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UK Police To Allow Gun Users To Renew Licenses With iPhone App 271

Sussex police are creating a number of iPhone apps for the public, including one to renew your gun license. Unsurprisingly, the plan has some anti-gun groups upset. Lyn Costello, of Mothers Against Murder and Aggression (MAMAA), said, "This isn't suitable, especially in light of what happened in Cumbria. We've got to be extra careful giving gun licenses. We have this attitude that gun murders don't happen very often so it's OK to be lax, but it is not OK and we've got to do everything in our power to stop it happening again. We can't put money before life and if you start to do that we are losing our humanity. It is a really stupid idea.''

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UK Police To Allow Gun Users To Renew Licenses With iPhone App

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Friday June 18, 2010 @01:01PM (#32615848)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Re:Mothers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mikael_j ( 106439 ) on Friday June 18, 2010 @01:04PM (#32615910)

      No, it's a perfectly sane reaction. Another red flag tends to be the word "against" in the group name, "foo against bar and baf" is a standard "think of the children" group name...

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No kidding. If the Mothers are Against Murder and Aggression what are they for? Is there anything they do like?

      Then again Mothers Against Sexual Intercourse and Conception may not be a very large organization....

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        not as rare as mothers against nagging and passive aggressiveness.
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        If the US we have MADD (mothers against drunk driving), so it's obvious what they are for: sober driving

        Presumably MAMMA is in favor of peaceful resolution of conflicts.

        MASIC already has a name: Christian.

        • Re:Mothers (Score:5, Insightful)

          by russotto ( 537200 ) on Friday June 18, 2010 @01:22PM (#32616256) Journal

          If the US we have MADD (mothers against drunk driving), so it's obvious what they are for: sober driving

          Err, no. MADD used to be for sober driving. Now they're for Prohibition.

          • Re:Mothers (Score:4, Insightful)

            by lazlo ( 15906 ) on Friday June 18, 2010 @02:54PM (#32617892) Homepage

            I like what I call the "AT&T solution" to drunk driving: More bars in more places.

            I mean really, there's no excuse for driving drunk, but if the bar is within walking distance of your house, then there's both no excuse and no reason.

            For reasons unbeknown to me, MADD doesn't seem to agree.

            • I mean really, there's no excuse for driving drunk, but if the bar is within walking distance of your house, then there's both no excuse and no reason.

              It's illegal to walk home drunk under public intoxication statutes. It's illegal to take public transportation home drunk under those same statutes. It's illegal to bicycle home drunk under DUI and/or public intoxication statutes. It's illegal to drive home drunk. And in Texas in Virginia, it's illegal to even be in a bar drunk under public intoxication

              • by lazlo ( 15906 )

                I didn't mean to imply that it might actually be legal to walk home drunk from a bar, just that it's the right thing to do. (and whenever "the right thing to do" and "the legal thing to do" are at odds, society is pretty screwy)

                I haven't paid much attention to MADD, but if they are in favor of laws against walking under the influence, then it's long past time for them to change their name.

                Makes me just want to go up to one of them and say "You should be ASHAMED of yourself! Do you know how many children a

    • Yes. And you hate children too.

      You, sir, are worse than Hitler!

    • I believe Frank Zappa wrote a song about disingenuous organization names like "The National Education Association".
    • Am I the only one whose skepticism level is instantly raised when a politically lobbying organization includes the word "Mom" or "Mothers" in it's name?

      How about this [swgalaxies.net]?"

      BTW, I just did a Google search for "mothers against -madd". The amount of hit was surprising.

    • What, you oppose Mothers Against Dangerous Speech (MADS), Mothers Against Suspicious Concealment (MACS), and Mothers Against Incomplete Justice (MAIJ)? They work tirelessly to protect the children from dangerous ideas, dangerous things people might have, and dangerous people who are probably criminals, respectively.

      They're all just trying to create a perfectly safe society - who can argue with that?

  • I'm confused... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Syberz ( 1170343 ) on Friday June 18, 2010 @01:11PM (#32616020)

    What exactly is the difference between a gun owner renewing his license online and a gun owner renewing his license in person?

    The guy already owns a gun, he's renewing his license, not applying for one for the first time.

    Convenience is the only difference between using the app versus the old way. This app does not make the streets less safe somehow.

    • by qoncept ( 599709 )
      What's the point of renewing a license at all if all you have to do is click a button or show up? While I couldn't care less about their cause, these idiots are at least making sense in their approach.

      Logically, they believe the renewal process is too simple. They probably think it needs some kind of review that likely isn't happening when you renew in person or with the app. But you couldn't do it with the app, so the first step is making sure you have to show up in person.
      • by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

        Why does there need to be any review for a renewal?
        If the license was already granted, and the person has not committed a felony what is the point of hassling them any further?

        • by qoncept ( 599709 )
          Why are you asking me? I clearly stated I don't agree.

          Anyway, the answer is pretty obvious. $$$. Or, uh, £££. Maybe ... yeah I can't even find the euro thing.
          • Why are you asking me? I clearly stated I don't agree.

            I'm not the person you are replying to, but I also got the impression that you were somehow upset that a simple process was a problem somehow.

            Taking the opportunity to expand on your comment about the money, think of an even more absurd example.

            Vehicle registrations. Why the hell do you have to renew a registration every 1-2 years? It's still the same vehicle, and registration is not inspection. It's simply a yearly tax on owning a vehicle.

        • by cynyr ( 703126 )
          to ensure no change in status since you last were in, did you receive an assault conviction? or any of the other number of things that would disqualify you from obtaining a gun license. It also shows the owner is semi responsible, can make time to come in and renew the permit, can't manage that, we feel you can't own a gun legally.
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by MBGMorden ( 803437 )

            That can be (and possibly already is) handled quite easily. We live in an age where computers are as common as maggots.

            For instance, my state DMV will let you renew your car tags online UNLESS it's flagged for some reason (unpaid traffic violations, property taxes due, etc).

            It wouldn't exactly be hard to just build the app to say "Oops. Your license is currently not eligible to be renewed online. Please stop into your local law enforcement office for review." in the event that a disqualifiying factor com

      • Re:I'm confused... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by IndustrialComplex ( 975015 ) on Friday June 18, 2010 @01:37PM (#32616520)

        What's the point of renewing a license at all if all you have to do is click a button or show up?

        The fee. You do realize that it is all an excuse for the government to put what is essentially a toll booth into your day to day life.

      • What's the point of renewing a license at all if all you have to do is click a button or show up?

        It is basically to keep track of people who own guns. A renewal says "I still live in your area and I still have guns." This is useful information.

    • Hell, the iPhone app even has the opportunity to sneakily take a picture of the person renewing, so as to properly profile them!

    • by Theodore ( 13524 )

      Agreed.
      Here in Illinois, I can take the renewal form I get in the mail for my car's license plate to a kiosk, scan it, swipe my card, and get the sticker out of a laser printer in less than half a minute.
      (Yeah, you get a form in the mail a couple of weeks later asking for your insurance info, BFD, another 30 seconds to make sure you know where your card is).
      I never have to interact with a live human being, hell, in the Thompson Center basement, you don't actually even have to enter the DMV to do it.
      I alread

  • A disturbed person used a public forum to hurt someone I know, so we shouldn't let anyone use a public forum.

  • ...when we allow people to be free. we can't be just handing that shit out.

  • by XanC ( 644172 )

    What a stupid idea. Do you live in a police state?

  • Lyn Costello, of Mothers Against Murder and Aggression (MAMAA), said:...

    ...that you've got dumbasses over there, too.

  • MAMAA (Score:5, Funny)

    by jspenguin1 ( 883588 ) <jspenguin@gmail.com> on Friday June 18, 2010 @01:27PM (#32616360) Homepage

    MAMAA... just killed a man. Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead...

  • by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Friday June 18, 2010 @02:12PM (#32617160) Journal

    For a brief but wonderful window of time, it looked like the Web was going to be the new platform.

    Then Apple came along and fucked it up.

    Please explain: Why does this need to be an iPhone app? I keep hearing about more and more iPhone apps which would make just as much sense -- more sense, even -- as web apps, and that includes the iTunes store itself. (WTF is the point of making the iTunes store DRM-free if I still need a specific, proprietary client program to purchase stuff with?)

  • ...my problem is with a government organisation, the Sussex police, contemplating the production of proprietary software for a locked-down platform in order to facilitate some licensing process (*). No, I do not want my tax money to go toward funding the proliferation of Apple toys, thanks!

    OTOH, this could just be someone over-buzzwording what turns out to be a web site.

    (*) This will, of course, save no money whatever, and means either Apple or - more likely - some local development firm has good chums/an u

  • There's quite a few countries with higher rates of gun ownership than the US, yet they don't see similar rates of people getting killed by them. I would dare speculate that the following has something to do with it:

    -Poverty
    -Social Security and Welfare
    -Access to psychiatric care
    -Bullying
    -Working and Study conditions for employees and pupils
    -Cultural differences in attitudes to weapons and violence
    -Differences in the approach to dealing with crime

    If you are worried about people getting killed by guns, start d

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