Personal Safety in the UK today

How safe are we from gun crime?. Peter Hitchens excellent article below examines some of the issues after the latest rampage in Cumbria.
Perhaps Derrick Bird’s deadly rampages aren’t so ‘inexplicable’ after all
Yet another gun massacre is followed by yet another typhoon of psychobabble,
sentiment and bogus declarations that ‘this must never happen again’, when everyone knows that it will.
It’s difficult to argue for tighter gun laws, since they’re already so tight, though I’m sure the authorities will think of something suitably irrelevant and futile, as they did after Hungerford and Dunblane.
They are determined to make sure nobody in this country is armed, apart from criminals and terrorists, the invariable effect of ‘tough’ gun laws that trouble only the law-abiding and have no impact on illegally held weapons at all.

Massacre: Now police need to establish if Derrick Bird was on anti-depressants
The truth is that until 1920, Britain’s gun laws were so relaxed they made Texas look effeminate, but we had virtually no gun crime. That only really began to increase here after we abolished hanging.
But that truth doesn’t fit the Leftist dogma which has ¬everyone, including the Tories, the media and the police, in its grip, so the facts will be ignored.
What can we learn from the Cumberland murders? Well, first of all that the police are no use to anyone once a crime has been committed. They never were and they never will be, except if they can do first aid.
It’s such a pity they’ve forgotten their job is to prevent crime rather than hold verbose Press conferences afterwards and festoon the countryside with silly scene-of-crime tape copied from American TV shows. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1284311/PETER-HITCHENS-Perhaps-deadly-rampages-arent-inexplicable-all.html#ixzz0rqS5XMSA
All these incidents usually follow a similar pattern in that the first victims are usually some one close or someone known to the attacker and then they go on to shoot at random and finally in each and every case they take their own life.
For ordinary people this behaviour is just beyond understanding so where does it start.
Again, in each case physiologists attempt discover that it did not just happen on that particular day and that the real problem often occurred many years earlier often in Childhood.
Derrick Bird differed from the previous cases in that he appeared to have a relatively normal social life. Usually after such tragic events we start to read articles about how neighbours and others who knew the killer commented on the fact that they were loners and kept themselves to themselves etc.
What physiologists now know is that something must happen in the brain before individuals display aggressive and violent behaviour.
When we examine what is known in Conflict Resolution as the normal phase this is where most healthy individuals are most of the time. In this phase we are neither overly aroused or depressed.
But all of us from time to time will on to what is known as the trigger phase when something happens which kicks in the adrenaline which happens in point three of a second faster than concorde.
The brain perceiving that there is danger starts to prepare us for action fight or flight.
The adrenaline triggers a host of other performance enhancing chemicals which make us faster, stronger, and in many cases can totally desensitize use from pain.
Logical thinking starts to diminish and emotion starts to take over anything requiring finesse becomes difficult as we loose our fine motor skill and gross motor skills kick in.
Numerous other changes occur at this time including tunnel vision and auditory exclusion as the brain demands more information about the perceived threat.

In a recent incident in my home city a teacher was acquitted of attempting to kill a 14 year old pupil at Nottingham Crown Court.
The teacher had struck the pupil over the head with a dumbbell after being mocked by pupils and had been off work previously with depression & stress.
During the trial it emerged that when initially interviewed by the police the teacher Peter Harvey stated that he saw the incident unravelling at the time as if he was watching himself on TV read full story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/8652243.stm
This mental splitting often occurs in real terrifying or near death situations when the subconscious mind takes over.

Trigger can be instant as in Road Rage or as in the above are incidents an individual is already triggered.

So lets look at road rage. Here you are e driving along minding your own business when suddenly you get cut up the fingers go up and you get the V sign back. Now we are moving on and going into the preparation/escalation phase and moving towards serious aggressive behaviour and potentially violence.
During our Personal Safety seminars we always advice people never to engage in road rage. Who remembers the Kenneth Noye incident ( M25 murder ).

This was initially a simple road rage incident which ended in a tragic when a young man got out of his car to confront Kenneth Noye on a slip road coming of the M25.

This young man and his girl friend would have had no way of knowing what sort of person they were confronting or they would have known there was only to options Kill or be killed .

Kenneth Noye had many years earlier had been acquitted of stabbing to death a Police Officer who had been carrying out surveillance on him.

The young man was stabbed to death whilst his girl friend pleaded with Kenneth Noye but to no avail.

After the trigger and escalation phase we move into the Remorse/ depression phase before finally going into the recovery phase and returning to Normal.

Most of us go through these phases all the time but we control the trigger phase and don’t become aggressive or violent.

Just think about this : Who as been angry in the last week most of you reading this I would say. Who has had to deal with someone angry recently again most of you reading this I would think.
So what does that tell you about anger basically that most people are pretty good and controlling and dealing with it, we are experts at it.

The most dangerous people on our planet are individuals who believe they have lost every thing and have lost control of this basic emotion.

Chris
For Brooks Jordan