It leaves me thinking that the people who set up and run the place are not entirely rational.
]]>I doubt whether the Gun Fundementalists of the US of A would hold to that view, but here is a news report from persons from outside of the US of A. It's a news report from what is popularly supposed here in the U.K. to be a rather Right Wing - but pop with Upper Middle Class British Readers - paper The Torygraph - I may have miss- spelled that...
" ... Kaylin was very excited when she unwrapped her fourth birthday present: a ·44 Magnum rifle. “You can go hunting with Daddy now,” her father said. This was one of the tales from Kids and Guns (Channel 4) that had more to do with paternal ambition than with the fascination of children in America for firearms.
Kaylin’s father had been a US soldier and lost both legs and one arm. We saw him on a wheelchair with caterpillar tracks, accompanying his daughter in the woods. But his ambition for her to shoot a boar was frustrated by her first attempt to fire the rifle, which kicked back and sent her into a flood of tears at the noise and the blow to her chin. "
Now, I've just had a stray - and doubtless ever so British Middle Class - thought? How many of these kids at the Home on The Range type fireing ranges are very small persons of Colour and how many are whiteish shade of pale kids who are being taught to be Really, REALLY, afraid of Persons of the Black and Hispanic kind?
Here in the U.K. private ownership, and Kids training in firearms, was severly restricted after ..well feed into Google for " The Dunblane school massacre " ..
' On the morning of Wednesday 13 March, 1996, a gunman armed with four legally-held guns: two semi-automatic pistols and two Smith and Wesson revolvers, with 743 rounds of ammunition, entered a primary school in Dunblane, a small close-knit Scottish town. He proceeded into the gymnasium, where he committed Britain's worst modern gun-related massacre. It was reported at the time that the gunman had intended to arrive at Dunblane Primary School during assembly. However, this plan was thwarted when he was held up in traffic on the icy roads. ' and also for
" A man shoots 14 people dead in the Berkshire town of Hungerford. ... Ryan's victims included his mother. Hungerford rocked by gunman massacre ..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/19/newsid_2534000/2534669.stm
We have had shooting spree events in the U.K. since then but those two events did have a huge inpact on fire arms ownersip in the U.K.
Note that " The Dunblane school massacre " took place in Scotland but had its impact in Law across the entire U.K.
]]>" Moat, who had recently been released from Durham Prison, shot the three with a sawn-off shotgun, two days after his release. After six days on the run, Moat was recognised by police and contained in the open, leading to a standoff. After nearly six hours of negotiation, Moat shot himself in the early hours of the following morning, and was later pronounced dead at Newcastle General Hospital. The operation took place across the entire Northumbria Police area, which covers both the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear and the county of Northumberland."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Northumbria_Police_manhunt
Yes, we do have gang related 'drive by ' and similar type events that involve self loading pistols and semi autmatic weapons but they are quite incredibly rare in the U.K.... outside of Irish Terorism events that is.
Oh, and lest anyone think that I'm playing it down for the benefit of our Colonial Kinfolk in the US of A ? I was once shot in a drive by shooting outside of a pub and not very far away from where I live.
]]>Perhaps introducing a differentiation between 'gendarmerie' and 'police' muddies the water a little, especially as these terms vary in meaning from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Nation states don't decide suddenly one day that we'll police in this style or that style, these things emerge from a stew of different historical and cultural factors.
I do however, think that nations get police forces that reflect their culture. As such Peel's principles actually reflect an inherently British sensibility, but even without them being articulated you'd still see the same sort of policing style in England. I also think that if you tried to graft these onto the police of another culture, like the US, you'd fail.
Neither, I'd suggest, is the attitude of gendarmes one of being a soldier at war, it's more along the lines of "we're here to keep order, not to fetch your damn cat out of a tree" and if you doubt this try asking a gendarme for directions in Paris. That's a long, long way from the thinking that you're at war with the civil population.
The Ferguson police are not a military gendarmerie, despite all their pretensions. They're run by city hall not the central government, they do the local policing, they're not selected along military lines, nor trained to perform military roles like say the Carabinieri.
So I disagree with your thesis. Trigger happy, racist and unrepresentative swill they may well be, but those guys in Ferguson are still police. That they don't stack up against Peelian principles reflects the difference in national cultures rather than a difference in role or nomenclature.
]]>Now, you might think that this was just overreaction by the police, except for the fact that the 'open carry crowd' has been holding events in various stores (Wal Mart, Target, etc.). No white person was shot in those situations.
]]>for a write-up.
]]>Eugh.
Please read this one. The flip side of all that state data-collection. What "they" don't want people to find out.
]]>I've read the report on Rotherham, and it's grim stuff.
One bit of context: pimping in the UK seems to have a long association with the different "criminal outsider" groups, which is not quite the same as immigrants.
One thing I remember is that South Yorkshire Police were the subject of a program in the Troubleshooter TV series, and Sir John Harvey Jones identified a problem with the paperwork load and the flow of information. Back in the early Nineties his "why aren't you using computers" question seemed more useful than it might now.
It looks as though bad information flow was a part of the problem. Some of the reports from Ferguson suggest the same. But I am not sure how much of that is caused by corruption, and how much is just something that made it more likely. Some of the amounts of money talked about for Rotherham make bribes sound very possible, and once you have a pool of bribed Police Officers (or others) is any change in procedures going to hit obstacles?
In the UK we do now seem to have official admission of such things as "institutional racism". Rotherham looks to be as much as example of institutional sexism.
In the end, I can't believe it's just one place and just one Police force. And that's the scary part.
Ferguson and Rotherham have hit the headlines. Look more closely at the stories, and they don't look all that exceptional. The same things happen in other places.
]]>I'm thinking I should shut up for a while. We don't get the raving nut-jobs here, but I think we should give Charlie a chance to say yea or nay on the topics, particularly Rotherham.
I've maybe already said too much in a reply to you in another thread. I don't want the topic to spread any more.
]]>I have con crud and am too ill to blog effectively or moderate a civil discussion.
Never mind third-rail topics, Rotherham strays close to third, fourth, and fifth electrified rails: institutional police corruption, sexism, racism (the term "political correctness" is being bandied around as a dog whistle here) ... it's messy.
It's part of a much bigger picture -- the exploitation and sexual abuse of young women -- that's emerging society-wide. And I'm more interested in the big picture than this one particular sad and disgusting local scandal.
Yuk.
Scary stuff.
]]>I agree strongly with your point 3.
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