UK flutherites: Does the prohibition of firearms make you feel safe?

“Im not really interested in a debate at all.”
Not the most welcoming sentence to open your question.
Hence the lack of replies?

Yes.

@rebbel I felt the need to preface my question that way because I can easily see this thread spiraling into a gun control debate whereas right now I’m only interested in the feelings and perceptions of those currently living under with strict gun control. How things are not how they ought to be.

the gun in America, is a symbol of right wing paranoia. That seems to have also permeated foreign policy. So yeah, i prefer a gun less society, angry people don’t kill people, angry people with gun’s do, desperate people with gun’s do, trigger happy cops do. so yes everyone feels safer, no debate necessary, it’s a no brainer.

OTOH, Britain is about to enact a law requiring the micro-chipping of all dogs because, in the absence of guns, bad guys have been threatening their victims with large and ferocious dogs.

“Angry people don’t kill people, their angry dogs do.”

Yeah. It’s pretty hard to get a gun here and the punishments are relatively severe.

It is extremely rare for people to carry guns, unless they are on a big drug deal or armed robbery, in which case they are not about to start robbing random people in the street at gunpoint. It just isn’t worth it here, so normal people are generally not afraid of gun crime.

gun crime generally stays within the gang/drug-dealing culture in the big cities. Even then, it is a tiny fraction of the size of the problem in the USA.

@Darwin That’s not a very good idea, but the dogs do need to be controlled. People have been breeding them over years now to produce extremely aggressive and dangerous dogs, specifically to use as weapons.

@mammal the criminals in America are armed. If the citizenry is completely unarmed, we would be sitting ducks because the criminals would know there is no danger from armed citizens. As it is now, the criminals have to wonder which of the citizenry is armed, which is not. Nothing right or left winged about it.

Yes, it does. It’s not just the knowing that there are relatively few guns on the street. It’s also the knowledge that gun use is largely unacceptable to the vast majority of the population, many criminals included.

@jaketheripper Understood.

Perfectly so.

Yes, whenever I’m in the UK.

Safe as in I’m near enough certain that I’m not going to get shot.
Shotguns and rifles are still legal with a licence and a wall mounted cabinet.

@Darwin – The dog chipping that was mentioned by the government just the other week has already been dropped

Guns don’t kill people

Yes I feel safer than I would if guns were legal. As things stand at the moment, 99.9% of the drunks, junkies and whackjobs can’t get hold of one, and 99.9% of the ones that can, stay on their own turf.

The answer to the vicious dog problem isn’t compulsory microchipping, it’s compulsory dog training. If you can’t attend dog training classes for the first X months of owning the dog (with maybe annual follow-up checks, like the annual health check), you can’t keep the dog. The dogs that have been trained to be vicious will be easy to spot just from their behaviour in the class.

Pretty safe yes – there is no real fear of gun crime except in a few very localised areas. It is also much harder for a nutter to go on a rampage with no access to guns; it does occasionally happen but they are armed with knives/swords and the outcome is usually less catastrophic (although still sometimes fatal). I much prefer it this way.

My fiancé lives in England, while I currently reside in the US…in a city that is consistently ranked somewhere in the top 5 US cities for murders by gunshot. While shootings are still occur in the UK (the Cumbria incident last week is an example), I will feel much safer.