Hi LF,

Always enjoy your articles and this week piece was not exception, although on this occasion I was a little surprised at how some of the facts were presented. Initially I thought "keep your mouth shut Jamie, you are just being a little doe eyed and nationalistic", and generally us Brits are a little understated about our country and rarely jingoistic; with the obvious exception of our sometime all too enthusiastic national sports fans.

You know crime levels in this country are getting out of hand and government after government that come in make vague promises of getting tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime; all the usual blah. Gun crime in particular is way out of hand, but thank fully due to the difficulty in obtaining firearms and the strict licensing of weapons for sporting purposes, it is no way near the levels that it could be. Latest statistics reckon there are some 300,000 illegal firearms in the country. Of these a percentage will be ?trophies? soldiers have picked up from the various conflicts we get involved in. Some are ?back alley? re-commissioned replicas or built from scratch weapons, which seems to be a booming cottage industry which recent legislation should see a decline in. The majority will be weapons which have been smuggled into the country through our all too porous borders with Europe.

As we all know newspapers are out to sell and sensational stories sell best. If you want to one can always find data to substantiate a certain viewpoint and paint a particular picture, it is where these ?facts? come from which count for most. For example it is in the interest of government departments to try and make the garden look rosier and the British Crime Survey [url=http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hosb1105.pdf:1b89e]http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hosb1105.pdf[/url:1b89e] which is the report on recorded crime in the UK, states that in 2003 there were 35,000 offences of possession of a weapon and in 2004 this figure was up by some 800 offences to over 35,500 and increase of almost 10% year on year. Now that is shocking weapon offences up 10% year on year, would make a great headline. Because of the numbers, the increase year on year can look huge and percentages of 53% and 40% appear massive and make great headlines but do not show the facts. Coupled with data sourced elsewhere and thrown into the mix, well, the picture is yours to paint. And notice the offence recorded is possession of a weapon. This can include knives, baseball bats or any other item used aggressively. The biggest concern I have about living in London is the number of youths who walk around with knives; I myself have had a knife pulled on me twice over the last 10 years, by teenagers, who seem to lack the understanding of the consequence for their actions.

I enjoy hunting and regularly wish we had similar gun laws to the US, however this is tainted by my experience serving my country and seeing up close what a single round can do. I have a theory that us Brits are so reserved because we a violent group of people and if we do not keep a lid on things, they get out of hand. I wonder how things would escalate if weapons were more readily available in the UK, ifs and ands.

There, I got it off my chest and feel better for it.

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JME
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