Adele Bellis lost an ear in an acid attack in Suffolk in 2014. (Photo: DailyMail)
British law enforcement officials have learned this year what the pro-gun community has been preaching for decades: guns don’t hurt people—people hurt people.
Attacks involving corrosive fluids like drain cleaner are on the rise in England, apparently as the result of a crackdown on guns and knives, according to a report from USA Today.
The most recent attack occurred at a packed nightclub in which twenty people suffered chemical burns after someone threw a harmful substance into the crowd.
“I ended up in the middle of this fight and I was thrown over the barrier near the bar with all my stuff,” Prue Fraser told the London Evening Standard.
“Getting up I could feel my arm was burning. It was like boiling water had been poured over me but like I was cut as well. I have never experienced anything like it, it was excruciating. We saw six other girls who had it in their eyes, faces and chest areas they were screaming and crying.”
In London, attacks like this jumped 74% from 261 in 2015 to 454 in 2016—a huge spike from 166 in 2014. Across the country, such attacks increased 30% between 2012 and 2015, according to the London Times.
Daniel Rotariu of Leicester in central England was blinded in both eyes and suffered burns to 32% of his body when his lover, Katie Leong, threw sulfuric acid on him as he slept following an argument last July.
“I have nightmares. … I see it every day, every hour, like it was yesterday,” Rotariu said in his victim-impact statement in court. “More than half of my life I’m gonna have to live it like this. … Sometimes I wish I was dead and I didn’t survive.”
Firearms are incredibly difficult to obtain in England, especially in urban centers like London. As a result, people have turned to corrosive chemicals that can be bought from many stores without any form of registration.
“(Corrosive substances) are extremely easy to get hold of (in Britain). You can buy them from hardware stores and don’t have to register why you’re purchasing it or what you want to use it for,” Simon Harding, a professor of criminology at London’s Middlesex University, told USA Today.
“If you throw (acid) in someone’s face it’s going to affect their eyes and eyesight so you have a high chance of getting away with it. It’s a very easy thing to do. You can ride up to someone on a bike and throw it at them.”
Regulating firearms, it seems, hasn’t solved the underlying problem of violence and crime in England. Passing gun control laws hasn’t made people virtuous. It has only prevented law-abiding citizens from being able to effectively defend themselves against those who want to do them harm.
You can bet the acid attacks are Mus-slim related & instigated against the \”Infidels!\” When Islam gets a couple of more years in on terrorising & killing European people the demand to get their guns back will skyrocket! This is a NASTY CULT & needs to be eradicated! If someone tells you they are a Good Mus-slim Cult member then you should run down & purchase a LOTTO TICKET because the odds are you will win the LOTTO before you find a Mus-slim that tells the truth!! GOOD LUCK & GOD BLESS YOU!!
Violence should be seen as a “miner’s canary” for declining societal tolerance, but rather than even attempt to understand that these same people professing to have the managerial acumen necessary to manage a large population are, in fact, dumb as a post, those politicians and leaders keep passing the blame onto thousands of individuals in hopes that no one will notice how truly incompetent they are.
True. The so-called leaders care nothing about the welfare of the people they are supposed to SERVE (not boss around). These “leaders” need to have their pants pulled down, so to speak, so that they are exposed to the same dangers that the people experience. A government that would disarm its citizens is not a government, but a tyranny that needs to be replaced. Ghandilike protests can restore the people’s rights. Also, siccing the criminals on the corrupt politicians wouldn’t hurt–to give them a dose of reality.
Murders in UK 2016, 540. Population 60M
Murders in USA 2016 15,400, Pop. 300M.
So population is x5, murder rate is x28.
Anybody with simple math skills can see this is not an argument the pro gun lobby should be trying to make. Gun ownership for private citizens makes sense in USA only because the genie is out of the bottle. Doesn’t make sense in UK where ownership has been held in check for centuries. Cops still don’t need gun for most duties in UK. They’re very happy with that.
Trying to use cases like this doesn’t help our case.
Regardless of murder rates, people always have the right to arm themselves. Period.
Are you certain of those figures? British law defines “murder”, “manslaughter”, and “accidental death” differently from American law, and I’ve heard plenty of Britons complain bitterly that the police and courts there downgrade “murder” arrests just to make their figures look good. American cops and courts, contrarily, tend to upgrade charges, often piling on as many charges as possible, so as to keep the convicted in prison and off the streets as long as possible — and also, to be blunt, so they can appeal for more money at budget-assessment time.
I can only find figures for 2014 but in that year, there were 11,900 murders in the US but only 8,100 with firearms.
So about 75% of murders were due to firearms.
On the other hand, firearms were used between 1.5 and 2.5 million times to defend law-abiding citizens against criminals.
I’ll keep my guns and you can keep your unarmed bobbies, if you please. And gun ownership in the UK has not been heavily controlled for hundreds of years. The really draconian laws started about mid-way through the 20th Century.
Derek, Why don;t you exercise simple math skills like rate per 100,00. While I question your numbers, in comparing murder rates you calculate by per 100,000 of population. UK rate .9 per 100,000 people, US rate 5.1 per 100,000 so the murder rate is not 28 times higher in US vs UK, its about 5 times higher. Get some education!
Not only are Britons held defenseless in the case of attacks, they are now subject to acid being thrown in their faces.
England, like Europe, doesn’t have a “terrorism” problem, it has an Islamic problem. England and the EU opened their doors to a Muslim horde that will never share or respect the cultural core values of western civilization. Islam is nothing more than 6th Century barbarism masquerading as the “religion of peace.” Ruled by Sharia Law, Islam is not a religion, it is a theocracy that seeks to make the world its caliphate. Islam does not integrate into cultures, it replaces them. Its Koran commands it to do so by any means possible. Political-correctness and liberal “progressivism” can never change this fact. The terrorism in England, France and the rest of Europe is just a prelude to what is to come when Muslims become a majority in these countries. The world will rue the day it allowed this evil ideology to infect its nations. Barbarism in the name of a pedophile “prophet.” All the more reason to keep the “religion of peace” in the sandbox “Allah” provided it and far from America’s shores. Islam belongs in the Dark Ages, not the USA. If the western world does not want to commit cultural suicide and be “fundamentally transformed” into another Islamic hell hole, it must purge the scourge of Islam from its nations. Thank God and our forefathers for the Second Amendment.
Grant, You are 100% CORRECT on your assertion! Mus-slim\’s are A CULT & an EVIL ONE AT THAT! They even HATE each other & are NO BETTER THAN GYPSY\’S! They will rip one another off for a mere gain of little. All of them should be FED to STARVING HOGS!!!!
Many saints and popes have condemned Islam for what it is: unGodly, meaning of the Devil.
OMG, is it really that easy to buy corrosive substances in England? If those English love to regulate firearms, then why don’t they try regulating the sale of these acids?!
No kitchen knives or sticks allowed as well! Wait! There’s more: vehicles of any stripe, rocks, bricks, bats, and don’t forget those nasty fists, eobows, and feet.
Naturally, no mention of the perpetrators. Any of them caught? As a contributor above noted, acid is how Arab Muslim men deliver punishment to women they are unable to completely control. I suppose England could outlaw drain cleaner and industrial solvents, just like they have done to firearms. They could also outlaw screwdrivers, yard tools, all knives, sharp sticks and rocks. Finally they may realize, it’s Islam that should have been outlawed, for the behavior it encourages.
The whole article missed the point. The woman featured in the article was still alive because the perpetrator had no gun go kill her with.
In France they only had 1800 deaths (with terrorism) last year and the U.S. had 33,000. Roughly over 18 times the deaths. Could we decrease unnecessary firearms deaths without banning guns? The answer is yes and its already been done in many countries.1. All guns would have to be locked up in approved heavy duty safes and defense guns would have to have a trigger lock or small desk safe if children were living in the house.2. All gun owners would have to install approved security alarm systems which would cut way down on stolen guns.3. All sales of all guns would have to be vetted which would dry up overnight the tremendous flow of second hand guns from States with lax laws into States that have strict laws on second hand gun sales.None of these laws would confiscate or outlaw the sale of any types of weapons already legal for sale and use. As history has proven these laws work in reducing gun homicides, and accidental deaths, especially with children, and crime with illegal guns. Statistics prove one child in the U.S. dies every other day due to gun accidents. Such new laws are long overdue as most other civilized nations have had such laws for decades. George Busch recommended such laws be passed and he was a Republican. Its perhaps the only good idea he ever cam up with in his years in office.
Okay, now back to your safe space under your Bernie Sanders poster.
Few of the gun murders were caused by legal gun owners. Half of that figure consists of suicides. Criminals in heavily gun controlled cities like NY and Chicago are the ones who commit the crimes. Heavily armed states like Vermont and New Hampshire have almost no gun violence. If blacks and hispanics were removed from the equation, violent crime would drop by about 95%; this isn’t racism, it’s just fact.
Wake up you “Libtard” do some research before you go blabbing your pie-hole. These laws already exist. The law abiding individual is not the one committing the crimes its the unlawful morons who do not care one bit of the comments you have posted. And as for the “Whole Article Missed the Point” remark… read it again and try and understand the part where the man states he would rather have “Died” than live without his face, eyes, and constant pain suffering.
First of all you have to compare apples to apples and let’s try to make them the same size while we’re at it. The United States has almost 4times the population as France and your comparing terrorism deaths to 33,000 deaths. This number which you want the readers to believe is terrorism is merely a rough number of all fatal shooting per year in the U.S. Within that number are shootings which take place against people who have total disregard for our fellow man, woman and child and have fatally died at the hand of someone defending their family. This is why statistics mean little if nothing when compiled inaccurately. You have made perfect comparison of apples to oranges along with variable sizes as well.
Next we have been enlightened to the security issue which all gun owners are lacking in. Here I will make my own comparison of gun safety to auto safety. “In 2010, there were an estimated 5,419,000 crashes (30,296 fatal crashes), killing 32,999 and injuring 2,239,000 and around 2,000 kids under 16 years old die every year due to traffic collisions. Records indicate that there have been a total of 9,613,732 motor vehicle fatalities in the United States from 1899 to 2013”. (Wikipedia)
“In 2010, 67% of all homicides in the U.S. were committed using a firearm. In 2012, there were 8,855 total firearm-related homicides in the US, with 6,371 of those attributed to handguns. In 2012, 64% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides. In 2010, there were 19,392 firearm-related suicides, and 11,078 firearm-related homicides in the U.S. In 2010, 358 murders were reported involving a rifle while 6,009 were reported involving a handgun; another 1,939 were reported with an unspecified type of firearm”. (Wikipedia)
Automobile accidents surprisingly have almost the same number of deaths as guns create. Why is it that with all the safety features that are already built into cars they still kill people? It’s because people avoid a lot of the safety features and laws that require them to be used along with avoidance of the fines they have to pay. I know what we need to do; we need to take all the cars off the streets. We should pass the laws right now to limit the manufactures to build automobiles that can go no faster than 10 miles per hour as to avoid any type of bodily injury that can be sustained from a high speed crash. This nation will not only have more people alive from this law but it will also sustain a greener environment as well. Who am I kidding we’re not going to get rid of any cars or guns. Even if all the cars and guns were rounded up and destroyed people will still die by the hands of another and the numbers at first may be low but they will rise as we develop our new ways to kill, it’s what we do. We all know that Wikipedia just as some people’s statistics are not a reliable source but I used it anyway as within the pages of Wikipedia you will find all the reliable sources to back up any statistics I have quoted here.
If we all carried guns and everyone knew it the criminal would think more than twice before he or she decided to use it in the wrong manner.
Bibliographic details for “Gun violence in the United States”
Page name: Gun violence in the United States
Author: Wikipedia contributors
Publisher: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
Date of last revision: 29 April 2017 08:39 UTC
Date retrieved: 5 May 2017 15:16 UTC
Permanent link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gun_violence_in_the_United_States&oldid=777792754
Primary contributors: Revision history statistics
Page Version ID: 777792754
Bibliographic details for “List of motor vehicle deaths in U.S. by year”
Page name: List of motor vehicle deaths in U.S. by year
Author: Wikipedia contributors
Publisher: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
Date of last revision: 29 April 2017 16:48 UTC
Date retrieved: 5 May 2017 15:31 UTC
Permanent link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year&oldid=777842091
Primary contributors: Revision history statistics
Page Version ID: 777842091
Gee cisco; Thanks for your moronic spew of total idiocy and stupidity ;
1. The woman SHOULD NOT be alive; she is a slime ball and at a minimum should have BOTH her eyes removed and denied a guide dog.
2.Your “statistics” are the usual bloom butt anti-gun bullshyte and made up crap; SOME DAY, bother to take a look at the difference in populations.
3. IF your liberal morons and left winger judges and prosecutors would FOLLOW the LAW and lock the criminals away for a lot longer when they use a firearm the crime rate and shootings would drop. It is suppose to be an automatic 5 year ADDED sentence, yet the liberal morons trade that for a quick conviction.
4. We MUST stop allowing the ALIEN INVADERS into this country and when caught KICK their ASSES out; MANY of the shootings are from that group.
5. Re: Gun Laws– Hey jackass, go take a look at the shooting records in CHICAGO where they have some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, ditto, Baltimore, Cleveland and every other city controlled by the anti-gun morons in the dimocrap party.
6. Finally, Buzz off BACK to your “safe space” in the bathroom, fish some brown play dough out of the toilet and amuse yourself—-OH, look for your brains in that toilet bowl too or did you already flush them down??
The government has no business what I lock up in my safe or even if I have a safe. This thuggish micromanaging of people’s lives occurs in freedom-loathing (mostly politicians, bureaucrats, sheeple) countries like Australia. This crap is unAmerican. Cisco Kid is no friend of mine. He sounds like he is one of Bloombergs’s/Soros’ hired guns (oops, I mean shills).
The whole article missed the point. The woman featured in the article was still alive because the perpetrator had no gun go kill her with.
In France they only had 1800 deaths (with terrorism) last year and the U.S. had 33,000. Roughly over 18 times the deaths. Could we decrease unnecessary firearms deaths without banning guns? The answer is yes and its already been done in many countries.
1. All guns would have to be locked up in approved heavy duty safes and defense guns would have to have a trigger lock or small desk safe if children were living in the house.
2. All gun owners would have to install approved security alarm systems which would cut way down on stolen guns.
3. All sales of all guns would have to be vetted which would dry up overnight the tremendous flow of second hand guns from States with lax laws into States that have strict laws on second hand gun sales.
None of these laws would confiscate or outlaw the sale of any types of weapons already legal for sale and use. As history has proven these laws work in reducing gun homicides, and accidental deaths, especially with children, and crime with illegal guns. Statistics prove one child in the U.S. dies every other day due to gun accidents. Such new laws are long overdue as most other civilized nations have had such laws for decades. George Busch recommended such laws be passed and he was a Republican. Its perhaps the only good idea he ever cam up with in his years in office.
Cisco……one major detail you are leaving out. Population. France has a population of around 66 million, the good old USA has a population of about 321 million. Reasonably speaking, the death rate should be higher in the USA vs. France….
This good to see you have been blindly swallowing the skewed “facts” that have been spoon fed to you by the mainstream media. This is America. If you choose to be a defenceless victim, that’s your right. You can parrot your “facts” to the rest of the politically correct lemmings that prefer to be victims.
Cisco isn’t leaving out just one important detail. This is what happens when you get your “statistics” from a Bloomberg group. The US has about 5 times the population of France, yet France has about 5 times the number of mass shootings compared to the US (and this doesn’t include the other mass murders not committed with guns). In 2015 alone, there were 532 mass shootings in France, and in the whole 8 years of Obama (though Obama claimed otherwise), there were 527 in the US (CrimeResearch.org). In 2015 in the US there were a total of 15,696 murders in the US, down 16.5% from 10 years earlier, yet gun ownership has skyrocketed (FBI.gov). The “death” rate you used included suicide, accidents, etc. To put this in perspective, medical errors cause over 250,000 deaths per year in the US – about 16 times the number of all murders (HopkinsMedicine.org). Maybe we should ban health care!
Hey Troll, you could at least spell Bush’s name correctly.
If the U.K. wants to control their violence, they will provide firearms to every Brit or Scot or Irish who can trace their family back to native born for 3 generations. That way they wouldn’t be arming ‘guest workers’ or their children. Give everybody a gun and watch the immigrants leave en masse, taking their violence with them.
What is disturbing about this is how the popularity of foreign practices are slipped into the population of open border come one come all nations. Are any citizens of any country capable of doing this, sure, but like most evil crazy methods of torture and bodily harm, some things are popularized by another group expanding into your country. So is there a Muslim practicing influence into Britain’s society, it would be hard to deny. Never thought I would say this, my feeling toward denying these peoples into American society is the safe thing to do. Why should we allow in a human breed of pissed off Pit Bulls and have to keep a wary eye on them constantly?
Something the gun grabbing group never relates while they spout off on how low the gun deaths have dropped in countries that have banned citizen gun ownership is the devastating rise in violent crime perpetrated by those no longer afraid of reprisal from concealed carry owners.
It’s barely even relevant that countries that ban guns have lower homicides by guns yet their murder rate and all around violent crime DOES NOT CHANGE! LAWS ONLY WORK ON PEOPLE WHOM FOLLOW THEM.
Super G is 110% correct. Until we revert back to a peacetime budget and reduce the military budget by at least 444445 % and stop our wars we are currently in and cant win nothing will change. Having served 9 yrs. during Vietnam and after when we reduced manpower in all the services I can only hope we decide soon to do that again.
Going into law enforcement in 1979 thru 2004 I saw how the mental health industry was pretty much abandoned for keeping or treating in a confined space system. Pills were dispensed just as today and the patients were and still are left to roam the streets and most have become the fodder for our jails. Sadly until our country can come to grips with the massive drug problem we have caused by this situation people being treated and released to go home and or where ever will be our black eye for the world to see.
It comes down to one think: …………….. MONEY…….
It is a mental health issue and always has been. When Ronald Reagan relaxed the mental health laws in this country, you will notice that “massacres” started happening with greater frequency. But it is expensive to identify, house, and treat the mentally ill so will will do nothing. We would not want to impact someone’s war-toy budget. Personally, I feel much safer knowing we have the 20 billion dollar Zumwalt program as opposed to having some crazy people off the streets, even though it lost propulsion in the Panama Canal and we’ve never seen pictures of it in heavy seas.
Ummm… did live through the release of the inmates and it wasn’t Reagan who said it’s was cruel and inhumane to house the insane. You can thank the liberals for opening the nut houses with “Have you killed or hurt anyone?” …..”No”…… “cool, you’re free to go”
Turn on your TV and realize that unless they kill someone, mental issue people can live in squalor on the streets and pan handle and self medicate… all thanks to happy feel good initiatives.
People who heard voices, saw things used to be locked up until they found a medicine that worked.
Sure it sucked but they weren’t homeless and weren’t a danger to the public.
The Supreme Court ruled against involuntary commitment, causing mental health institutions massive loss of income and very many closing down. Pick another subject for Reagan bashing.