The UK has not had a school shooting since 1996, yet the US has had approximately 165 since Sandy Hook. Why?

You forgot your Bush. The greatest war criminal in recent times

May Christ forgive you for supporting death

Hold it right there, Buster...Americans believe we have a God given right to arm ourselves in order to kill people and we try to demonstrate that right to kill people with great regularity !

Thriftymaid, You have a frightening attitude, I hope you care about people?

Surely!

Have you ever been called  a self righteous buffoon?

You keep believing that BS if it makes you feel better.

The actual statistics that include ALL violent crimes, not just firearms crimes, paint a very different picture.

https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/uk-violent-crime-rate-eight-times-higher-than-the-us/

And while that's for 2011 the data shows that the incidence of violent crimes is on the increase.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/12112024/Violent-crime-jumps-27-in-new-figures.html

Good luck with that, by the way.

Oh, don't talk rubbish, Salt. If you had bothered to read the ONS figures I gave you, you would have seen that they ARE the figures for all types of violent crime, not just for gun crime; I also stated that in what I wrote. Go back and read it again! You should stop getting your so-called "facts" from NRA sponsored websites. The ONS figures are only for England & Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland are counted separately. I used to be able to find similar figures from the Scottish Parliament. I did find this account of a debate in the Parliament: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/sp/?id=2016-01-06.6.0 I'm trying to find the figures for Northern Ireland. I found this one which shows that overall crime, not just violence, is going down in the province: http://www.nisra.gov.uk/publications/default.asp4.htm I am having some browser problems, so I will make that do for now. I will try again some other time.

Oh, and as this is about school shootings, NRA president Wayne La Pierre changed his mind about guns in schools between Columbine and Sandy Hook, didn't he? As shown here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/wayne-vs-wayne-when-the-nra-chief-endorsed-gun-control-in-schools-20130131

BOO!!

Oh, please. You're the one with bad data. Many of your own newspapers and many European newspapers are reporting that the real crime statistics in the UK are much worse than you would like the world to believe. You potentially have a murder rate that is worse than the USA's. And let's not talk about rape, robbery with a weapon (knives, for example) and assault and battery. And let's not forget that guns are STILL in the hands of criminals in the UK and still being used by them.

Your NISRA is a the official "polling" arm of your idiot, lying government; has nothing to do with real data. Next you'll be offering to back up their data with something from the Ministry of Silly Walks. You could always go with data from your "Home Office", but wait . . . they "lie" too. The data that they report, unlike the USA, only includes convictions, not actual incidents. And many of those unreported "incidents" are further covered up by corners that only write "narrative" autopsies with no definitive cause of death.  Here we report every "suspicious" deaths as homicides until proven to the contrary.

So go peddle you bag of lies somewhere else. I'm know you line of BS.

Yea, the Rolling Stone WEB site is where I always go for accurate, concise reporting. Your nonsense is so weak that you have to resort to, basically, a tabloid.

Salty, the ONS was founded to be an independant body to hold goverment to account. For Northern Ireland and Scotland, there is no similar independant body, so the government figures are the only ones available. Do you dispute that Wayne La Pierre said what was quoted in the Rolling Stone? The gun and violent crime rate of the UK is low. Kindly stop lying about my country to prop up your own ridiculous argument!

OK, but since the early 1970s, the UK has had a crapload of bomb attacks on shopping centers, transit, theaters et al by the wonderful IRA folks. What's the difference?

And the US has over 300 million people compared to your 64 million too.   I wonder if shootings in the US are just more "newsworthy", for some reason.  How about all the IRA bombings?  

Stu and Lynn, I would have thought the paramilitaries, on both sides, in Northern Ireland are a perfect illustration as to why guns need to be kept out of the hands of unsuitable people. How did we achieve peace in the province? By adding more guns, as in the NRA argument? No. We convinced them to give up their weapons.

Who convinced whom to give up what? The IRA killed Ronan Kerr with a car bomb as recently as 2011.

That's rather interesting OS.  Could you supply some examples of areas of US culture that supply, promote or otherwise enable this which are not shared with other nations?

A fair question, Stu. The killings and attempted acts since the start of the peace process have been committed by breakaway groups, such as the Real IRA or the Continuity IRA. The mainstream IRA remains committed to the peace process. Unfortunately, not all their members agreed with what their leaders and Sinn Fein were doing, and formed these factions. They are stubborn and dangerous, but small in number, and the consensus of opinion is still that Northern Ireland is a lot more peacefull now than back in the day.

Hey, as Salty doesn't seem to like Rolling Stone, here are a few more articles that also speak of La Pierre's change of views between Columbine and Sandy Hook. http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/04/02/what-the-media-should-know-about-the-nra-guns-a/193402 http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/01/16/1456051/after-columbine-shooting-nra-embraced-gun-safety-measures-it-now-opposes/ http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/2593937.html

Why does it matter who did it?

Read what I said again, Stu. Everyone agrees Northern Ireland has very little violence now, compared to the old days.
Let me address a question to you. More people in America have been killed by other Americans with guns since 9/11 than through terrorism, yet while laws were passed to tackle terrorism (which cut holes in your fourth and fifth amendment rights), your country still fails to pass gun control laws, citing the second amendment. Why don't you do something about the violence in your own country?

Oh, yeah. Sure they're unbiased.

Yet three more extreme left-wing publications . . . they're even more questionable in their political spin that is the Stone.

Another nice try though . . .

Carrying a knife is illegal in the UK?

Maybe there's a serious violence problem in the UK in that the people there can't be trusted with anything that "might" be usable as a weapon.No way do I want to expose myself or my family to THAT kind of environment.

Personally, I've carried a knife for the last 50-years, have one on me right now. Most of my friends carry knives too. Very useful tool in day-to-day life. Started to carry a knife in grammar school, part of the Cub Scout uniform (you know, that organization that used to promote values of community decency).

What the devil has the UK come to? Pretty sad.