Mucking, don't just dislike, state your case, tell me where you dislike my post.
The simple fact is that both the UK and USA have gun laws designed to protect the public, unfortunately both these countries laws tend to protect the guilty. Let me explain.
What link can we see from the past couple of atrocities both here and America.
Virginia Tech, Colorado Cinema and now an elementary school in Connecticut. All the people assaulted were unarmed and very unlikely to be able to fight back, the (cowardly) assailant picked these locations for that very reason.
In Virginia two of the tutors ran to their cars to get their guns so they could return fire, but was too late, the school has a ban on teachers carrying concealed weapons of even having them in their possession, so the only way of protecting the pupils was left in a car some 500 yards from the school.
Colorado, the cinema had ban on concealed weapons except for law enforcement, the police took 15 minutes to arrive on the scene. If only 10% of the 200 patrons were carrying, that's 20 guns that could have returned fire at someone who was stood on the stage firing into the crowd.
Connecticut, not enough information has been released and so I am not going to make assumptions based on what is currently available. He was a loner with issues.
The US has their gun laws, no convicted felons or history of mental issues, just like the UK, the law doesn't always work.
Hungerford, Dunblane and Whitehaven. Michael Ryan was a known local idiot who the police were warned about and had a previous assault conviction. Thomas Hamilton was a known paedophile and Derrick Bird suffered from depression and had had his guns taken of him a few years previously but they were returned.
People died in the hands of these three people because the public were failed by the very system put in place to protect them. None of these three people should have had access to firearms as part of the firearms licensing conditions.
Any armed member of the public in all six of these examples could have returned fire, armed police take and did take too long to attend the scene and were too late to minimise casualties.
Michael Ryan was the reason automatic rifles of a calibre larger than .22 were banned, Personally I kinda agreed, you can't hunt with them and you can't really target shoot with them.
Thomas Hamilton of Dunblane was the reason handguns were banned in the UK and deserves a special mention because of the two counter signatures on his license application. One was the chief of police (despite on the application form it says the signer cannot be a serving police officer) and the other signature was none other than Gordon Brown, (yes, that one). The Cullen report is online and you can easily find it, what parts of it they will allow you to see of course, the rest is subject to a 100 year secrecy clause, the tin hat theorists amongst us can come to your own conclusions about that.
Derrick Bird. He should not have had his guns returned to him, plain and simple, the system failed the people it was designed to protect. The Prime Minister said that no changes would be made to the current firearms legislation as they are adequate. If they had been enforced as they should have been it may never have happened.
The UK has strict gun laws, no police record, (even speeding offences can go against you), you need to be a member of a home office approved gun club, serve a probation period, have two references, a good reason to want to own a gun, allow access to your medical records and an interview with the local firearms officer. This system works, as long as its adhered to, its a good system and I agree with it.
My main shooting sport is practical shotgun which involves a lot of thinking about how you will shoot the course of fire, which order to take the targets and when you will load the gun to reduce your time while still being accurate. Anyone who turns up in anything camo is not allowed to shoot, we do not want the rambo kinda crowd. The guns used are multi capacity shotguns, mine holds 12 rounds and is held on a section 1 firearms license. A shotgun with a magazine held on a shotgun license can only hold a maxim of three rounds. A section 1 shotgun is just about the hardest of all license conditions to fulfil due to its nature, running round with a loaded gun in the company of others takes a large amount of experience for safety. and I have to hold an international competition license like most other practical shooters, but over the last couple of years this has been relaxed to encourage more shooters to take up the sport.
Good thing bad thing? Only time will tell.
Yes I am pro gun, but only because I have been around them most of my life. I do agree legislation has to be there and is necessary, but a knee jerk reaction to a situation is just that, a reaction. If the rules and regulations are followed by everyone then things like this should never happen, but sometimes its necessary to carry a bigger stick than the next guy.
Thanks for reading.
thats funny.
