What's Your Opinion? Firearms or Not?

[GordMay]

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[swagman]

On a mainly US used site this kind of poll is only ever going to reflect US opinion. A shame - as the sailing most aspire to is worldwide - and you've not got worldwide representation in this poll.

As Gord almost suggested earlier, I also think its the planners who worry more than the doers. So would it not be good to re-configure the poll to ask the same questions but to also ask if the respondants are actually out there cruising, or still planning?

If any newbie read the poll so far - 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 - they might assume 1/3 of global cruisers might carry guns. Fortunately for everyone, we all know that is far from the case.

And if most US readers do not realise, the majority of peoples around the globe still think gun toters only add to their own crime issues, and not the other way round.

I'm not the only one who would would not wish to see any gun branished around in any anchorage we park up in - and although it's a minority, I do get comfort seeing at least some Americans feeling exactly the same.

Cheers
JOHN

[BBill]

Originally Posted by swagman

On a mainly US used site this kind of poll is only ever going to reflect US opinion. A shame - as the sailing most aspire to is worldwide - and you've not got worldwide representation in this poll.

As Gord almost suggested earlier, I also think its the planners who worry more than the doers. So would it not be good to re-configure the poll to ask the same questions but to also ask if the respondants are actually out there cruising, or still planning?

If any newbie read the poll so far - 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 - they might assume 1/3 of global cruisers might carry guns. Fortunately for everyone, we all know that is far from the case.

And if most US readers do not realise, the majority of peoples around the globe still think gun toters only add to their own crime issues, and not the other way round.

I'm not the only one who would would not wish to see any gun branished around in any anchorage we park up in - and although it's a minority, I do get comfort seeing at least some Americans feeling exactly the same.

Cheers
JOHN

The suvey didn't say it was "global" cruisers only...but it's a geographical situation for sure. There are more guns carried where it's easy/legal and less carried where a hassle/illegal. If the survey only included global cruisers ("doing it"?) we would have very different survey results from a miniscule minority of cruisers. In my case, Florida and Bahamas are the only places I care about and there are high numbers of guns on cruising boats in those waters. Few who are "doing it" there really care what happens on the other side of the planet where it's illegal or a hassle to carry. However, I think the survey shows the intent of people going cruising in whatever waters they cruise and what they actually do when the dock lines are tossed.

Another thought...Most anti-gun cruising folks who think they know how many guns are carried on boats have not a clue. The vast majority of cruisers out there "doing it" don't tell the neighborhood if they are carrying weapons. It flat doesn't happen except by a rare few who don't know better. Gun owners know better and keep their weapon ownership aboard very private (and legal). Cruisers are more likely to be struck by lightning a dozen times every year than being involved in a gun incident. A survey that asks how many have been struck by lightning and how many have been in a gun incident while cruising would give better statistics on reality.

Being that several admins here post with highly anti gun attitudes I will now retreat before electronic bullets from a hyper active thesaurus fly my way.

bb.

[GordMay]

If it’s a matter of cruising practicality; I am not anti-gun. On the other hand, I don’t think firearms are worth the trouble (given my level of fear & knowledge - others might be comforted, and calculate a different balance).
If it’s merely a matter of testicular hyperactivity; I am anti-gun.

[swagman]

Thanks bb for the head up on where the guns exist.......I'd had the wrong impression that the guns were needed to maybe prevent piracy off Somalia or Indonesia, but clearly you know many are felt needed closer to your homeland. Shame.

But I've yet to meet a US sailor over this side who even believes they are needed, let alone packing - and I don't think the guys we've met would be worried or scared to let us know if they had them - as they were the most vocally opposed whenever the subject got raised.

Cheers
JOHN

[BBill]

Originally Posted by swagman

Thanks bb for the head up on where the guns exist.......I'd had the wrong impression that the guns were needed to maybe prevent piracy off Somalia or Indonesia, but clearly you know many are felt needed closer to your homeland. Shame.

But I've yet to meet a US sailor over this side who even believes they are needed, let alone packing - and I don't think the guys we've met would be worried or scared to let us know if they had them - as they were the most vocally opposed whenever the subject got raised.

Cheers
JOHN

I shouldn't be used as a reference of "where guns exist". But it does point out how anti gun folks take an unqualified single point data source to make their opinions about guns.

It's also interesting how your multi-dimensional thinking can be of the word "needed". If cruisers only carried gear they actually used there would be a lot less "needed" aboard. I have yet to see a cruiser who practices that philosophy. I carry an expensive life raft with emergency rations for sailing coastle and Bahamas. The chance of me "needing" it are a million to one (not yet in 30+ yrs) but it goes along anyway. If a firearm is aboard it's considered no different other than a piece of safety gear that probably will never be used. There is no "shame", no paranoia, no whatever in carrying any and all gear that prepares you for maintaining life safety. Most cruisers would rather error on taking too much gear along instead of too little.

With that said, there is little to zero evidence of hostile situations with firearm carrying cruisers but the anti gun crowd drones about how dangerouse they are or can be. Facts or imagination...take your pick. Worry about lightning strikes or the other guy dragging his anchor on you instead. You have no real worries with the other cruiser guy with a gun on his boat. If he wants to deal with the hassle of carrying one let him do it in peace.

[SydneyTim]

A few sweeping generalisations, then a morbid bit!

If you are born and raised somewhere where everyone has guns you think you need one to protect yourself, if you grow up where there are no guns you don't think you need one.

When you cruise you go to places other than where your were born. People who grew up with them take them, people who didn't don't.

As a consequence the gun culture gets exported. Robbers get the impression people they rob willl have a gun, therefore they carry one to rob you, this makes the robbery more dangerous than it would have been before. It's a vicious circle. Look how many people get shot in the UK and how many in the USA and compare the numbers of people who carry guns, it's simple maths.

Personally born in UK, never needed a gun and would never carry one, the fact that anyone at all carries a gun even a policeman scares the crap out of me.

I hope the petty criminals the world over are distinguishing enough to pick the countries likely to be carrying guns and leave theirs behind when they want to rob me, and I will be flying my ensign as an act of self defence.

If I had been born and raised somewhere else I would have a different view, so don't take it personally if you are pro guns.

It just depresses me that I will be in anchorages in beautiful parts of the world with people who are so scared of the locals that they have brought a gun. If you genuinely believe that the only thing saving you from attack is your gun, why would you want to go there in the first place?

[Pblais]

It just depresses me that I will be in anchorages in beautiful parts of the world with people who are so scared of the locals that they have brought a gun.

It's hard to argue this point. I would rather be anchored next to oyu.

[44'cruisingcat]

Originally Posted by SydneyTim

If you genuinely believe that the only thing saving you from attack is your gun, why would you want to go there in the first place?

This too. I would sooner avoid those places where having a gun aboard would make me feel safer. It may not always be possible though.

[hellosailor]

" Robbers get the impression people they rob willl have a gun, therefore they carry one to rob you, " Perhaps in some places, but according to the cops and robbers, that's quite wrong in the US.

There have been extensive interviews with inmates conducted in the US, regarding guns and criminals using them. On the one hand you have the gangbangers who simply use guns because they expect to be in gunfights. On the other hand, you have all the rest of the criminals, who typically carry a gun in order to display overwhelming force against an UNarmed victim, in order to ensure the victim won't hurt them. That's right, the criminals are carrying guns in order to subdue Unarmed victims.
Case in point, the armed robberies and carjackings of foreign tourists (guaranteed to be unarmed courtesy of airline insecurity) within the first few hours of arriving in Florida some years ago. During the interviews, the inmates said again and again that they chose those victims because they knew the victims would be unarmed--safe and easy prey. Then after Florida passed a "shall carry" law, requiring concealed carry permits to be issued unless there was a specific problem, the rate of armed robberies plummetted. Another round of interviews revealed that the robbers, carrying guns, didn't want to take a chance that the victims might also be armed--and shoot back. So many changed careers and often switched from armed robbery to burglary, preferably of empty homes.

Gun culture, whatever that is, will vary with national culture but one thing you can be sure of is that FUD and the Evening Nooze and politics will provide you with a totally skewed picture of whatever "gun culture" may be. Statistics, from the FBI, DOJ Uniform Crime Statistics, and other sources, keep showing a radically different picture form that of the popular press and the "antigun" sources.

And then, there's this odd little statistic that always seems to be forgotten. Shooting ranges are infested with guns, but somehow, "gun crimes" just don't happen at them. Folks who shoot, and visit ranges, can tell you they're among the most polite places you can visit. At least, in the US.

Which, among it's other distinctions, is one of the few nations on earth that is only a dozen or so generations away from "founding fathers" who were refugees, outcasts, scoundrels, misfits, and profiteers either looking for a new start--or exiled to one. Refreshed by a hundred years of disparate and conflicting immigrant waves.

A very different place from "nations" that are a thousand years old--or at least, where the natives have been mainly one society for a thousand years. Can't really compare any part of the US culture to most other nations, although we sure can wonder, why the hell the rest of the world has adopted our fast food franchises. (UGH!)

[BBill]

Originally Posted by SydneyTim

A few sweeping generalisations, then a morbid bit!

If you are born and raised somewhere where everyone has guns you think you need one to protect yourself, if you grow up where there are no guns you don't think you need one.

When you cruise you go to places other than where your were born. People who grew up with them take them, people who didn't don't.

As a consequence the gun culture gets exported. Robbers get the impression people they rob willl have a gun, therefore they carry one to rob you, this makes the robbery more dangerous than it would have been before. It's a vicious circle. Look how many people get shot in the UK and how many in the USA and compare the numbers of people who carry guns, it's simple maths.

Personally born in UK, never needed a gun and would never carry one, the fact that anyone at all carries a gun even a policeman scares the crap out of me.

I hope the petty criminals the world over are distinguishing enough to pick the countries likely to be carrying guns and leave theirs behind when they want to rob me, and I will be flying my ensign as an act of self defence.

If I had been born and raised somewhere else I would have a different view, so don't take it personally if you are pro guns.

It just depresses me that I will be in anchorages in beautiful parts of the world with people who are so scared of the locals that they have brought a gun. If you genuinely believe that the only thing saving you from attack is your gun, why would you want to go there in the first place?

My first thoughts are you are easily scared, get depressed easily over imagined things you have no control over and don't rely on hard data to make decisions. Scared of police carrying firearms? Depressed at the posiblity of a gun around you in an anchorage? If criminals think one boat is armed and the other isn't you can plan on the unarmed boat being the victim...maybe waving a white flag would help? Your posted idea of what gun owners think is far from truth. To be blunt about it I think you should study a little more on the criminal element and violent crimes. The fear is unnecessary...and not based on credible and statistical data.

Firearm history and violent crime statistics for your country...go back to the late 1600s "arms rights act" and follow the relation of violence before guns, and up to the current time. Note the decrease in personal violence when guns were invented. Note an increase in personal violence each time the UK passed a law tightening gun control. It's no different from any other place...guns keep crime down. Take them away and the bad guys get more active. At least have a legit reason for not carrying a gun for cruising...it isn't about making more violence.

Here's a blub for you...

A July 2001 study from King’s College London’s Centre for Defence Studies found that handgun-related crime increased by nearly 40% in the two years following implementation of the handgun ban. The study also found that there had been “no direct link” between lawful possession of guns by licensed citizens and misuse of guns by criminals. According to the King’s College report, although the 1998 handgun ban resulted in over 160,000 licensed handguns being withdrawn from personal possession, “the UK appears not to have succeeded in creating the gun free society for which many have wished. Gun related violence continues to rise and the streets of Britain…seem no more safe.”
A few weeks before the King’s College study was released, Home Office figures showed that violent crime in Great Britain was rising at the second fastest rate in the world, well above the U.S. rate, and on par with crime-ridden South Africa. In February 2001, it was reported that 26 percent of persons living in England and Wales had been victims of crime in 1999. Home Secretary Jack Straw admitted, “levels of victimisation are higher than in most comparable countries for most categories of crime.” On May 4, 2001, the Telegraph disclosed that the risk of a citizen being assaulted was “higher in Britain than almost anywhere else in the industrialized world, including America.” The latest U.N. data show that Scotland (which has always kept separate criminal justice statistics from England and Wales) has the highest violent crime rate of any developed nation, and that England and Wales are not much better.
With passage of the Firearms Act of 1997, “it was confidently assumed that the new legislation effectively banning handguns would have the direct effect of reducing certain types of violent crime by reducing access to weapons.” The news media promised that the “world’s toughest laws will help to keep weapons off the streets.”
Yet faster than British gun-owners could surrender their handguns for destruction, guns began flooding into Great Britain from the international black market (especially from eastern Europe and from China), driven by the demands of the country’s rapidly developing criminal gun-culture.

[Pura Vida]

I need to take exception with a couple of ideas presented here.

First "there is no crime at shooring ranges." While I am sure there is less of certain types of crimes I can't believe that statement being truthful. In fact there was a period here in Houston (late 1980s) where a criminal was regularly following people home from the range and robbing them in their driveways. It happened to a friend of mine. I guess it's only a mexican stand of if you draw first. Oddly enough after he had his handguns stolen from him he changed his mind about their usefulness as a defensive tool.

Second is the idea that there is a set of statistics that proves the question at hand. Just because there is a study done by (enter your approved group here) that says (enter your prefered stance here) does not mean it can be generalized to cruising a boat, especially outside your home waters. This ain't rocket science guys, it's sociology and it is much, much harder.

[SydneyTim]

I thought I made the point fairly clearly that your view on guns depends on where you were raised, in much the same ways as one's views on whaling, cannibalism and bigamy are shaped by the society you live in.

I am getting scared irrationally about guns, you are getting scared irrationally about crime.

I have travelled to many many countries in the world, including most of south america and everyone talks about how dangerous it is, I have never carried a gun and have been robbed only once which was in the UK in a city at knife point after work. I gave them my money and PIN numbers they went away no one got hurt. If I had had a gun at best I would have on my conscience 3 dead teenagers, then there's the issues around being sent to prison, or coming off second best in the fight.

Personally prefer my approach, and if that makes me "scared" so be it, just don't think there's anything brave about shooting at people.

[David_Old_Jersey]

Originally Posted by BBill

Here's a blub for you...

A July 2001 study from King’s College London’s Centre for Defence Studies found that handgun-related crime increased by nearly 40% in the two years following implementation of the handgun ban. The study also found that there had been “no direct link” between lawful possession of guns by licensed citizens and misuse of guns by criminals. According to the King’s College report, although the 1998 handgun ban resulted in over 160,000 licensed handguns being withdrawn from personal possession, “the UK appears not to have succeeded in creating the gun free society for which many have wished. Gun related violence continues to rise and the streets of Britain…seem no more safe.”
A few weeks before the King’s College study was released, Home Office figures showed that violent crime in Great Britain was rising at the second fastest rate in the world, well above the U.S. rate, and on par with crime-ridden South Africa. In February 2001, it was reported that 26 percent of persons living in England and Wales had been victims of crime in 1999. Home Secretary Jack Straw admitted, “levels of victimisation are higher than in most comparable countries for most categories of crime.” On May 4, 2001, the Telegraph disclosed that the risk of a citizen being assaulted was “higher in Britain than almost anywhere else in the industrialized world, including America.” The latest U.N. data show that Scotland (which has always kept separate criminal justice statistics from England and Wales) has the highest violent crime rate of any developed nation, and that England and Wales are not much better.
With passage of the Firearms Act of 1997, “it was confidently assumed that the new legislation effectively banning handguns would have the direct effect of reducing certain types of violent crime by reducing access to weapons.” The news media promised that the “world’s toughest laws will help to keep weapons off the streets.”
Yet faster than British gun-owners could surrender their handguns for destruction, guns began flooding into Great Britain from the international black market (especially from eastern Europe and from China), driven by the demands of the country’s rapidly developing criminal gun-culture.

Bbill,

Not sure which side of the Atlantic you come from, but I would caution against beleiving anything that comes out of the Home Office............

The rise in gun crime (a relative term) coincided with the UK importing large numbers of folk into the country from places that are little better than warzones and developed the attitudes and outlook on life and survical that would be needed / are "normal" in that environment...........and for some strange reason the UK Govt expected these folk to adopt a "More tea vicar?" attitude just cos' they had arrived in Blighty.............


Here in Jersey (part of the UK, have the Queen but no Tony Bliar etc) we never got the handgun ban. In fact it is meant to be very easy to get a licence for just about anything - a recent front page story was that a few people had licences for guns that would equip a small army, including some seriously heavy calibre weaponary.........

Here in Jersey is a relatively peaceful place (90,000 people in an Island 9 miles by 5), certainly no gun crime to speak of - NOT because guns are freely available, and the crims are scared, but cos' we are civilised........and a large part of our population did not grow up in a warzone.

But more importantly the economy has been very good for a generation, meaning most people can afford their drugs. And it's just less work and more profitable earning a living than stealing..........not to say we don't have any problems.........

Scotland's high violence? That's cos' they are just heathen savages

[mudnut]

This thread has come a long way from,"Fire arms or not",aboard a sailing vessle.Now it seems we are hinging on sociological parameters of what is the norm and what is the expected needs within certain areas of society.You people can crunch the numbers of different places,different societies and give up/down rates of crime stats to uphold your argument relevent to your stance on the subject and Bla Bla Bla...I actually find it disturbing that at this day and age,that most of you,and more important,all of you,are not advocating that weopons are a problem in general.So how about keeping to the THREAD and leave the landlubber numbers and stats,out of ya GOOGLED statistics.Less people get hurt/shot at sea by guns.Less guns at sea,less people shot at sea.If you have grown up with a great need to protect yourself with guns against other people it would be a hard habit to shuck,just remember,those people you guard against,arn't necessarily,out on the pond.Mudnut.