Cosmoline
Member
I love a lot of things about the UK. Their television has long been vastly superior to our own. I was just watching "Smiley's People" on DVD this weekend--a spy thriller that puts anything produced stateside to shame in a corner with a dunce cap on. And I find the people witty and intelligent in general. But as much as it pains me to say this, giving the modern citizens of those Isles the same rights and access to firearms that I enjoy in Alaska would indeed be a recipe for disaster. One hundred years ago gentlemen routinely packed heat. Oscar Wilde included. The country *INVENTED* the first modern CCW handgun--the British Bulldog, and mass produced it.
But too much has changed, particularly since WWII. The current generations there have almost no idea how to handle firearms. The gun culture that serves to regulate and officiate firearms over here is almost entirely extinct in the UK. If a noob from the Pacific Isles who's never handled iron comes to my range, I can and have helped keep him from blowing his toes off. Just as mentors and older bros helped me, and others helped them before. This is routine and has been an unbroken chain in the US for hundreds of years now. But over there there is nobody to help or guide. EVERYBODY is a noob, even 90% of the police and most of the soldiers apart from special forces. If you suddenly gave everyone arms and munitions they would be using them like they've seen in the movies with tragic results, particularly with all the binge drinking that goes on there.
I would never say gun rights should not be restored to the UK, but at this point it would need to be done carefully and slowly. The rights were removed overnight and they can't be restored overnight. People have to re-learn what firearms are and what they are not. They have to understand the responsibility of ownership. A lawful gun culture needs to be rebuilt.
But too much has changed, particularly since WWII. The current generations there have almost no idea how to handle firearms. The gun culture that serves to regulate and officiate firearms over here is almost entirely extinct in the UK. If a noob from the Pacific Isles who's never handled iron comes to my range, I can and have helped keep him from blowing his toes off. Just as mentors and older bros helped me, and others helped them before. This is routine and has been an unbroken chain in the US for hundreds of years now. But over there there is nobody to help or guide. EVERYBODY is a noob, even 90% of the police and most of the soldiers apart from special forces. If you suddenly gave everyone arms and munitions they would be using them like they've seen in the movies with tragic results, particularly with all the binge drinking that goes on there.
I would never say gun rights should not be restored to the UK, but at this point it would need to be done carefully and slowly. The rights were removed overnight and they can't be restored overnight. People have to re-learn what firearms are and what they are not. They have to understand the responsibility of ownership. A lawful gun culture needs to be rebuilt.
