'Yeah, Britian is so safe, the law wants people to hide under their beds or lock their bedroom doors when they have a burglar in their home. Here, we shoot their asses.'
Simply not true. I have two shotguns and a .303 rifle in my home. The law allows me to use reasonable force to apprehend a burglar. That means if he is armed I may shoot him in self-defence. If he attacks me I may shoot him in self-defence. If he is unarmed and running away, I may not shoot him.
You only have to compare 62 firearm related murders in Britain per year with 8259 in the US to know that civillians armed with handguns result in more deaths of innocent Americans, not less.
You shouldn't believe everything you read about the UK, just as i don't believe everything I read about your country!
The names I mentioned in my post # 124 Are actual stories about just how bad it's getting in Britain.? IIRC, there was an article a couple of days ago posted here where a man was charged with selling a minor a knife.
Two points I would like to make about this statement.
One, total numbers don't tell the whole story, as the rate per x number of population is a more telling figure. The US population is over 300 million, vs. quite a bit less for the UK. Plus, the "handgun murder rate" will differ from the overall murder rate (murders committed using any kind of weapon, including bare hands).
Second, not all handgun deaths are innocent victims. We have a gentleman in our midst named Jeff Cooper who has written extensively about guns, self defense, and other issues (I highly recommend reading some of his material, such as the book "To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Tell the Truth). He says there is something called the "good riddance factor", which is when punks and thugs kill each other, thus doing society a favor.
Each society has its own dangers. Americans pack heat. That means when arguments and disputes occur, they can often escalate into gunfire and death. That doesn't happen in the UK. So this goes some way to accounting for the difference in firearm related deaths.
However, there is another side to this coin. It is that the citizenry will never put up with crap like the escalating intifada in Europe, perpetrated by gangs of Muslim thugs, as witnessed recently in France and described in these incidents in Belgium. So yes, we have a price to pay for our firearm usage but in the world of evermore assertive Muslims and jihadists I think we'll find that we're in good shape.
Europeans in general look to the government to provide for them.....and that includes their personal security. That may have been fine in 1940 or 50 when a stern word from a bobby was sufficient to put the fear of God into a teenage tearaway but in the world of 2006, you will find and are already finding that this leaves you extremely vulnerable.
The law allows me to use reasonable force to apprehend a burglar. That means if he is armed I may shoot him in self-defence.
Is it really that simple? What say he is armed with a knife, attempts to stab you and grazes your hand, drawing a little blood and then you pull out your gun and blow him away. I'm thinking the fact that you were afraid for your life carries little weight with the police and a jury and you likely get to spend some time in the pokey for manslaughter or maybe even murder, no? He grazed your hand, you killed him. Uh oh. The term "reasonable force" has a very limited defintion in the UK, does it not?