as easily shoot an unarmed security guard, or shoot an armed security guard who was not threatening him.

If they're at all rational though, they will likely avoid an armed guard scenario altogether and go for more favorable odds. (e.g., case the intended robbery location, observe the armed guard, choose a different location where the chance of significant resistance is less.) Non-judicial does not necessarily presuppose being irrational. Supposedly, one of the advantages of armed uniformed guards (weapons unconcealed) is just this - to be a deterrent against crime.

 

It's a deterrent against non-violent crime, as the perp would be out-gunned so to say. Or you could look at it as a facilitator for violent crime, as it can be a cause for the perp to think he needs a gun in order to pull off his criminal activity.

 

Again, Drew, you're only counting legal guns and means of obtaining them, when the whole issue is illegal guns and means of obtaining them. I think it's safe to say that the gangsters with guns in the UK didn't get "...a Member of Parliament, Justice of the Peace, minister of religion, doctor, lawyer, established civil servant, bank officer, or person of similar standing" to serve as a counter signatory on anything.

Any smart crook, maybe. In reality, I'm fairly convinced that most crooks, especially most that commit violent crimes, aren't really thinking things through to that degree. Nor, usually, do they care anything for anyone's lives but their own, aremed, threatening, or otherwise.

 

Well, most robberies (as opposed to, say, burglaries) are committed with some type of weapon to enforce compliance in the first place. You wouldn't do very well demanding money from the 7-11 without one (or at least the threat of one). So the offender, if he presumes to be a successful hold-up man, probably already has a gun, or at least a knife. He's not then likely to case a holdup location, see an armed guard, and say to himself "I can take him" or "I need to outgun him" unless the payoff is really high, like a bank, because chances are very high that he himself will be injured. Instead, he's more likely to figure that he needs to go somewhere where there is no armed guard. So in that sense, yes, armed guards can deter violent crime (assuming that a hold-up where no one gets shot is still considered a violent crime).

People of the typical violent crime mentality aren't looking for a challenge; they're looking for an easy mark. Any problem with their target means possible delays, possible injuries, and a greater likelihood of capture, and they do not want any of those things.

 

Way to completely ignore my point, NOG. We have more trouble with illegal weapons than the UK precisely because of how much easier it is to legally procure a firearm in the US. After all, what really differentiates a legal weapon from an illegal one, anyway? If you think it has something to do with the weapon itself, you're right -- but only in a tiny percentage of cases. Usually, an illegal weapon is just an otherwise legal weapon held by someone who is not allowed to have it. My over/under rifle shotgun (yes, I own a long-arm) is legal because I'm allowed to have it. I never bought it and it's never been registered. My grandfather "found" it in Germany during WW2 (although after learning how, when and where he acquired it, I think "stole" would be more apt), and I recently inherited it. Even though is has neither been bought nor sold, registered or even declared at customs, it is still a legal weapon because I'm not required to register rifles, shotguns, or handguns in the state of Iowa. The weapon has no features limited by federal, state or local gun legislation -- and I have no criminal record. If I commit a felony, though, that rifle magically transforms from a legally owned (if tasteless*) heirloom into an illegal weapon. The vast majority of illegal firearms -- in both the US and the UK -- were initially purchased legally and in-country. If it were somehow possible to include a truly accurate count of illegally procured weapons in the total**, the gulf between the US and the UK, if it changed at all, is more likely to widen than shrink.

* Tasteless not because it's a gun, but because my grandfather stole it from some unfortunate (and quite probably dead) family's house during WWII.

** ...and you are wrong in asserting that the US and the UK fail to account for illegally held weapons. Neither the US nor the UK maintain a firearms registry (Canada does, but who cares about Canada? ), so determining the total amount of guns found in either country is hardly an exact science. Needless to say, the methodology used for obtaining such a count is ....complicated, and we're straying far from topic. The bottom line is that both the US and UK aim to count legal and illegal weapons when determining the total number of firearms found within their borders. How could they not? There's no real way to differentiate between them in most cases.

 

Actually, I'd argue the thing that most easily differentiates a legal gun from an illegal gun is how it's aquired, and that's the point I think you're missing. Again, I'm not trying to compare anything to the US, but Shoshino is trying to say that the streets of the UK are far from clean of firearms, that they're not that hard to aquire, and you keep talking about the legal hurtles and the legal availability. I think Shoshino's whole point was that the illegal availability is still rather high, regardless of the laws.

Shoshino, feel free to correct me if that wasn't what you were saying.

 

Thats exactly what Im saying, where did the sawn off shot gun and 2 hand guns come from which were used to rob the local post office? they werent bought legally in this country, the instant they entered this country they became illegal firearms - if the police knew about these guns, they would have removed them from the streets, but these 3 guns were part of an impossible statistic, the government doesnt know how many guns are in the UK.

If the post office had armed security what are the odds that someone would have been shot? If I were an armed robber, I know I would be alot more nervous going into a situation where I knew I would face armed security, so much so that my trigger finger may be very edgy to any movements.

 

But Drew's point is that in the US, you wouldn't have to bring them in from another country - you can legally purchase that stuff in the US. I don't even understand why this is even being argued - in the US, any town of meaningful size has a place you can go to purchase a hand gun (which is the type of firearm used in most violent crimes). In the UK, you can pretty easily buy a hunting rifle, but you'll find it a lot harder to get a hand gun. The nation the allows higher accessibility of firearms is the nation that it's easier to get a gun. As Drew points out, most of illegal firearms in circulation were purchased through completely legal means.

 

The UK is considerably smaller then the US, its a 4 hour trip from my house to Europe thats from Wales, from London its considerably less, but most people looking to get a gun dont go to Europe for that reason, dealers do the smuggling, ask around the pubs, someone will know where to get a gun, Guns are smuggled in via the Swansea - Cork ferry from Ireland.

As critics of the government voiced concerns "the British government is more concerned tackling cigarette smuggling than gun smuggling."
Gun crime in the UK is on the rise, in 2008 there were 10,182 firearms incidents reported in England and Wales thats on average 28 offences a day, in a small country with a population of 61.4 million. as opposed to the US's population of 309.3 million had 385,178 gun crimes thats 1055 a day.

Obviously the US is going to have worse guncrime then the UK, guns as you say are legal, but the UK's gun crime statistics arent good either, in a country where guns are illegal.