838 violent incidents in 107 days on London buses

In article ,
"Pat" wrote:


The point is not that you find this a reasonable and acceptable rate
of crime, but that no individual in the UK is allowed the means of
self-defense.

Please describe "self-defense." Is this a modern code word for "firearm"?
Can one not defend oneself by means other than firearms? Is it firearms or
nothing at all? I see this "I have the right to defend myself" a lot, but
ultimately, it means---"blow the head off of the sucker who is bothering
me."

To be fair, if someone's using a weapon such as a knife, or if there is
a great disparity of force between the assailant and the victim, there
really isn't much except a firearm, that will do you any good. Unless
you're an expert in Krav Maga or something ...

--
socpla_99

Following up to Pat

Please describe "self-defense." Is this a modern code word for "firearm"?
Can one not defend oneself by means other than firearms? Is it firearms or
nothing at all? I see this "I have the right to defend myself" a lot, but
ultimately, it means---"blow the head off of the sucker who is bothering
me."

just avoid buses.
--
"Mike....."(not "Mike")
remove clothing to email

On 1 Jun, 09:15, strabo wrote:
Seems pretty reasonable - with 2-3 million bus passengers per day (c.
2 billion journeys per year, most of which are returns), a 0.0084%
chance of being a victim of any crime, and a 0.00042% chance of being
a victim of serious crime, are pretty good odds.

The point is not that you find this a reasonable and acceptable rate
of crime, but that no individual in the UK is allowed the means of
self-defense.

That's strange; I thought we were allowed to use reasonable force up
to and including the infliction of fatal injury in self-defence.
Because that's what English law[*] says.

You see, the freedom to exercise individual rights is important to
normal people. Self-defense is an individual right.

Jolly good; I'm glad you agree.

Unfortunately the British seem to have no guts and refuse to stand
up to their tyrannical cops and MPs.

The tyrannical cops who enforce the laws passed by the MPs who the
people voted for? Damn those democratically elected tyrants to hell!

Now, what I propose is to take you on a circuit of London or New York
and expose you to repeated assaults such as described. You may of course
flail and scream and maybe get a punch in now and then but I suspect you
will have a change of attitude.

Hmm. Are you suggesting I'm not exposed to such assaults? That's
strange, as I live in a fairly rough part of inner London and I travel
on public transport at least twice a day; before that I did the same
in a different fairly rough part of inner London; and before that I
did the same in a fairly rough part of Manchester.

I've been successfully mugged once, which made me more wary about
talking on a mobile phone loudly in public while drunk; and I've faced
various idiots of various sorts in plenty of encounters that hadn't
led to violence. I've learned that the best kind of self-defence is to
be aware of your surroundings, to treat others with respect while not
showing fear - and to run the hell away in the very few situations
where that doesn't work.

If concealed carrying of pistols were legal in England and I had one,
then it would've been no help against the chap who mugged me at
knifepoint, and it would also have been no help in any of the other
situations (as it is, I got out of them without injury or losing any
property; the only thing a gun could have added would have been to
harm someone else, which at best would cause annoying paperwork and
chats with policemen that I'd rather not have [**]).
[*] there's no such thing as UK law and I'm not at all sure how the
self-defence picture works in Northern Ireland or Scotland.

[**] I assume that even in concealed-carry jurisdictions Stateside, if
you shoot someone on a bus then the homicide squad are going to give
you a reasonably serious grilling to make sure it was self-defence and
not revenge/robbery/random nutjobbery disguised as self-defence...

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

John B wrote:
On 1 Jun, 09:15, strabo wrote:
Seems pretty reasonable - with 2-3 million bus passengers per day (c.
2 billion journeys per year, most of which are returns), a 0.0084%
chance of being a victim of any crime, and a 0.00042% chance of being
a victim of serious crime, are pretty good odds.
The point is not that you find this a reasonable and acceptable rate
of crime, but that no individual in the UK is allowed the means of
self-defense.

That's strange; I thought we were allowed to use reasonable force up
to and including the infliction of fatal injury in self-defence.
Because that's what English law[*] says.

You see, the freedom to exercise individual rights is important to
normal people. Self-defense is an individual right.

Jolly good; I'm glad you agree.

Unfortunately the British seem to have no guts and refuse to stand
up to their tyrannical cops and MPs.

The tyrannical cops who enforce the laws passed by the MPs who the
people voted for? Damn those democratically elected tyrants to hell!

Now, what I propose is to take you on a circuit of London or New York
and expose you to repeated assaults such as described. You may of course
flail and scream and maybe get a punch in now and then but I suspect you
will have a change of attitude.

Hmm. Are you suggesting I'm not exposed to such assaults? That's
strange, as I live in a fairly rough part of inner London and I travel
on public transport at least twice a day; before that I did the same
in a different fairly rough part of inner London; and before that I
did the same in a fairly rough part of Manchester.

I've been successfully mugged once, which made me more wary about
talking on a mobile phone loudly in public while drunk; and I've faced
various idiots of various sorts in plenty of encounters that hadn't
led to violence. I've learned that the best kind of self-defence is to
be aware of your surroundings, to treat others with respect while not
showing fear - and to run the hell away in the very few situations
where that doesn't work.

If concealed carrying of pistols were legal in England and I had one,
then it would've been no help against the chap who mugged me at
knifepoint, and it would also have been no help in any of the other
situations (as it is, I got out of them without injury or losing any
property; the only thing a gun could have added would have been to
harm someone else, which at best would cause annoying paperwork and
chats with policemen that I'd rather not have [**]).

[*] there's no such thing as UK law and I'm not at all sure how the
self-defence picture works in Northern Ireland or Scotland.

[**] I assume that even in concealed-carry jurisdictions Stateside, if
you shoot someone on a bus then the homicide squad are going to give
you a reasonably serious grilling to make sure it was self-defence and
not revenge/robbery/random nutjobbery disguised as self-defence...

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org

Better to have a reasonably serious grilling than lay dead in the
street. You write like a professional victim. You're fortunate that your
mugger let you live. Maybe you should contact him in a classified ad,
and send him a nice present.

On Jun 3, 11:55 pm, Road taco wrote:
If concealed carrying of pistols were legal in England and I had one,
then it would've been no help against the chap who mugged me at
knifepoint, and it would also have been no help in any of the other
[snip]

Better to have a reasonably serious grilling than lay dead in the
street. You write like a professional victim. You're fortunate that your
mugger let you live. Maybe you should contact him in a classified ad,
and send him a nice present.

And you write like a professional gung-ho lunatic. The chap who mugged
me at knifepoint was able to do so because I wasn't paying attention
to my surroundings. So he was able to grab me and threaten me with the
knife before I'd realised what was going on - at which point it was
too late to do anything. If I'd had a gun, the only difference would
have been that he'd have stolen my gun...

And no, I'm not fortunate that my mugger let me live, since a
vanishingly small proportion of muggings (in the UK at least) involve
any physical harm at all being inflicted by the perpetrator, much less
murder.

None of this is to trivialise the impact that mugging can have on some
people - but simply put, if you're in a state where you're
particularly vulnerable to mugging (whether that's because you're
elderly and infirm, blind drunk or completely unaware of your
surroundings), then a weapon is no bloody use at all unless you shoot
anyone who comes anywhere near you while looking a bit dodgy. And if
you aren't in such a state, you're extremely unlikely to get mugged
anyway, so the weapon is a waste of time...

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org