In message , Simon Robbins
writes
"Dweezil Dwarftosser" wrote in message
...
Well, there is a definite historical culture clash between Brits
and Americans concerning personal ownership of firearms (and that
alone is hard to overcome) - but it actually goes much deeper than
the legal mechanics of private gun ownership.

I believe that to be only a recent (i.e. past century) issue. Until WW2 I
think it was legal for UK residents to own firearms,

I owned firearms until 1997. Still could now, shotguns, rifles or
repeating handguns, if I had the time and spare cash.

Trouble was, having concentrated on Practical Pistol, it would have been
a fairly awkward shift in both hardware and technique to go over to
shooting black-powder pistol (even if a LeMat makes a fairly awesome
weapon: nine rounds of soft lead .36" ball plus a shotgun, any intruder
still standing after *that* has earned the right to pillage while I
reload: if I wanted one I could get one, legally and fairly easily)

but as someone else
said they were mainly long-barrelled weapons for sport or hunting. The hand
gun has no other purpose than to shoot other people.

That's its design role, just as the role of a sword is to kill people
(hence no more sports fencing) and the bow had no purpose other than
turning living creatures into dead meat (so no more archery either).

For that matter, let's ban the javelin from athletics (throwing spears
were only ever designed for killing!).

Sports grew out of military competition: so we should also ban all
martial arts from boxing onwards (dedicated to learning how to batter an
opponent insensible!)

Being a Brit myself, I actually wish we did have the right to bear arms, at
least on our own property, and the legal back up to use them if necessary.

Closer than you might think now, tabloid hysteria notwithstanding.

But, (and this is where I give the US population credit they deserve but
very often don't get), is that I don't believe the UK population has the
respect for those weapons tha they deserve. They've just not been part of
our social landscape. If they were to legalise the ownership of hand guns
tomorrow in a similar manner to US laws, gun crime and accidental shootings
would (I believe) go through the roof as the current generation overcame the
novelty value of owning a "piece".

No worse than in the US. The electable viewpoint there is that the costs
are worth paying, but there the genie's out of the bottle and it's a
fair assumption that any casual burglar or opportunistic mugger might be
carrying a firearm. Unfortunately, the reaction to to that gets them a
lot of stolen weapons, domestic accidents and other grief, but the
current consensus is that the gain outweighs the cost.

For the moment, in the UK the overall view is different. Personally, I'd
be happy with much more widespread ownership provided that ownership
equalled responsibility: your weapon, your job to keep it secure. You
want a weapon, it lives on your person or else properly secured. You
fire that weapon, you're responsible for every round leaving the barrel.
Not popular here, and oddly enough it seems to be very unpopular in the
US for very different reasons

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk