As fond as I am of the Lee-Enfield rifle in all its incarnations, its continued use by the UK well into the 1970s was more due to economic reasons than because than a lack of interest in self-loading rifles.
The Indians, incidentally, are the last country to have manufactured and issued a bolt-action rifle to troops; the Ishapore 2A1. It’s basically an SMLE Mk III* chambered for the 7.62x51 NATO cartridge; the Indians took a design they knew was reliable and chambered it for the same cartridge as the SLR they were adopting to save on ammunition costs and make supply and maintenance (the SMLE was a familiar design to armourers and gunsmiths in remote parts of India) much easier.
Don’t forget two wars against the Boers and North Koreans respectively, two Emergencies (Malaya and Kenya), and a Crisis (Suez) as well, not to mention all the countless minor Colonial conflicts in places like the North-West Frontier and so on.
Mike was a bit of a legend back when I was in the army - he was, without a doubt, the best shot in the Israeli military. The guy was good, freaky good. He could put 5.56mm round into the an empty brass casing at 100m, without a sweat; he could calibrate an M-16 by feel, without firing it. He was also the only officer in the IDF who walked around with a 44" revolver, under the belief that he didn’t need more than six shots. The army figured out pretty fast what they had in their hands, and put him in charge of the Shooting Branch of the IDF infantry School, where he spend hit time developing new shooting techniques and technologies and developing training programs.
I was at a lecture of his, once. To say the man was a gun enthusiast would be selling him short - he was a full-fledged geek, the kind of guy who HAD to TELL you about his NEW red-dot sight RIGHT NOW. It would have been a bit silly if he wasn’t who he was, and if he weren’t also accompanied by a pair of *hot *female NCOs wearing tight, tight pants and gun belts with semiautomatic pistols (Rugers, I think - Mike said they gave the best bang for your buck). I left the lecture enlightened, and more than a little jealous.
Oh, did I mention that Mikey had immigrated to Israel as a teenager… from Tennessee?
I would have used Firefly as an analogy, but otherwise yeah, this is pretty much the reason.
I’d expand further but it’s 1am here and I need to get some sleep, but assuming this thread hasn’t been hijacked beyond all recognition in the morning I’ll address this point in more detail then, if that’s alright with everyone.
I don’t buy it. The British pop culture, like the American one, is utterly fascinated with gun violence, as is plainly evident from their movies. Guy Ritchie, anyone? Snatch? Lock Stock and 2SB? They love their action movies with bullets being thoughtlessly sprayed in every direction, everyone waving guns around, and automatic assault rifles being freely available to every crook or gangster who wants them. But, just like American films - which are by and large produced and created by anti-gun Hollywood celebrities - you never see a common man using a gun to defend himself or his family. Whenever you see guns, they’re either in the hands of dangerous insane criminals, or superhuman heroes who no average man could possibly measure up to. In other words, it’s taking guns and putting them on a plane up there, above the common rabble. In that regard, American and British pop culture are in the same boat.
There really is a huge difference is the US and UK attitude to guns.
As has been said, our beat police don’t carry guns. The general public never see a gun. There was overwhelming support for banning guns after just two incidents.
I think some of the reasons for the difference are:
the US constitutional right to bear arms (N.B. we used to have similar laws encouraging the medieval gun equivalent i.e. the longbow)
the lack of hunting opportunities in the UK (we’re a small crowded island, with just a little grouse + deer shooting e.g. in remote parts of Scotland)
the difference in war techniques (in WW1 and WW2 a lot of soldiers were in the front line and a lot died - they weren’t keen on shooting when they returned; the current US technology means it can now use planes, helicopters, guided missiles, tanks and armoured units rather than infantry)
the campaigning of the NRA
the popularity of Wild West (I don’t know how true this is, but even Science Fiction like Star Trek has a Wild West episode)
concern about the Government (I’ve noticed that several posters refer to their need to be armed in case they need to resist the US Government)
I’d be interested to hear if posters think this is valid.
I think there’s truth to it. One thing I’m curious about, is do you think there is ANY chance of the gun bans in the UK being repealed? If a pro-gun movement, funded and advised by the NRA or other American groups, took hold in Great Britain? I don’t know if there’s truth to it but I have heard that while gun murders have gone down in the UK, other crimes like rape and robbery have gone up. If it gets really bad, maybe there would be people lobbying for the right to self-defense?
It’s true that we Brits like the Die Hard series. The ‘A team’ was also popular. But there’s very little blood in these (the A team in particular used to fire automatic weapons endlessly to no effect :smack:)
Also we like things in those films such as the little guy fighting back, bringing the criminal to justice, learning to patch up your marriage and humiliating scummy reporters.
We also like superheroes, but nobody tries to fly in real life.
Certainly ‘Lock, Stock…’ was popular. But again the violence was stylised.
In real life, the violent and criminal Kray brothers were detested. Nobody has imitiated Vinnie Jones killing a man by repeatedly banging his head with a car door.
We were ghoulishly fascinated by such appalling violence, but have no wish to see it in real life. We know guns can be used to kill school children and we don’t want it, even if it means a complete ban.
Here we call the (unarmed) police. And we like it that way.
Dude - we’re just not into guns enough to get excited over them. We care about guns only insofar as we want them kept out of criminal hands.
We certainly don’t believe being tooled up will lead to a fall in crime. The whole tone of your posts is that it’s somehow odd we aren’t a nation of gun fetishists. We just don’t care about them that much and like the rest of the world, find the US obsession with them somewhat disturbing.
I think only a US organisation would lobby for guns here and we wouldn’t like such interference (just as you chaps wouldn’t appreciate the rest of the World lobbying for Obama!).
We have a lower murder rate than the US (and far less gun crime).
Of course people should have the right to self-defence, but we think guns are simply too dangerous for that purpose.
I realise this is a dramatic difference, but it’s true.
I mean no offence to the US (which is packed full of decent hard-working honest peaceful people ), but we regularly see news stories and TV plots here about:
armed teenage gangs
drive-by shootings
school shootings
seiges of armed survivalists
armed robberies caught on CCTV
police chases of armed suspects caught on police video
snipers
Even some of your Presidents get shot.
Having practically eliminated guns from our society, we’re never going back.
We also like sci-fi films, yet not everyone is clamouring for lasers and pouring money into space exploration. We like fantasy films, but there’s no cultural movement towards getting a sword for every person that wants one.
Look, it seems to me you’re looking at all the stuff around the issue and saying “Well, I don’t believe the British aren’t that interested”. If there were a general common interest in guns - if we as a nation tended towards wanting them - we’d have them. That we don’t, and that there is no widescale, national, loud movement championing gun rights over here analgous to the NRA is pretty much excellent evidence. Not that we like films with guns in.
I have to think that if it was discovered that an American group (or really any foreign power) was primarily behind a social movement over here, that group would be laughed out of any influence they might have. I suspect i’d also question the motives of the NRA or similar wanting to get involved in British politics, but this is a hypothetical.
Is there ANY chance they might get repealed? It’s possible. I really can’t see it as being all that likely, since generally we as a nation aren’t all that interested in guns in the first place. I suspect that if rape and robbery and so forth got out of hand, people might very well keep on thinking that adding guns into the mix would probably make things worse. And i’m not sure i’d disagree.
See, here in America we realize (or at least some of us do) that crimes are committed by people, not guns. It takes a person to pull the trigger. A gun is just a tool. You can kill a person with a knife or you can use it to cut up vegetables. Here in America we recognize (or at least some of us do) that a gun can also be used to defend yourself from being robbed, or let a 100-pound woman prevent a 250-pound rapist from sticking his STD-infected cock inside of her.
Some people are content to depend on the police in case of a crime. My personal motto is - when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.
Their job is to clean up the mess afterwards, not protect you.
But that’s just my barbaric American view.
I’m not trying to insult the British here, I realize that different people see things differently. I’m glad that your country is able to keep the gun crimes down. In America, the states with the most restrictive gun laws like Washington DC tend to have pretty bad crime - that’s our problem, not yours. My solution, if I were in charge anyway, would be to go after the criminals and not the tools that they use. Your solution works for you, I guess, so good for you.
Regularly? You regularly see sieges of armed survivalists? How often do you see that? When was the last time you ever saw any conflict between the American government and “survivalists” or militias or any other armed group?
The armed teenage gangs and drive by shootings tend to take place mostly in inner cities - NYC, DC, LA - where guns are nearly impossible to own legally. Also most of the school shootings take place in inner cities too, it’s just that they don’t get coverage because it’s black people shooting each other, or Hispanic people shooting each other.
I’m not denying that we have problems with violent crime in America, but I don’t think it’s connected to the gun culture here. I’d feel much safer in Vermont, with no firearms restrictions whatsoever, than in DC.
I suspect that you would do better to not insult us if you didn’t present such a condescending post.
I’ve a question, however. You seem to accept that our way seems to work for us. Clearly you yourself seem to believe that widespread gun ownership works for you in America. What do you believe is the difference between us - why is it that we apparently do not require guns to such a large extent, whilst you do?
I, for one, don’t give a hoot about the gun laws in the UK or any other country outside the US. It’s your country, run it the way you please. Don’t like the way we do things here? Don’t come here. Then everybody is happy.
What I do give a hoot about are attempts, largely through the UN, to meddle with our gun laws here in the US. I’m not talking tinfoil hat nonsense about blue-helmeted thugs kicking in doors to take anybody’s guns, either. I’m talking about treaties aimed at reducing the numbers of guns in civilian hands. Happily, to date the US has refused to sign such treaties and our officials have told the UN sponsors of such treaties to piss off in no uncertain terms.
Maybe the UN should concentrate on getting guns out of the hands of fucking corrupt dictatorships and third world warlords who brutalize their populations, not civilians! Or do they really have their heads that far up their asses?
glee and RT I really do not intend to insult you and if I have offended you, I apologize. I think that your British gun laws probably work well because your country doesn’t already have a billion guns in it. America has always been saturated with guns, and so if you ban them, they’re just going to find their way onto the black market and therefore into the hands of criminals.
If America all of a sudden had no guns in it at all, by some act of magic, then maybe restrictions on further importation of guns and the strict banning of them would work to reduce gun crime. I’m sure it would, no doubt. There would still be criminals importing guns (if thousands of PEOPLE can cross our border with Mexico, think of all the guns that could get through if smugglers thought they could make a profit doing it.)
This is actually my view, too. Banning guns outright in America would be entirely pointless - people would bury them or keep them hidden, and it’ll still be relatively easy for those who want them to get them through the black market or otherwise.
I think also it’s a matter of not just having them, but having had them. You’ve got a history of guns that goes back literally to your founding. It’s a part of your Constitution. While we’ve had guns for longer (since you were us, anyway ;)), it’s never been an important part of our culture as it has been there.
Although generally there isn’t a large debate about the possible self-defense requirement for the Royal family. Though i’d probably support a law that meant burglars were run off by the Queen on horseback or something.
), but we regularly see news stories and TV plots here about: