Rising gun crime fear - Sydney

[Township75]

THE daylight robbery of a man at gunpoint near a busy train station has renewed fears of a rise in gun crime in Sydney.

SNIP

New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said more than 40,000 weapons were seized in major crackdowns across the state last year.

Mr Moroney said a major audit and compliance check of all firearms in NSW, combined with the State Government's gun buyback, had seized and destroyed 43,000 weapons.

A number of private security firms had also closed following a police audit of the industry and its weapons, he said.

rest of the story is here:
http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,12208981%5E1702,00.html

if the link isn't working try this:
http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/

and access the story from there (under breaking news)

[iverglas]

1. my goodness gracious me!

Paul said he thought the mugger was joking at first.

"I thought maybe it was a finger or something on my neck, but not actually a pistol," he said today.

You'd think with all that gun crime going around, he would have been a little less credulous, no?

A city with a population of nearly 4,000,000, and a mugging makes the front page.

Just imagine what they'd do with "dog bites man"!

Just imagine if a single firearm mugging made the front page in Los Angeles, and prompted government opposition leaders (who have no interest at all in criticizing the government, of course) to say (as that one said) that "gun crime was surging" ... or that their city "will end up like Los Angeles if we keep going the way we're going" ...

Too bad that if Sydney kept going the way it's going, that opposition leader's great-grandchildren won't be around to see it end up like Los Angeles.

[MyMouth]

2. I don't believe it....

This story has to be fabricated. Banning guns reduces crime, especially crimes with guns.

[iverglas]

3. your mouth

to dog's ear.

Banning guns reduces crime, especially crimes with guns.

You may be right. Who knows?

Did you have a crystal ball to tell us how many firearms crimes would have occurred in Australia if guns had not been banned?

Oh wait ... they weren't ...

[Lefty48197]

8. Now wait a minute. I thought the poster was saying that guns had been

banned in Australia, and that it was causing a surge in crime? Was it one of those smoke and mirror posts designed to make certain people fear that their guns were about to be taken away?

[jody]

4. How dare you cast doubt on the preachings of the Scary Brady Bunch. n/t

[iverglas]

5. isn't it just so cute the way he says that?

"Scary Brady Bunch". I guess it's supposed to be funny. Somebody should point out that while something may be funny, at least to some people, the first time it's said, the four hundredth time it's said it's just really just sad and boooorrrrring.

On a quickie search, I find well over a dozen, maybe a couple of dozen instances (I got even boreder) of this little bit of wittery or its variation, "Scary Brady", evidently referring to the individual in question (and hey -- one that's even not under jody's byline, or in the headline to one of jody's well-known contentless posts; one other person seems to have found it cute enough to adopt). And what's this "Fiendstein" business that it's often found in tandem with? (I take that to be the intended spelling -- but why is it just as often spelled "Feindstein"? So many questions ... so little interest.)

Are kindergartenish jokes about people's names really that worthy of repeating over and over and over?

It's reminding me of the kid I sat across the aisle from on the train a couple of years ago. Five hours, which would have been bad enough without the kid, since I'd fallen down stairs on the way to the train and lost half the skin and flesh on my left shin and was already in rather nasty pain. But no, the kid had to sit there banging her metal armrest up and down, and, over and over and over and over, in a high-pitched excited voice, telling her mother a joke about how the mother went to the fridge and did this and that AND THEN YOU CUT THE CHEESE!!!

It wasn't funny. Not to an adult.

Any chance we could cut this cheese? Please.

[Retired AF Dem]

6. Sounds like the kid has more basic motor skills

than again it could be old age catching up.

[iverglas]

7. yeah, eh?

Fiendstein ... Feindstein ... ¿quién sabe?

[Retired AF Dem]

9. The kid sounds pretty talented

She made it up the stairs, using shorter legs than you and didn't skin her shins. She managed to aggravate you and wasn't even trying.

[iverglas]

10. ah

Gee, I never would have guessed that that was what you were talking about. Good job of explaining your joke, though. You must have found it very entertaining. Of course, I'm still wondering why.

And me, I'm still wondering about that Fiendstein/Feindstein business. The kid wasn't sitting there screeching AND THEN YOU CUT THE KEYS, completely eliminating the entire point of her unfunny-in-the-first-place joke, so I guess she just beats hell out of just about everybody here.

Oh, by the way, I don't think the kid in question has ever in her life made it either up or down the concrete steps in the front of my house, which I wasn't going up anyway since I was already up and was going down. And I'm pretty sure, actually, that she was rather intent on annoying, it's just that I and the other people around her weren't her intended annoyees.


damn typos.

[Pert_UK]

11. Oh I see...the FEAR of gun crime is rising.......how do we stop that?

It's terrible, isn't it, the increasing number of people who fear an increase in gun crime?

Call me crazy (YOU'RE CRAZY!) but I'd rather think about whether gun crime is actually increasing, not whether people FEAR that it is.

Oddly, Labour has a problem with this in the UK - school standards are actually improving, as are standards in the National Health Service. Even crime is actually not running out of control, despite what the scare stories say........Yet most people in the UK believe that everything is getting worse...Labour just can't win.

I heard a Conservative MP today talking about how "You aren't safe to walk the streets".....This was news to me, given that I've been walking the streets for over 20 years with no real negative experiences to show for it (touch wood).

[anonymous44]

12. yawn

the cops will protect them

[Pert_UK]

13. Another sensible and useful comment from someone with...

no interest in or understanding of the story.

Thanks for coming, you've been great.....

:eyes: