Silentshadow,
Quite a few UK members on here own or have owned guns.
None of us have killed anyone yet!
Fact is gun danger is treated as a witch hunt in the UK - nearly all gun crime in the UK involves illegal firearms yet for decades ever increasing restrictions have been put onto the legal community. I can't find official figures but the last time I saw out of 3,500 gun crimes for the year I looked at, only 6 involved legally held weapons!! Don't forget that out of those 6, some could involve crimes a simple as a breach of safe keeping requirements or a suicide on the part of the owner. Thus many of the 6 may not even truly represent what many would understand by a gun crime.
Yes its true there will always be someone who slips through any legal requirements and use legally held weapons to kill, but these instances hardly ever happen. I can think of 2 in the last 20-30 years in the UK. In Dunblane, the guy was so determined are we really to expect that he wouldn't have walked into a pub and got a handgun illegally and done exactly the same thing with an illegally held weapon if handguns hand not been available before the ban? Its hardly difficult to get hold of a gun illegally if you really want want. Nearly everyone knows of a friend of a friend who has dodgy contacts who could arrange it.
Its also interesting to note that the gun crimes involving hand guns have increased by 400% since the post Dunblane ban - official government figures for 2007: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2328368.ece.
Or to put it another way, you're now 4 times more likely to be shot by someone with a handgun than you were when they were legal, so obviously the ban has worked!
Bottom line is guns don't kill people, people do, and if they are determined enough, they will always find a way of getting a gun or of an alternative method of carrying out an equally deadly killing. The secret to good guns laws is suitability checks and good safekeeping requirements.
Its interesting to note that a lot of the US crimes that occur, eg school shootings do so as a result of a lack of safe keeping requirements rather than simple gun onwership. To put it simply, guns are stored around the house in drawers and bed side tables where disturbed teenagers can get access to them. In the UK, they're all in locked safes (or clamps) and only the certificate holder is allowed to have the key, which must be kept on them or in a safe to which only they have access.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by soforene
