The first time I remember seeing a loaded gun was when I was 25 and landed at an airport in Germany (Franfurt IIRC). I admit that I managed to miss the ones the police had at Heathrow Airport.
When I worked at my old company’s Atlanta office, people brought their guns in to work and went shooting at lunchtime. One break time was spent comparing guns in a conference room.
All I know is that, for one reason or another, I never came into contact with guns in my native country. That is all I care about. It doesn’t bother me what people do in their countries regarding guns, but in Great Britain I never saw the things. They just weren’t there. If you ask the average person in Great Britain if they ever see guns these days they will still tell you that no, they don’t. Frankly, that is the way the overwhelming majority of British people want it. They don’t care if they are being mislead by government about these matters. They just don’t want guns.
As I said before, other countries can do whatever the hell they like. That is no concern of mine. I don’t call for a change in the gun laws in other countries. I, like millions of other Brits, am very happy with our gun laws. To me that is all that matters.
The very next person who makes a gun-control argument in this thread, pro, con or neutral, will be banned from this message board.
There is a reason the OP posed the question in this forum, dammit! And I’m gonna make damn sure that this forum does not become a mini-GD. We created the Great Debates forum for exactly this reason – to prevent factual questions from being sidetracked by debates over related issues.
Now knock it off, or I promise you you will be finding another message board.
For those who refrained from debating or who saw the error of their ways prior to this post – thank you very much.
Hey, it looks like I’m the first to post after manhattan laid down the law :eek:
(glee decides to skirt the line…)
A man walks into a thread.
Ouch!
(It was a gun-control thread.)
:smack:
I know a country in Africa where they have similar problems. Everyone wanted a large pet.
Finally they passed a gnu-control law.
Anyway our School has a shooting club (.22 rifles). We have always had to satisfy the police about security, both guns and ammo. The recent legislation didn’t change that, as far as I know.
As a typical Brit, the first time I ever saw, or handled, a gun was in Canada when I was about 30.
As the gun said, I’ll stop now, before I get fired.
Right, that’s it.
I am reporting you to the moderators.
(I shall send them a list of bullet points, explaining how you are trigger-happy and they would best be shot of you. Don’t be surprised if they rifle thru your desk before firing you. Still, perhaps we’ll meet agun - don’t know where, don’t know when…)
Around the time it was enacted, I read an article that noted that to qualify for any type of rifle/shotgun ownership, two of the qualifications were that you had to have an approved steel gun-cabinet for at-home storage, and that your neighbors could be consulted to see if they’d object to your gun ownership. The article pointed out that lease/rental owners could effectively prevent legal firearm ownership by their tenants, just by not giving permission to “securely install” a gun cabinet (which had to be bolted to/through a wall). The neighbors bit was just that: if your neighbors didn’t want you to have a gun, then you wouldn’t be allowed to own one. Sounds pretty sad overall.
…
I read the crime rate in UK is rising quickly. Murders are still lower than USA, but gun crimes were increasing.
~
I can’t find any mention so far of a requirement to consult neighbours.
Regarding gun crime, although that’s a GD topic beyond the scope of this thread I would suggest that much of the rise in UK gun crime is down to Yardie gang violence in a small part of London. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find specific statistics in a half-hour trawl through the Home Office and the ONS.
