It is disappointing to realise that ole Mother England has turned her back on a thousand years of democratic development and has settled for empty promises and cheap rhetoric. Where is Cromwell when you need him.

In East London… The world is larger than East London. So in the rest of the UK they hunt with sharpened sticks and rocks?

The problem with these groups is they’re trying to legislate their beliefs on a much larger group of people who don’t share their views and are doing nothing unlawful. Are you a drinker? What if they want to outlaw alcohol in the UK (look at our Prohibition movement and how that turned out). Are you a smoker? How about banning tobacco in the UK? Still all for it? (And BTW, don’t argue that those don’t harm people so it’s different. Cigarettes kill individuals and alcohol kills many people every year.)

Think about what rights YOU wouldn’t be willing to give up… they may be next.

That being said, it disgusts me how many people come on here and decry the “gun culture” as if it’s the accepted viewpoint for all civil people. You don’t like guns – don’t buy guns. Don’t let your kids play with them (but be prepared to remove all but the most innocuous video games from the house too!) If you love them, love them. But just because someone doesn’t like “the message” guns allegedly send gives them no right to deny anyone else from enjoying them.

As far as censorship, I agree with Benjamin Franklin (here paraphrased): “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.” Think long and hard before you start censoring things people!

Likewise, just like Nuclear weapons, if firearms could all be made to disappear, then you might get to zero GUN crime, but NOT zero violent crime. Violent criminals don’t obey the law and will always obtain a weapon of either choice or convenience to inflict their sadistic will onto others. This point I need anyone on the anti-gun side to concede before they can be taken seriously. With no other weapon except a gun, can a 91 year old grandfather in Florida defeat a 25 year old career criminal who is determined to kill and rob both he and his wife. If you don’t concede that point, your words are meaningless to those who believe and advocate firearms ownership. Would I prefer there was no such thing as a gun? Or a nuclear weapon? Well yes to the nukes, but then there would be no nuclear power… Same for guns, there would be no target shooting, a really fun sport, there would be no rifle or shotgun hunting, also a lot of fun. If you have never tried either of those, then you have no right to say all guns are bad.

Nigel’s citing of criticism of Lott’s work is flawed. The analysis and criticism both stem from early numbers in 1996. AND – they only look at GUN CRIME, not ALL VIOLENT CRIME. Let’s use the latest, shall we? In the 20 years since the trends in gun ownership and concealed carry began in 1986, violent crime has gone down in the USA while concealed carry has increased. All over the USA – except in DC and Chicago where handguns were banned, where they’ve enjoyed far above average violent crime rates – concealed carry and firearms ownership have increased while violent crime has decreased. The numbers in the UK for violent crime have been under-reported INTENTIONALLY to mislead the populace. Do a Google search on ‘violent crime in the UK under-reported’ story came out October 2008.

Now clearly I am on the side of firearms ownership, but not for the love of guns. I detest crime, and the criminals who commit them. I detest the taking of a life by a low-life. And I don’t like being told my rights can be infringed. BUT, if you don’t feel safe with a firearm around, I understand your apprehension. I have found the best way to overcome apprehension is to get to know better the source of your apprehension if possible.

Lastly, if you believe as I once did that the police will help, think again. In 95% of the cases, the police arrive to investigate a crime that has already occurred. The criminals are all gone and perhaps we can get the 11th commandment, thou shalt not get away with it, but perhaps not. In the USA many states have already given the police a ‘pass’ in that they are not obligated to protect you.

I enjoy shooting targets, and hunting with my son. I know guns are inherently dangerous and we practice safety drills often. I pray anyone who needs a gun will have one rather than the inevitable crime resulting from lack of a defensive firearm. And if you folks have ever had a knife held to your throat with no weapon or friends nearby, you might think differently about the need to defend yourself. A former NYC detective once told me that liberals are just one violent mugging away from becoming conservatives…

And yes on my iPhone are the Shotgun Free App, the Armory App, and the Ballistics FTE app. They are fun and the last one is useful too!

In In Australia, a year after strict new gun control laws took effect, homicides were up 3.2%; assaults were up 8.6%; armed-robberies increased 44%; and in the state of Victoria, homicides-with-firearms increased 300%.

There’s a lot of spin in this. A more reasonable analysis can be read here. If your argument in any way reflects Lott’s study, then his study is basically worthless. Given others’ analysis (see, for example, this review of Lott’s work), there is little substantive data backing up your claims. Let’s face it, appeals to percentage change are really just a way to hide the fact that the US has about three times the homicide rate per capita of Australia, Canada, and the UK.

Guns don’t kill people. People with guns kill people.

But I also came close to unsubscribing from this site’s feed. Tacking a bunch of personal pro-gun politics onto this article is really not on.

But to counter some of your arguments:
The story involved the UK. Using statistics about gun ownership and crime from Canada is utterly irrelevant. Different country, different culture. We’ve never had wide-scale handgun ownership in the UK, we have hunting guns – rifles and shotguns – but not handguns, and our police still don’t carry guns as a matter of course. This is a good thing for us.

As for Canada – from what I’ve heard Canada has a much saner relationship with guns than the USA. But still the idea that you can tighten gun controls in a society already saturated with them and expect some immediate benefit is silly, even if you banned all handguns it would take decades to see real benefits. Take account of that long border with the USA and I’m not sure you’d ever end up with UK levels of gun crime. My point is you’ll have to wait a long time to see any potential benefits from tighter gun controls, I’m sure all the stats you quoted are true, I’m not sure they mean gun control is bad.

So maybe your opinions are right for you and Canada – at least in the short term – but they don’t apply to the UK.

And that’s the crux of the problem here, you took a story about tabloid hyperbole and possible censorship in the UK and used it as a platform for personal and Canadian gun politics.

Also as those 6 years covered the period of the end of Thatchers destruction of the country and the start of Labours governance. I am guessing there are a lot more reasons for the increase in violent crime, robbery etc. Social and economic factors have a lot more impact over here than whether the scally down the road can buy a gun.

On the right to bear arms, isn’t that supposed to just as part of a well organised militia rather than a personal right? I maybe be wrong there.

Finally, can we get back to tech news.

Check Australia, we’ve very heavy gun laws, crimes here involving a gun are practically unheard of.. after a very savage attack to innocent people in Tasmania, our gun laws where tightened even further..

we are a country that is opposed to guns, we’ve barely any, we don’t need them, they are used to law enforcement, military and the small population that need them for farming and so on, so forth and what not..

get off your box, some people don’t agree with guns, but an apple blog isn’t the place to talk about those things!

Naysayers: Why don’t you bring facts to the discussion, as Charles did? Instead you just scream “Offensive! Offensive!” That’s ridiculous.

You mean the strident, inflammatory, bullying zealots?

No, no. That’s not fair. You specify a little more precisely later on…

“I don’t oppose rational, reasonable regulation of guns, so long as the right of law-abiding citizens to own guns for sport and self defense is respected and protected.”

So you’re fine with a reasonable, rational discussion with anyone who doesn’t actually want to ban guns. Anyone who is actually diametrically opposed to your you is, by definition a strident, inflammatory, bullying zealot.

Look, this is an opinion piece and there is nothing wrong with your opinion. You, like everyone else, are entitled to your beliefs, your arguments and your biases. (And I know to say someone has a bias is generally an insult but everyone has biases. It’s part of being human.)

No, the problem is that you insult and denigrate people who happen to disagree with you, dismissing them as the aforementioned zealots. You cannot accept they may have a point or two somewhere in their arguments and insist on listening only to those who are already broadly on your side.

Oh, and the other problem is that you do all this on an Apple blog site. A full half of you article was lauding the gun owner’s lifestyle and this is not the place for that.

“However, as I said, what really concerns me here is the demand for censorship”

That was one sentence at the end of the article.

One. Sentence.

Here’s a concrete example. Last week,Toronto’s Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone (whose boss, David Miller, is one of Canada’s most vocal advocates of a total ban on private handgun ownership — which has been highly restricted in Canada since 1934), was quoted by teh Canadian Press news service saying “We all know that 30 to 40 per cent of legal guns end up in the wrong hands and they’re used for criminal acts,” which is a wild and irresponsible exaggeration. A Canadian Shooting Sports Association spokesman cited Toronto’s own Guns and Gangs Task Force calculation of the actual percentage at 5.7 per cent.

Yopically, my concern is that Apple has been “quick on the trigger” so to speak in banning other iPhons apps. deemed to be controversial byt the stridency of the anti-gun lobbyists cited in the Macworld UK article linked from my column.

I don’t oppose rational, reasonable regulation of guns, so long as the right of law-abiding (vetted by authorities as they are in Canada before purchase of either long guns or handguns) citizens to own guns for sport and self defense is respected and protected.

However, as I said, what really concerns me here is the demand for censorship of even make-believe electronic gun imagery from the anti-gun fanatics (viz: “I am stunned this game should ever have been allowed to have been made.”

CM