Cyclist shot in Cumbria

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mangaman

Guest
jonesy said:
Only up to a point. The argument that Problem A is more important than Problem B because it has a bigger number attached to it is only really relevant if we are forced to make a choice between them in some way, e.g. for resources, money, physical space etc. But apart possibly from how police time is used, or Parliamentary time, gun control isn't really in competition with road safety for anything. We can reasonably be concerned about both.

I agree - and can't put it any more elequantly, so I'll leave it to you.

Suffice to say gun killing sprees and road deaths have no correlation / connection or similarity and should be dealt with separately
 

dondare

Über Member
Location
London
mangaman said:
I agree - and can't put it any more elequantly, so I'll leave it to you.

Suffice to say gun killing sprees and road deaths have no correlation / connection or similarity and should be dealt with separately

I was wondering how many of those people who advocate a total firearms ban are opposed to speed cameras and happily text whilst driving. Further more, if about 10 people are killed on the roads every day, then there could well be a few drivers who were deploring those unnecessary killings in Cumbria yesterday who will have killed someone through their own dangerous driving today.

There is no connection or correlation at all, but why aren't road deaths regarded as being just as tragic and pointless as those others?
 

Mark_Robson

Senior Member
Road deaths are tragic but you have to accept that there is an element of risk of being involved in a RTA every time that you get into a car.
What you don't expect is to be gunned down when you leave your house to go about your everyday business.
So already stated there is no correlation between the two.
 

dondare

Über Member
Location
London
Mark_Robson said:
Road deaths are tragic but you have to accept that there is an element of risk of being involved in a RTA every time that you get into a car.
What you don't expect is to be gunned down when you leave your house to go about your everyday business.
So already stated there is no correlation between the two.
Someone who calls for stricter gun control on the grounds that a dozen or so innocent people are killed every 10 or 15 years will not accept that motor vehicle controls should be stricter because they regard 3000 deaths per year as acceptable.
As a society we can do little to prevent the "crazed gunman" but we can do a lot more to prevent the incompetent or reckless motorist and with a much greater saving of lives.
 

mangaman

Guest
dondare said:
I was wondering how many of those people who advocate a total firearms ban are opposed to speed cameras and happily text whilst driving. Further more, if about 10 people are killed on the roads every day, then there could well be a few drivers who were deploring those unnecessary killings in Cumbria yesterday who will have killed someone through their own dangerous driving today.

There is no connection or correlation at all, but why aren't road deaths regarded as being just as tragic and pointless as those others?

I agree dondare about the carnage on the roads dwarfing the odd nutter with a gun.

The fact there is no corellation/connection is the key. They're separate issues and the politicians/media can't deal with 2 complex issues at the same time

Reducing road deaths is much more important, I believe, than gun control.

That's why I want them separated.

The media/politicians will concentrate on the Cumbria killings for a while.

Now isn't the time to launch a program to reduce road deaths - it would be drowned out.
 

jonesy

Guru
dondare said:
Someone who calls for stricter gun control on the grounds that a dozen or so innocent people are killed every 10 or 15 years will not accept that motor vehicle controls should be stricter because they regard 3000 deaths per year as acceptable.
As a society we can do little to prevent the "crazed gunman" but we can do a lot more to prevent the incompetent or reckless motorist and with a much greater saving of lives.

Who is this person who holds this view?
 

dondare

Über Member
Location
London
User3143 said:

If you asked Mr. Average Person right now whether we should have tighter gun laws then they are likely to say yes. Mr. Average does not own a gun.
If you asked them whether we should have a lot more speed cameras then they are likely to say no. Mr Average knows that he sometimes drives too fast.

I'm not saying that we should ignore the problems with guns and focus only on cars because cars kill more people; but to react to rare events, however horrific, with a lot of new legislation whilst reacting to common events that are just as bad with justification and complaints when existing legislation is enforced is straining out gnats and swallowing camels.
 

mangaman

Guest
dondare said:
If you asked Mr. Average Person right now whether we should have tighter gun laws then they are likely to say yes. Mr. Average does not own a gun.
If you asked them whether we should have a lot more speed cameras then they are likely to say no. Mr Average knows that he sometimes drives too fast.

I'm not saying that we should ignore the problems with guns and focus only on cars because cars kill more people; but to react to rare events, however horrific, with a lot of new legislation whilst reacting to common events that are just as bad with justification and complaints when existing legislation is enforced is straining out gnats and swallowing camels.

I'm sure most on here would agree with all of that.

The tragedy in Cumbria on Wednesday doesn't have any bearing either way though.

Now would be the wrong time to lobby aggressively for more speed cameras / traffic cops as people are preocupied with gun control.
 

GFamily

Über Member
Location
North Cheshire
dondare said:
I was wondering how many of those people who advocate a total firearms ban are opposed to speed cameras and happily text whilst driving.

In my experience, very few.

dondare said:
There is no connection or correlation at all, but why aren't road deaths regarded as being just as tragic and pointless as those others?

What makes you think they aren't?
But if you are asking why the media doesn't make a big fuss about road deaths; that's because road deaths happen all the time.
 

dondare

Über Member
Location
London
GFamily said:
Really? How?

Enforcing existing laws would be a start. I see drivers on their mobiles everywhere, don't the police see them too? Most roads do not have speed cameras on them and speed limits are ignored, but our new Transport Secretary is opposed to cameras and it now costs Councils to put them up.
There are sufficient numbers of unlicenced, unregistered and uninsured vehicles on the roads to fill a traffic policeman's day with arrests, especially since those communities where such offences are most common are well known to them, but in the interests of "not alienating the public" the police turn a blind eye most of the time.

I wasn't intending to use this tragedy as a soapbox for anything but it seems that I am.

After Hungerford there was a public demand for stricter gun control, the Govt. duly complied, gun crime did not fall and Dunblaine was not prevented.
After Dunblaine there was a public demand for stricter gun control, the Govt. duly complied, gun crime did not fall and Whitehaven was not prevented.
After Whitehaven there is a public demand for stricter gun control....
 

mangaman

Guest
GFamily said:
But if you are asking why the media doesn't make a big fuss about road deaths; that's because road deaths happen all the time.

OK - thanks for clarifying that, whoever you are :blush:

Sorry to be sceptical but an aggressive poster steaming into P&L all guns blazing with single figure posts usually turns out to be a previously banned member. I apologise if you're a newbie.

Anyway, your argument is, the media don't make a fuss as road deaths happen all the time.

Do you not see the madness in this.

Does it happen in other areas of the media? For example if the England football team lost as many matches as possible, the media wouldn't make a big fuss as it happens all the time?

They would go ballistic. If England lose 1 game in any sport it's apocolypse now time.

If the unemployment figures rose consistenantly month on month to - I don't know 40% would the media think we'll not make a big fuss as unemployment rises all the time.

The media are, I agree, crap at reporting road deaths. That doesn't make it OK because road deaths are common, it makes the media wrong.
 

mcshroom

Bionic Subsonic
mangaman said:
The media are, I agree, crap at reporting road deaths. That doesn't make it OK because road deaths are common, it makes the media wrong.

+1 - I wonder what the affect of running every road death as a murder on the news would have on people.

People will get angry and want to ban guns because it's in general a group of other people that use them, and the ban will have no effect on their lives.

Conversely people would not like the rules on driving made more restrictive as in general they drive (and a majority break the rules of the road) and any changes to that legislation would affect them personally.

It's amazing what having a vested interest in a subject will allow people to tolerate.
 
OP
OP
StuartG

StuartG

slower but further
Location
SE London
Can I please kill this canard that there is no correlation. An innocent, unknown and non-fault person is randomly struck down in the street by an unknown person for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are many thousands in the UK each year.

On average one will be by a crazed spree gunman. The rest by a motor vehicle. The cause makes no difference if you are dead. It will not make any difference to the grieving of the family. The pointlessness is the same.

The public/media wants to be protected by the first by law - or at least this appears to be now top of our legislative agenda. We know that this is highly problematical. Whereas we know we can save many lives by legislation on road speeds and probably alcohol levels.

I, and I suspect you, don't want to be killed while standing at a bus stop or cycling along a road whether it be in Cumbria or London. That's the point. One to remember when some people call for gun control and ignore road user control.

That's why we may wish to divert this need for safety to future random street deaths we know will occur rather than legislating for a particular and idiosyncratioc gun case that has gone and may never be repeated or at least for, I hope, a good number of years.

Just a cautionary and final correlation. Deaths caused by rogue cyclists is of the same magnitude as spree killers. People here usually go bananas when such an event causes the cry for all cyclists to be licensed, taxed, tested, banned from pavement and roads ... correlation is linked to proportionality. And that is the view we should surely be thinking about right now?
 
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