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Comment by mjbeswick | Hacker News Reader

There is nothing wrong with peaceful protests, but blocking traffic and people glueing themselves to roads and trains are not passive acts. The police have been escorting just stop oil protesters for their own safety, as the public started against protester.

Why does anyone need a gun in the UK!? The US has 3.6 gun related deaths per 100,000 people, while the UK has 0.3. Politician in the US would have you believe knife crime makes up for the lack of gun crime, but the truth is that the US has 4 times rate of violent crime than the UK. There really is no legitimate need for civilians to own handguns.

It's true that the UK has a large number of surveillance cameras in towns and cities, but that's more of a reflection in the cuts to number of police over the years.

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One might argue that having guns for self-defense is crucial because the police may not always be immediately available, especially in rural areas. Individuals have the duty and right to take proactive measures to protect themselves and their families in emergency situations. That becomes even more important in the face of the police cuts that you yourself mention.

One might also note the positive aspects of shooting sports, such as target shooting or competitive events, which can foster discipline, concentration, and responsible firearm handling. They provide an avenue for skill development, camaraderie among diverse groups of people from different backgrounds, and the enjoyment of a traditional and culturally significant pastime. Responsible participation in these activities contributes to the overall well-being and mental health of individuals involved, bolstering the strength and cohesiveness of the UK overall

Are there any statistics about the UK and how often a personal weapon was crucial for self defense? For me it seems like a rare occurrence, but I don't know.

> shooting sports

I currently live in Denmark where we have some of the very strict weapon laws. No switchblades, no throwing stars, no carpenter knife for carpenters on person unless he drive between jobs sites etc.

And we still have sports shooting. Even with no license I know a gun range that is inside a normal school where we had a team building exercise :) Was fun shooting.

You can't do that currently in the UK or what?

Yeah you can do all sorts of sports shooting in the UK, people do clay pigeon shooting or target shooting or even hunt birds (pheasant and grouse) and the like in the UK. We just have sane (or if you're American, draconian) controls on people owning guns.

Handguns must be stored in a locker at the shooting range, I believe. You’re not allowed to take them home.

Farmers can keep a shotgun for pest control, so it’s not a total ban on all home ownership of guns. But there is not seemed to be any legitimate purpose for owning a handgun in your home. Ditto an AR.

> There is nothing wrong with peaceful protests, but blocking traffic and people glueing themselves to roads and trains are not passive acts. The police have been escorting just stop oil protesters for their own safety, as the public started against protester.

Heaven forbid their safety should be in danger, they might get trampled by a horse.

I think peaceful protests are great, and from time to time civil disobedience is needed to get the point across. But while blocking main highways with your protests might get attention to your cause, I think it will backfire with the common people just trying to get to work associating your cause with being the reason you got fired from your job for being late. It's very short-sighted and self destructive to any progress.

depends on the context, an airport expansion? yeah dumb, protesting something as huge as genocide or climate change? then the inconvenience cause will be a fraction of what climate change will cause (or genocide is)

common people are often short-sighted and self-destructive to their own progress

How is protesting an airport expansion not a protest against climate change?

People always say that they're ok with protests as long as they don't cause them any inconvenience, and I think they're mostly being honest with what they feel, but I also think that protests are about generating mindshare, and if they're freely ignorable, they don't work. It sucks, but the average person isn't going to care about something that doesn't affect them, and sometimes the best way to make them care (enough to actually look into the issue) is to make it affect them. And even if they go into it with a perspective of "Wow these protesters are annoying assholes", if they look into the cause and see a bunch of people online saying "We don't think our allies should have blocked the freeway, but also look how fucked up this is" enough people might be converted to make the disruption worth it.

It's super easy to say "this was bad tactics because I personally was not converted" (and I'm very prone to feeling that way with irritating or intrusive advertisements), but I don't think it's actually a very useful way of thinking about things.

I agree with you on principle, but in reality it seems like it just gives the media more ammo to villainize the cause even more. Or worse, block ambulances from getting to where they need to be. I highly doubt the family of a person who died because they couldn't get to the hospital, or got fired from their job is ever going to look positively on that cause.

Shutdown a courthouse or government building or something instead, I guess is my point.

> Shutdown a courthouse or government building or something instead, I guess is my point.

That's reasonable, but you also know that you can always come up with a justification for why this protest in particular was unacceptable.

Shutdown a courthouse? You're ruining people's weddings, you're preventing trials right before the statute of limitations expires, you're keeping people in jail for longer than they had to otherwise and then what if they commit suicide because jail is so bad?

People (justifiably) really hate being inconvenienced, but that's also kind of the point of this kind of protest.

>The police have been escorting just stop oil protesters for their own safety, as the public started against protester.

I didn't agree with their blocking of roads, but there has been a hysteria whipped up online and by tabloids about them. to the point where a small minority of people think being late is a valid excuse to run their SUV over these protestors.

Go to comments on news websites covering these stories and you'll usually see a few suggestions to run them over.

I think you figures are a bit off for gun deaths. The ones here are 10.84 per 100,000 in the US, 0.24 in the UK. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-death...

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