Safes + concealment?

[gryeyes]

Greyeyes: Why would I stop, are you trying to say that advocating aimed fire is a bad idea?  Go shoot a few rounds of trap and tell me how well that not aiming thing works out for you.  Now remember that you're using no choke and birdshot and any HD load is going to have a spread 1/4 to 1/10th of that.

Because creating a red herring is just going to shit up the thread more. I semi-regularly hunt duck and have competed in a few marksmanship competitions, I have not even vaguely hinted that aiming is not important. But i agree i would avoid a confrontation if possible while waiting for the burglar flee (assuming only my personal safety was a factor). Relying on a police response to save you is not very practical. More so any burglar who is willing to break into someones house that is occupied shows he is physically dangerous (on drugs,complete fucking idiot,does not give a shit about a confrontation).

[Surlyboi]

I'd think the sword would be too unwieldy in the confines of a home.

It really depends on the home more than anything. I had no trouble in Sir Ian Campbell's wee house.

Also depends on the sword. A good shoto is good for medium sized spaces if you know how to use it.

[Yegolev]

On the off-chance that SC is still reading this, the reply was to just hang a mirror over the opening.  Even if there are seams at the lower end, chances are very good that no one will notice because of the mirror drawing the eyes.

As for the rest of the thread, are two pro-gun people arguing or am I on the drugs again?

[Ironwood]

Pro-gun people always end up arguing about penetration.

It's awesome.


Not for real.

[Arthur_Parker]

The UK for example has twice the per capita burglaries of the US with over 50% of those occurring while the resident is home.

Can you keep us out of it?  Unless you want to link some statistics such as the number of people killed in the UK in their own home during a burglary compared to the US.  I'd be interested in that.

[Yegolev]

Because it's a different statistic?

[Sheepherder]

The prevalence of firearms in homes is one of the biggest factors in the US having only 15% burglaries occur while a home is occupied. The UK for example has twice the per capita burglaries of the US with over 50% of those occurring while the resident is home. Various surveys done have criminals stating "fear of being shot" as the main motivator for going out of their way to avoid robbing an occupied home. In situations where a confrontation occurs having a firearm significantly lowers the risk of harm to your person (statistics concerning self-defense vary widely).

The rate I found is 3.8% (link to FBI).  Where are you getting your statistics?

Regardless, "fear of being shot" applies equally to all persons unless you think the criminals are going door-to-door asking people how many firearms they have in the house and taking notes.  Much like vaccines, any single "unprotected" case's odds are bettered by an increase per capita regardless of whether or not they are protected.  This is also completely ignoring that statistics could be manipulated, that definitions of burglary may be different, and that the root cause may be something else (such as self-defense being a viable legal argument in U.S. courts).

[Arthur_Parker]

Because it's a different statistic?

Yes, obviously, though he didn't actually link a statistic.  If he's going to use UK burglaries as justification for keeping a gun, then the fact that the UK has very different gun control laws is relevant.  If the law required everyone in the UK to keep a gun at home for protection, then I'm sure that would affect the pattern of burglaries, but it won't naturally lead to making us safer.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/scotland/4631857/Scotlands-murder-rate-is-fastest-rising-in-Western-Europe-UN-finds.html

Despite repeated pledges by the Scottish Executive to tackle the country's "booze and blades" culture, the number of killings rose by a third in just a year.
The murder rate in Scotland stands at 2.1 deaths per 100,000 people, the joint highest in Western Europe with Finland and Portugal.

What's the US murder rate, three times that?  Apples to Oranges was exactly my point.

[Ironwood]

Why O Why when discussing 'Booze and Blades' does Scotland always come up ?

 

[Surlyboi]

Why wouldn't it. Cragganmore and Claymores.

[Polysorbate80]

Why O Why when discussing 'Booze and Blades' does Scotland always come up ?

 

Perhaps if you shot each other more it would divert attention from that? 

[Lantyssa]

I'd think the sword would be too unwieldy in the confines of a home.

It really depends on the home more than anything. I had no trouble in Sir Ian Campbell's wee house.

If I had that place I would only have a rapier and dagger for personal protection.  My knights would be the ones walking around with claymores.

[veredus]

I'd think the sword would be too unwieldy in the confines of a home.

It really depends on the home more than anything. I had no trouble in Sir Ian Campbell's wee house.

If I had that place I would only have a rapier and dagger for personal protection.  My knights would be the ones walking around with claymores.

Now why on earth would you give your knights landmines?

[Lantyssa]

I want them to be using top-of-the-line stuff.

[gryeyes]

Yes, obviously, though he didn't actually link a statistic.  If he's going to use UK burglaries as justification for keeping a gun, then the fact that the UK has very different gun control laws is relevant. [

Yes because that is EXACTLY what i was doing.

[Arthur_Parker]

I played this "guess what I really meant" dance with you before.  It's your keyboard, you want to keep a gun, go for it, I'd probably have one if I lived in the USA too.  It doesn't change the fact that quoting statistics about occupied burglaries in the UK (with no link) while talking about the possibilities of your "home" being "invaded" is a standard talking point of the pro gun crowd.

Oh but wait, you totally didn't mean that    Is it cheap flights to the USA and a concern over cockney villains that has you watching the UK burglary figures so closely?

[gryeyes]

No guessing is required just the ability to fucking read. But here is some statistics if you wanted them.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita

Wow seems like the UK has higher crime in every category barring homicides and rapes. By a significant margin. 

[Arthur_Parker]

Don't worry so much, just practice your rhyming slang, I'm sure you will be fine.

[IainC]

No guessing is required just the ability to fucking read. But here is some statistics if you wanted them.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_bur_percap-crime-burglaries-per-capita

Wow seems like the UK has higher crime in every category barring homicides and rapes. By a significant margin. 

Yes. Because crime is largely driven by social factors such as low economic mobility and unemployment - which the UK absolutely sucks for at the moment. If you are a victim of crime in the UK however you are significantly less likely to end up dead as a result and that is heavily influenced by the fact that British criminals aren't routinely armed with guns.

[gryeyes]

I wish the abhorrent levels of violence in the US could be attributed to access to firearms. Sadly our homicides not involving firearms are also proportionally inflated.

[Righ]

Oh there are plenty of other factors, such as how recently you were running round with slaves, and how little social welfare exists to elevate people out of the mire of poverty caused by generations of inequity. But easy access to firearms certainly makes life easier for those desperate enough to commit violent crime.

[gryeyes]

Which is most certainly true. A vast majority of our homicides are condensed to relatively few urban centers. Im curious why the UK has such inflated crime rates? I honestly always assumed the US was leader of all things criminal (at least in developed nations).

[Arthur_Parker]

Your figures.

UK
Gun violence > Homicides > % homicides with firearms - UK not on the list.
Murders   1,201       [7th of 49]
Murders with firearms   14       [29th of 36]

USA
Gun violence > Homicides > % homicides with firearms    39.5604       [7th of 32]
Murders   16,204       [2nd of 49]
Murders with firearms   9,369       [1st of 36]

Can you Adam and Eve it?

[gryeyes]

I cant find any relevance of it. But feel free to spew inanity if it makes you happy.

Adam + Eve= see? What are the rules for UK hipness?

[K9]

Wow seems like the UK has higher crime in every category barring homicides and rapes. By a significant margin. 

Actually the US has higher per-capita rates of Rapes, Assaults, Embezzlements and Murders. The UK has higher rates of Burglaries, Car Thefts, Frauds and Robberies. Neither country is listed on the manslaughter and the UK doesn't appear on any of the murders with firearms lists. The margins of difference for the violent crimes the US leads the US in are not so different from the margins by which the UK is leading in non-violent crime. The overall crime rate in the UK is slightly higher though.

Also apparently the UK is the #1 country in the world for kidnappings, which I find somewhat surprising.

[Arthur_Parker]

I suspect it all depends on how you define "kidnapping".

http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/statistics/statistics074.htm

If you narrow the definition you get things like this.

http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/resourcesforprofessionals/Statistics/KeyCPStats/15_wda48733.html

While we do have figures on 'child abductions' or 'killings at the hands of strangers', we don't have figures on the numbers of children who are abducted and killed by a stranger. This is because if a child is abducted and then murdered, only one offence of homicide is recorded by the police. However, the number of children abducted and murdered by strangers is almost certainly tiny. An NSPCC internal survey of newspaper reports of children who were killed or died in suspicious circumstances in the 12 months following Sarah Payne's killing (August 2000 - July 2001) found that of 128 reported cases, not one was of a child abducted and killed by a stranger.

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2007/01/raw-data-kidnapping-statistics.html

While researching this question today, I came across some interesting statistics. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (citing U.S. Department of Justice reports), nearly 800,000 children are reported missing each year. That's more than 2,000 a day.

The NCMEC says 203,000 children are kidnapped each year by family members. Another 58,200 are abducted by non-family members. Many others are runaways or pushed out of the home by parents.

Despite these huge numbers, very few children are victims of the kinds of crimes that so-often lead local and national news reports. According to NCMEC, just 115 children are the victims of what most people think of as "stereotypical" kidnapping, which the center characterizes thusly: "These crimes involve someone the child does not know or someone of slight acquaintance, who holds the child overnight, transports the child 50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep the child permanently."

Of these 115 incidents, 57 percent ended with the return of the child. The other 43 percent had a less happy outcome.

I'm not saying kidnapping is worse in the USA, I just suspect that if we complied the figures in the same way, I won't be surprised if it was.  Which goes back to the whole point about comparing apples to oranges.

Adam + Eve= see? What are the rules for UK hipness?

http://tinyurl.com/oew7xv

[gryeyes]

Also apparently the UK is the #1 country in the world for kidnappings, which I find somewhat surprising.

Ya ive noticed a bunch of strange anomalous crime rates. Canada has a retarded amount of rapes for some reason. Is it just how they report them?

[Arthur_Parker]

The margins of difference for the violent crimes the US leads the US in are not so different from the margins by which the UK is leading in non-violent crime. The overall crime rate in the UK is slightly higher though.

As we drifted onto the subject anyway, I think a small part of the reason there's more non-violent crime is that UK jails are massively overcrowded.  Leading to government instructions for sending fewer to jail.

Jack Straw, the justice secretary, last night made an urgent appeal to magistrates to send fewer people to jail as the prison population in England and Wales soared past 82,000 to an all-time high.
...
He appealed to the 30,000 magistrates to use non-custodial penalties instead of sending them to prison for an ineffective jail term of less than 12 months.

As that directly impacts more "minor" offences such as burglary, you get a lot of repeat offenders (drug users) who aren't locked up.  As it's the UK, they also aren't very likely to get their criminal career cut short by an armed homeowner either.

Tony Martin, the farmer jailed for killing a burglar, has said he will fight "tooth and nail" any attempt by a second burglar injured in the shooting to sue him.

Brendon Fearon, 33, who has 30 previous convictions, was wounded in the leg during the break-in at Martin's home in Emneth Hungate in Norfolk in 1999. Fearon's accomplice, Fred Barras, 16, was shot dead in the raid. Martin, who was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for manslaughter, is due to be released next month.

Fearon was jailed for three years for conspiracy to burgle and is currently serving a further 18 months for drug-dealing. On Friday he won the right at Nottingham County Court to sue Martin for £15,000 for loss of earnings.

[K9]

Also apparently the UK is the #1 country in the world for kidnappings, which I find somewhat surprising.

Ya ive noticed a bunch of strange anomalous crime rates. Canada has a retarded amount of rapes for some reason. Is it just how they report them?

It was my suspicion, it's also why I wouldn't look into drug-related offenses as these vary hugely between countries.

[Koyasha]

Gun argument entirely aside, it seems entirely insane to me that not only was the man who defended himself and his property punished for doing so, but he received a longer sentence than the criminal and now stands to get sued for it.

[NowhereMan]

In fairness he set his home up full of booby traps clearly intending to cause bodily harm to any home invaders and shot one in the back as he tried to flee, killing him. It pretty much went beyond home defence into revenge for all the other times he'd been broken into (whether that was anything to do with these two or not). The fact that the one who survived can sue him seems fucked up, simply because it's a bit too close to profiting from crime, but his sentence didn't seem unreasonable to me.

[IainC]

Gun argument entirely aside, it seems entirely insane to me that not only was the man who defended himself and his property punished for doing so, but he received a longer sentence than the criminal and now stands to get sued for it.

1: He wasn't punished for defending himself, the law allows you to do so using reasonable force. He was punished for manslaughter, the mitigating factors were taken into account but, ultimately it was found that he had unlawfully killed someone.
2: That's because manslaughter is a more serious crime than burglary.

[Arthur_Parker]

It was an extreme example on several points, I should have made clear it happened years ago.

Brendon Fearon who attempted to sue Tony Martin has his own wiki page.

Fearon, a small time career criminal who had been convicted of a string of about thirty offences, starting with handling stolen goods in September 1986, for which he was fined £25, through theft, burglary, drugs, fraud and wounding, for which he received a 1 year sentence, his third and longest custodial sentence, in May 1997.
...
On 10 January 2000 Fearon and Bark admitted to conspiring to burgle Martin's farmhouse. Fearon was sentenced to three years in prison and Bark to 30 months (with an additional 12 months arising from previous offences). Fearon was released on 10 August 2001.
In April of the same year Martin was convicted of murdering Barras, the charge was reduced to manslaughter, the sentence to 5 years, on appeal, due to diminished responsibility. Fearon was released after eighteen months, Martin after about three years, having been refused early parole.
...
During 2003, Fearon applied for, and received, an estimated £5,000 of legal aid to sue Martin for loss of earnings due to the injury he sustained. However, the case was thrown into doubt when photographs were published in The Sun suggesting that Fearon's injuries were not as serious as had been claimed. Fearon later dropped the case when Martin agreed to drop a counter-claim.
...
Fearon was again jailed for 18 months on 6 February 2003 for dealing in heroin. Controversy was again provoked, in July 2003 when Fearon left Ranby prison after serving less than a third of his 18-month sentence - just days before Martin's release. The Home Secretary, David Blunkett requested an explanation from the head of the prison service.
On 2 September 2003 Fearon was arrested for taking a Toyota Land Cruiser on 24 August without the owner's consent. On 9 November 2003, he was found guilty of driving the vehicle without insurance and recalled to prison to serve the remainder of the preceding sentence.
In August 2005 Fearon was arrested with Dean Thompson, accused of drawing out £11,000 from a bank machine using stolen cash cards. Fearon was bailed to appear before magistrates in October.
In February 2006, Fearon was banned from two public houses in Newark. The Crown Court Judge called Fearon "a menace" and issued him with an 18 month community order for his part in causing a large disorder occurring at the said locations

So he was released from prison before Martin, got arrested for drug dealing, got sent to prison again and was released before Martin had finished serving his first sentence.

[Nevermore]

Martin should have just moved to Texas.

[Sheepherder]

Ya ive noticed a bunch of strange anomalous crime rates. Canada has a retarded amount of rapes for some reason. Is it just how they report them?

Likely, also, it's old and has a disclaimer at the bottom.  Also, the definition of burglary and robbery may intersect and cause bad statistics.

DEFINITION: Total recorded robberies. Crime statistics are often better indicators of prevalence of law enforcement and willingness to report crime, than actual prevalence. Per capita figures expressed per 1,000 population.

SOURCE: Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998 - 2000 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention)

Ideally you stop people before they set foot on your property, guns don't even really enter the equation of deterrence except when you get into the hypothetical game theory land of large quantities of people owning guns dictating the behavior of criminals when selecting targets and timing  - which doesn't in fact require that you personally own a gun.  The physical presence of a gun in a specific house only gives the option to realistically threaten grave violence, which will provoke a flight or fight response in the criminal which may end exceedingly badly.

Back to Snakecharmer: are you on a suburban or rural property?  Rural property would make an outbuilding easy, else you should be looking for secure storage of some sort IMO.