Thanks for the reply.
How many guns do you suppose people have regardless of the law? (criminals and law abiding citizens.)
..and what about the country? No more fox hunting and such?
Fox huntings gone, and there are still shitloads of guns around.
There are millions of guns in the country, not just left over shit from the gun ban and farmers shotguns, there have been recorded uses of Mac-10s in the past 5 years.
The gun war is just as blatantly a failure as the drug war, and that failure is as blatantly ignored by media/public/government as with the drug war too.
'Guns off the streets' is all i hear, its as if they're still trying to get them banned.
* In the year ending June 2005, there were 10,979 firearm offences recorded in England and Wales (excluding offences involving air guns).
* This is a 6% increase from 2003/04 and continues the pattern of annual increases every year since 1997/98.
* In fact, the current number of firearms offences is almost twice that of 1997/98.
* Firearms were involved in 1,206 more serious incidents of violence against the person (other than homicide) in 2004/05 than in 2003/04.
* In less serious incidents of violence against the person, firearms were involved in 4,568 offences – a 31% increase from 2003/04.
* Firearms were used in 73 homicides in 2004/05 (under one in ten of all homicides), five more than the previous year.
* There were 2,659 firearm robberies in 2004/05 (4% of all robbery offences) – down 9% from 2003/04.
* 412 firearm offences resulted in serious injury in 2004/05 – down 6% from 2003/04.
I don't think there has been one recorded use of a gun in self defense that didn't get some sort of jail time since the hand gun ban.
Really its hard to stress the point enough if you're from america, It's not like people in the jury are going to look at the evidence and see if you were at risk and see if you tried to avoid killing them if you didn't have to kill them. If you even touched the gun you're guilty.
"Only people who want to kill people have guns, everyone knows that, look at America they have tons of guns and tons of gun crime"
Self defense here is non existence, if you kill someone its murder, no ifs no buts. You can just about get away with it if you use your fists to defend against a burglar, but there have been recorded cases of burglars prosecuting for assault when they were attacked.
As I've said before, and hard as it is to believe, its simply just not worth the risk of jail time.
Shit, even taking the gun home to my house is too big a risk, its a mandatory 5 year sentence just for owning one. I'll take my chances with heavy doors and a baseball bat if I'm at home, and if I'm in a car I'll use a tire iron. Anything else that would be remotely useful as a weapon outside of my house will get me done on
offensive weapons act (hint: anything they say is an offensive weapon is an offensive weapon), and as I mentioned before I'm far more likely to be searched walking about than to be attacked.