I do not keep up with your country's crime stats so whether they are starting to escalate is probably something you might wish to investigate.
Many the dam break started out as a small crack.
Also, with the recent terrorist attacks in the UK would a law-abiding subject consider the means for self-defense or simply embrace the wrath of a lunatic as another benefit of living in the realm?
Well, it's fairly clear you're pontificating on something you know nothing about. What makes you think crime statistics in Britain aren't being collected and analysed on a regular basis?
The shooting sprees are easy enough to enumerate.
- Michael Ryan, Hungerford, 1987
- Thomas Hamilton, Dunblane, 1996
- Derrick Bird, Whitecastle, 2010
Make of that what you like.
There is simply no demand or wish or pressure from the population in general to be allowed to own and carry guns. The overgrown child with his overgrown and functional toy guns is a rare phenomenon in Britain. As someone pointed out previously, the last time gun legislation was significantly tightened up, only a very small percentage of the population was affected - the vast majority didn't have the things anyway.
In fact, if you look at the profiles of the three men named above, you'll find that
they fit the category of "gun nut". They all had legal weapons, and they behaved in a way more reminiscent of the US gun culture than the British norm. Face it, your puerile love affair with firearms is the breeding ground for these incidents, not the cure.
And as someone else pointed out, the Glasgow Airport bombers were set upon by the unarmed bystanders and nobody has been complaining that they didn't have a six-shooter in their sock. England and Ireland have had more experience of actual terrorist incidents than you've had hot dinners. It's actually got much, much safer in recent years, since the Northern Ireland peace process has been in place. In the 1970s I remember having my bag searched every time I went to the theatre in London, and that hasn't happened for years now.
You Yanks have absolutely
no clue. We went through many years of very real and very serious threats of terrorism. Google Warrington, and Guildford, and Canary Wharf, and Brighton, and a lot more and that's without even mentioning the incidents in Ireland itself. And you know what? The main funding for all this was coming from
America, smiled on and condoned by high US officials, who thought that their "Irish roots" entitled them to get all romantic about the "freedom struggle" and send lots of money to the IRA to buy Semtex from Gadaffi to blow up English children on the streets of Warrington.
You have no idea what it was like. You wouldn't listen to any pleas to close down Noraid and cut off the funding to the terrorists. That's right - in the late 20th century, Britain was under massive terrorist attack,
funded from the USA.
And nobody wants to go around with a gun in their sock.
Then hey, you guys finally cop a hit, and you seem to think this has never happened to anyone else in the history of the world. You start pissing your pants in fear and advocating eveybody and their maiden aunt should be armed to the teeth. In the country that saw through the IRA years.
You really ought to figure out what you're talking about before you start typing.
Rolfe.
