I think this argument is pretty much irrelevant, but come on. Guns were designed to kill things. That is their purpose. They are weapons, pure and simple. You can take advantage of them without firing them, and you can fire them at inanimate objects to practice, but really; their purpose is to kill things. It’s not a value judgment to say so, nor does it follow that anyone owning one must ergo want to kill someone. But it is still the truth.
To me this is an example of people getting backed into defending silly positions for no reason. Gun rights are perfectly respectable without these sorts of mental gymnastics. No-one would question a policeman’s need to carry a gun just because he never has cause to draw it, so why do we need to pretend that guns are anything other than what they are; highly efficient weapons? Were they not, the entire self-defence argument would be moot.
Okay, I challenge you to a duel at 50 paces. You can have the croquet mallet, and I’ll have the pistol.
I don’t see how this thread is getting pitworthy, incidentally. It’s gotten pretty unfocused, and I have no idea what the general point is any more, but it seems reasonably civil.
Importantly it’s not just that we’re quite happy about it. We regard it as part of normal life. That means, people carrying guns, even legitimately, is not normal. It might be that there’s a member of the royal family passing by in convoy. It might be that we live in some shithole where everyday life can’t be described as normal. Major airports aren’t normal.
(Aside: why do only big airports get guys with guns? I feel a bit of a fraud going through security at Norwich)
The important thing: we really really like the idea that guns are something we don’t have to think about. At all.
Eh, a .22 using gun may not have the same stopping power as a general self-defence gun, but I suspect a fight between a guy with a heavy mallet requiring close range and a guy who can literally just run away and stop every now and then to plink away would end up with the free pistol owner winning.
But wait - I thought there are lots of farmers that have shotguns and stuff?
Or by guns are we basically talking about handguns?
If your argument is that the basic city-dweller never needs to worry about guns, well, I’d buy that, seeing as how I don’t think I’d be too afraid to walk around London unarmed at night. I might get into a brawl with hooligans but hey, everyone needs to get into a brawl now and then.
On a farm, though, you have to have at least a shotgun. For keeping the pests away, if not for the rabbit or fowl hunting. (In that movie Straw Dogs, when Dustin Hoffman moves to that village with all the sleazy guys who wind up fucking his wife, they go hunting for ducks with shotguns and it’s presented as if it’s a common thing over there.)
The American right to keep and bear arms came out of British law. However gun ownership was never as widespread as in the US. Consequently when gun bans came up, few people were effected and they didn’t protest much. Even today if you’re rich or powerfull you have no trouble getting guns in the UK (same as in California).
Yes, handguns, and also that ‘we’ being the people who don’t need guns for a purpose. Where they’re needed as part of everyday life, then we don’t have a problem. That’s what guns are for. Restrictions on shotguns haven’t, as far as I know, been a matter for serious political debate for some time.
Jeez. Well, you know, if the scorn dripped any faster, it would look like a Niagara of spittle.
First, hunting in England, at any rate, means riding horses and chasing foxes with hounds whilst wearing pink coats that are really scarlet as tanagers and shouting “Yoicks” and stopping now and again in the villages to rape the buxom barmaids. That’s hunting.
Shooting is different. It means pressganging hordes of cowering, forelock-tugging peasants to chase helpless pet pheasants into the guns of drunken lords and dukes who shoot their big bored shotguns indiscriminately and if they hit a few peasants instead of pheasants, what ho, who gives a rat’s, eh?
Like the Brits, we Canucks don’t find it necessary or especially desirable to have guns about the house for “self-defense”. See, our Royal Overlords provide it for us and we, in our colonial downtroddeness, don’t really care.
I did say “generally”. But I don’t know as much as i’d like to - are they armed? Which force are they taken from, or is it a special group that rotates around?
It’s easy enough to obtain a licence for a shotgun (albeit a bit bureaucratic) “I like clay pigeon shooting”, and similar for a hunting rifle “I like to shoot deer with my rich friends”. You just need to not have a serious criminal record and have somewhere secure to store the weapon.
They are armed. There’s a whole branch of the Metropolitan Police dedicated to VIP protection, but I don’t know what - if any - role the other regional forces have when it comes to protection on their home turf. They all have officers trained with weapons though.
Someone mentioned above that guns could be used to ‘protect from robbery’. Isn’t that more than a little barbaric? Really. Stuff ain’t worth killing people over. I’d hate to see the gun ‘bans’ in the U.K. Australia and NZ overturned. Very little gun violence is a good thing. If we tend to nick a few more cars then that really is no big deal. I also like unarmed police officers. I feel much safer when they don’t carry firearms.
And I’d much rather face off someone with a knife at 20 paces then with a firearm.
But it still won’t happen here in the U.S. Guns are too deeply entrenched. The sheer number of handguns out there makes any sort of regulation almost impossible. Short of me being able to pull off some sort of Barnhouse Effect
If you’re being robbed by an armed robber you have no idea if the robber is going to just shoot you so as to not leave any witnesses. Sometimes when I’m in a morbid mood I read over all of the case files of all the people executed in Texas. You would be utterly amazed at case after case of some robber holding up a shithole store for forty dollars, and then just killing the poor clerk for no reason. Trust me, robbery is about more than just “stuff.” It’s a crime of intimidation, often accompanied by deadly force, and if one’s life is in danger, there is nothing barbaric about killing the criminal in question. The criminal is the one who’s the barbarian.
My Danish husband grew up in a family of hunters (farmers), they even own their own hunting ground. They are anything but royalty.
Both my FIL and my husband served in the military, my husband as a volunteer. Both excelled at marksmanship, my husband earned some commendations and was, I was told, one of the best at the time. My husband does not particularly like weapons and has never hunted, though he would eat the meat. He has never had any desire whatsoever to own a gun, and has never even practiced after he left the army. He doesn’t like guns any more than he likes lousy food and cramped accommodation.
Armed robbery in Denmark makes the national news, and a shooting is a huge deal. Danes don’t feel particularly oppressed by the fact that it isn’t too easy to own a gun. In fact I guess most of them would still not want them even if there were being given for free at a corner stand.
The UK is not DK, but I think the attitudes are pretty close. They just like it that way.
I agree; I think your tone has been exemplary. You have drawn some rather broad-brush conclusions, but you seem to be prepared to have your preconceptions challenged.
One thing I’d like you to note is the proportion of Brits in this thread who favour US-style gun ownership laws in the UK: namely, zero. I know the plural of anecdote is not yadda yadda yadda, so have a look at this 2004 Gallup poll:
Now, you can draw a single conclusion about that attitude, based on an opinion you hold that looks to me like an accusation of cultural inferiority - and add a few comments that look like a mildly patronising admonition that we don’t know what’s good for us - or perhaps you can take into account the actual explanations offered by several real-live Brits, directly to you in this thread.
Namely, for most Brits, guns aren’t an issue. I live my life without seeing a gun for months on end. The only time I see them is at airports or around military institutions. I never consider that an attacker will have one, because the likelihood of that is vanishingly small. There simply aren’t enough guns in general society to make them an issue (some inner city areas aside) for me, or anyone else I know. And we prefer it that way.
The US is a different matter entirely, and not one that I feel us Brits are qualified to comment on. I have a gut feeling about it myself, but the situation is way more complicated than I’m likely to be able to understand, so it’s best left unsaid.
