I can't comprehend this one...

[bookwyrm]

Re: I can't comprehend this one...

sigh.

CDNIC

Here in the US, if you are a teenage male intent on suicide you typically do it with a gun. Did the lack of access to guns drop the male suicide rate in Japan?

In response to my own question, I would suggest that the US and Japan are different cultures, and different cultures frequently have different responses to similar stimuli.

Yes, I looked at your article. At the time it was written Washington DC had a total ban on handguns, and, if you as a private citizen owned a long gun, you had to keep it unloaded. This different culture has reacted differently to the similar stimulus of banning guns.

Though an ever decreasing majority of our citizens are descended from immigrants from Europe, and Britain in particular, we are a different culture, as we are composed of those who rejected yours.

[Feba]

Re: I can't comprehend this one...

The carrying of knives in a public place and or an offensive weapon (which would include a tire iron) is against UK law and a prisonable offense. It is illegal to own a knife (with the exception of a kitchen knife) with a blade longer than 2" and illegal toc arry a flicknife in a public place. You also have to be 18 before you are allowed to purchase a kitchen knife or sharp bladed object.

Holy shit. I'm all for a bit more reasonable and sane gun control in the states, but you're just fucking insane, aren't you?

As for lower crime rates, of course you have lower crime rates. That's not an EFFECT of those laws, it's a CAUSE. You're obviously a nation of mostly pussies, at least to the extent where you pass so many laws and give up so much to make yourselves marginally safer. Pussies tend not to be murderers, mainly because even though they'd like to kill people, they're afraid of something bad happening to them.

I mean, seriously. You have to be 18 to buy kitchen knives? Seriously!

[Taskmage]

Re: I can't comprehend this one...

I'm still hung up on the tire iron personally. British gardens must look like rubbish with nobody allowed to carry dangerous items like hedgeclippers and weedwhackers in public.