Posted on 06/02/2010 7:07:49 PM PDT by marktwain
Gun laws in the UK are among the toughest in the world after a number of mass killings over the past three decades. Anyone who acquires or is in possession of a shotgun — the weapon believed to have been used in the Cumbria killings — must have a certificate issued by a chief police officer in the area in which they live. The certificate allows the holder to possess any number of shotguns, including pump-action and self-loading weapons with a magazine that cannot hold more than two cartridges. The officer must be satisfied that an applicant has “good reason” for wanting a shotgun, is fit to have it and that public safety will not be endangered. Police must interview every applicant and visit their home to check that the gun is held in a secure locker. There were 574,946 shotgun certificates in operation at the end of March last year, 5 per cent higher than the previous year. The number of certificates peaked in 1988 at 882,000 and has since fallen by more than a third, according to Home Office figures published in March. The reduction coincided with revised rules for renewing shotgun certificates, including a requirement on the police to carry out additional checks on applicants, including a visit to their home. The certificates covered 1.3 million shotguns. In Cumbria 9,868 certificates were in operation in March covering 22,476 shotguns, an average of 2.3 guns per certificate. Police in the area received 370 new applications for shotgun certificates of which only two were refused. Shotgun certificates must be renewed every five years, with the police conducting the same checks on the applicant, including a face-to-face interview. Gun laws were tightened after the Hungerford massacre in 1987, in which Michael Ryan killed 16 people and himself with two semi-automatic
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Which is where gun control laws fail miserably.
Restricting gun ownership to protect people, by making them utterly defenseless against violent crime, where the cops are the only ones armed and are not responsible to protect anyone, is so fantastically stupid that only insane people could possibly go along with it - literally sheep to the slaughter.
This world does not have a political problem. It has an insanity problem.
I take it that "To defend against a tyrannical government and overly zealous law enforcement" does not cut the mustard over there?
All of the reports that I have seen and heard harp on the fact that handguns are not allowed in GB....
He had a rifle and a shotgun.
Gun Control and gun control laws are the excuse of negligent, incompetent, foolish and irrational public officials playing upon social pop-culture ignorance!
My view is similar to the Ft. Hood shootings. Had firearms been allowed, the massacre could have been prevented.
:We do not know if the firearms used were legally purchased and owned or not.”
That doesn’t matter. They will simply ban all guns and think that they have solved the problem.
“To defend against a tyrannical government and overly zealous law enforcement”
It’s Great Britain.....socialist tyranny is standard operating procedure....
Or, at least, greatly reduced...
What's worse is they think they're just like everyone else and are voted into positions of power.
But a Good Guy, with a gun, could have.
Same as at Ft. Hood, where the ending had to wait until the *civilian* post police showed up. Which was probably quicker than police generally would have shown up, since the two responding officers were pretty close when the call came in.
But since the guy apparently had a clean history and was well-liked by those who knew him, it’s unlikely he’d have been turned down for a shotgun certificate if he’d apply, since the turn-down rate is extremely low. What was needed was plenty of armed citizens, with concealed handguns that could quickly be pressed into service.
Ya won't hear that on Commie News Network.
It doesn’t really make any difference. Nothing stops people whose heads get puddled like this, especially a law.
I disagree. I dont think it would have any difference at all.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Folks, he was driving through small towns, via rural roads, for three hours, taking pot shots at random at folks for no readily apparent reason. How many people expect that to happen and have time to draw a concealed weapon? If you did, would you really fire it at a fast moving vehicle in a built up area?
First you say he was in small towns via rural roads, then you ask if we’d really fire in a “built up area”. There was plenty of opportunity over all those hours to shoot out his tires and then shoot him as he emerged from the car. Sadly, nobody did that so he just kept going and kept killing.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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