I don't agree with you on this, with respect to Kyle Naughton's scenario. Bassong holding a gun (replica or not) in his back yard sends out a message to the public that its cool to own guns and play with them in your back yard. Nile Ranger as above. Jay Bothroyd tried to be smarts, but it didn't quite work out. Kyle Naughton went to a firing range to try something new, or perhaps let off some steam (I assume firing bullets at a target is an example of letting of steam) and wanted to post a picture of himself online doing so because, frankly, 1) people in the UK tend not to own guns and 2) people think its quite cool. The difference here is that KN did it in a completely controlled environment. Going to a firing range is perfectly legal and there are no moral or ethical issues in doing so (I say that because legal doesn't always mean right e.g. tax avoidance). It is possible that some kids might take this the wrong way and think "OMG! KN HAS A GUN, I MUST OWN ONE AND STARTS SHOOTING PEOPLE" but then one completely limits the activities, or advertising of such activities, by footballers to a smaller range just because there are negative connotations associated with it. Frankly, those who cheat on their wives (or girlfriends) are sending a FAR worse message than what KN did. I honestly don't see the problem with what KN did.
Given how The Mail supported Hitler, Mussolini and Mosely in the 1930s, of all the papers who should be held responsible for the views influencing their readership they'd be on top...
That aswell, won't happen though because parenting at the lower end of spectrum so to speak, leaves a bit to be desired to put it as politely as possible.
Sorry chirpy but your comment about young men almost exclusively from the same backgrounds as the footballers trying to get guns and kill each other is simply not true...it is a myth perpetrated by papers like the mail. In 2009 a freedom of information request to the met police showed that just under 60% of shooting crimes in london are suspected of being committed by non white people...this is not a conviction rate but an arrest rate so the actual figure will be a bit lower. As london has the biggest section of non white people in the rest of the country the figures is much lower therefore across the country most gun crime is committed by white men. Sorry to be anal but it is a particular bug bear of mine...if black men commit violence to other black men we get hundreds of articles about black on black violence and how the black community needs to sort itself out...yet when white men hurt other white men their race is irrelevant and they are simply called thugs. As for rio...3 weeks after new labour recruited him for its street crime campaign against gun violence he celebrated scoring a goal by....pretending to fire a rocket launcher!
Not sure Americans are allowed an opinion on this. Isn't it De Rigeur for you lot to carry arsenals of weapons wherever you go
Newspapers, and I use the term loosely in the case of The Fail, only influence those who are easily led, and who are predisposed to that papers' political agenda anyway. I particularly detest The Fail, however, because it is the most unashamed rabble rouser of them all. What makes them worse is their pretensions towards being a "serious" newspaper. In reality, the only difference between it, and The Sun, is that the tits are not confined to page three. They're writing on virtually every page.
They look to be at a firing range... 1 - who thinks this is newsworthy 2 - what kind of person is offended by this 3 - why should we care about such people
Guns don't kill people. Americans do. Adjoining Detroit to the south, Windsor, Canada, has less than 1/100th Detroit's gun murder rate: one every few years. I'm not such a big gun fan myself, though I've thought about getting an AK-47 and twenty boxes of ammunition on the chance it all goes to hell. I can't imagine anything I'd enjoy less than killing Bambi's mom. Except maybe killing Thumper. But a gun range? Target shooting seems like such a harmless little hobby compared to, say, playing killfest video games.
That, of course, is the old argument of the gun lobby. I still can't help believing that far fewer Americans would be killing each other if lethal weapons were not so freely available to enable them to do so.
Its true that said gun does need said dumb idiot to shoot (or bludgeon with, lol) it in order to kill someone. I would say that the UK has AT LEAST the same percentage of dumb idiots as america but our gun crime (i'm guessing) is probably much, much lower per capita because the dumb idiots can't get the guns. Its pretty difficult to go on a killing spree with a knife/cricket bat and its a lot more (i'm guessing!!!!) of a personal way to kill someone.
They are in denial about guns in the US. They charged the Boston bombers with 'using a weapon of mass destruction' (very misleading IMHO) when they have four or five incidents every year when someone goes on a gun rampage and kills 10 people or so. But I think its cultural too - the Canadians also have a high level of gun ownership (not as high of course) but per capita death from firearms is considerably lower. Anyway, regarding the original point of this thread, I said he looked like a prat because if it was all just about having a quick blat on a range you would not be wielding a weapon like that in the photo. There's more to it than that, something about (trying to) look cool because it's a military-style weapon rather than a target shooting weapon, which is why I originally thought he looked like a prat. But still don't think there's anything worth reporting, and I completely echo everything people have said here about the Daily Fail.
A bomb is a weapon of mass destruction though, Vim. It's almost the definition of a what a bomb is. The problem is that the military's definition of a WMD has become more widely used and it makes the legal one sound quite inaccurate and misleading. One of them needs to change. The US is miles ahead of everyone else in terms of gun ownership but you're right about that not being the whole picture. Switzerland has a very large number of firearms but a much lower level of gun related deaths and they were still bothered enough by it to change their rules. Cypriots own a lot of guns but have a death rate that's closer to our own than to that of the US. I think it's cultural, for the most part, but I've no idea as to what the root cause is.
The UK population is 1/5 that of the US, but our gun crime statistics are 1/40th - and, added to that, in the UK having a gun pointed at you is legally considered a minor injury to be included in statistics, in the US you have to be grazed by a buttel or pistol whipped. The dumbest thing they say is they can prove that gun control doesn't work by bringing up the Dunblane massacre - ignoring the fact the hand gun ban was enforced after that happened and we haven't had a massacre since, whilst the US has two or three a year on average.
