Gun Crime

A few facts and figures to start off with:
According to the Crime in England and Wales 2003-2004 Report

There were 81 deaths involving firearms in England and Wales.

That's about 0.135 deaths involving firearms per 100,000 people (unless my figures for population are wrong, around 60 million people in Britain?)

In America there were 9416 gun murders, 67% of all murders. (You do not know the meaning of the word "unhelpful" until you have tried to get statistics out of the U.S. Government. Interestingly, they were more keen to give me the percentage of violent crime committed by black people than they were to give me the above figure).

Assuming that there were around 295 million people in America, there are about 3.1 gun deaths involving firearms per 100,000 people.

Therefore I can conclude, fairly safely, that there is a higher gun murder rate in the USA than in England and Wales.

I would try and find out how many of these were committed with legal firearms, but I think I might be here till Christmas 2010 trying to get the U.S. Governemnt to tell me.

Another interesting site told me that:

There were 506.1 (to one decimal place) violent crimes per 100,000 people in the U.S.A. in 2000.

The same site also told me that, in the catagories of sexual offences and robbery, there were many more cases per 100,000 people in America than in England and Wales. The anomaly was "Violence against the person", which was greater in England and Wales.


It is clear from this that legalised gun ownership does not lead to greater security from shootings, rape or robbery. I am not saying that the evidence supports my theory that gun control lessens these things, but clearly, something is wrong.The arguments put forward by those in favour of legalised gun ownership (namely, the American Right-Wing), are that it protects you from these things and if you make firearms illegal, rape, murder etc. will become more common as "people cannot defend themselves". This is not the case. People don't think about that sort of thing when committing a crime, and if they do, they take it into account. Poeple probably couldn't defend themselves either because the criminal might be carrying a firearm (they are legal you know) and would get the drop on their victim, or the victim might not be carrying a gun, or might not be able to reach it. When will the U.S. realise: giving people guns is a BAD IDEA.


(Regarding violence against the person, it's difficult to tell. I doubt that many of the cases involved firearms, and that the majority was common assault or attacks with knives, it's interesting though).

P.S. After the "Brady Bill" was passed in the U.S. (banning various firearms), the gun murder rate decreased. But then, as we have already seen, people in Government never learn.

The Washington Affair

I refuse to call it "Plamegate". Why does everyone insist on taking the name of someone or something involved and putting "gate" on the end? (Yes, I do know about Watergate, but still, why?).

For all those who don't know, Joe Wilson was sent by the U.S. Government to investigate claims from documents that fell into the hands of Italian Intelligence reporting the Saddam Hussein had tried to by Uranium Yellowcake from Niger (this was before the war in Iraq. We now know that the documents were forged, but not who they were forged by). Mr. Wilson found that these allegations were false, but the Bush Administration already had their hearts set on Iraq. They wouldn't listen, and became angry when Mr. Wilson would not tell them what they wanted to hear. A while later, Mrs. Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson's wife and a CIA undercover Agent, was outed by the press. It has now been found by the Special Prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, that her identity as a CIA agent was leaked by the Government. Those under investigation are Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Chief of Staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, one of Bush's Political Strategists and close advisors (he helped build the case for war in Iraq) and (possibly, and we can always hope) Vice-President Dick Cheney, the most powerful Vice-President in years.
Libby has been indicted already, but not for the leaking of Mrs. Plame's identity, but for lying about it (1 count of Obstruction of Justice, 2 counts of Perjury and 2 counts of making false statements). If he is found guilty, he could face 30 years in prison and fines of up to $1,250,000. Rove is still under investigation, but perhaps Fitzgerald is going higher, perhaps he has his sights on the very top of the administration. If the Bush Administration's luck is out, it is possible that the whole case for the war will be officially, once-and-for all discredited. I'm putting htis here mainly so nobody forgets what has happened (this is a premanent record), but also to help those that don't know what's going on.

Point of Law: International Law dictates that no nation may engage in an aggressive war. The first charge for the Nazis at Nuremburg was starting an aggressive war. So much for a "legal" war.

A ridiculous thing to say

I heard on the news that a bird had died of bird flu in quarantine in the UK. Well, that's it Ladies and Gentlemen, we are not safe, we're all going to be in great danger in the next few years, good luck.
But that's not all they said. They said that, because the bird was in quarantine it didn't die in the UK. OK, legally, they're right, quarantine is not the UK, but I don't give a damn about the legal technicallities of quarantine, that bird was on the piece of land commonly known as the UK, therefore it died in the UK. What are these people trying to say?

Bird Flu

The latest news is about 50,000 British people are going to die. However, I've also heard from a Government Minister that we're stockpiling the treatment for bird flu, so maybe we won't all die. I've also heard that the virus currently seen in Turkey and Romania can't travel from birds to humans, so what are we worrying about? And just what is the official story?
The other thing is why can't we stop it spreading? It can't be that hard to stop the transportation of chickens from one country to another. Or are we going to encounter the same problems that we did with foot and mouth or BSE? The good news is that we did eventually see these off. BSE took a while, and Turkey can look forward to not having the French buy their chickens, and Foot and Mouth, despite the Labour cock-up, was eventually sorted.

So, apparently we're going to get this virus, or not.

But didn't we think that we were all going to get Ebola not so long ago?

Mufti Day

Today was Jeans fo Genes Day (a charity event). Now, usually this entails the entire population of the College being allowed to wear their own clothes (that's what Mufti means). Only this year, it was different. While JAGS got to wear what they wanted, we could only wear jeans, but had to keep the rest of our iuniform on (shirt, tie, blazer).

1. What the hell is the point? Not of this, but of Mufti day in general? No, I'm serious. Why do we want to do this? It's not that i don't like my clothes, it just seems a little bit pointless. Any ideas?

2. The Boycott. We didn't like this new rule. Therefore a boycott was organised. OK, I say organised, I mean that lots of people all over the school thought it would be a good idea not to do this so the administration don't try this again (stop it before it starts). As a result, only a few people actually wore jeans, and the College got a fraction of the money it usually does. The College doesn't like this. The College wants to look charitable. The logic was that if we make the College look uncharitable, it will let us go back to wearing our own clothes because otherwise it won't look charitable.
All well and good? I'm not sure. While I was one of the advocats of this boycott, I now feel bad for having encouraged peopel not to pay money to a charity purely for selfish (well, not for myself, but for the community, I couldn't care less) reasons. Did I do the right thing, or should I make a donation directly to the charity to make up for it?