Daniel_

OK - there was a shooting at Hungerford (where a mentally ill man used an assault rifle, if I remember correctly). And then a few years later there was the shooting at Dunblane (where a man shot up a school with a handgun).

This was BEFORE the rules were changed, and therefore under the old gun control measures - and we still remember them decades later - this demonstrates not that we are at the mercy of criminals and ought to defend ourselves, but that we have a largely gun free society where acts so small that they would only just make the local news in the US remain in the national consciousness for years.

What crap. Knives have been carried for years and have been the "default" weapon of choice for most criminals for years - again, we have had rules in the UK forbidding the sale of knives to the under 16s for a decade or more, and simple possession of a knife with intent to harm is punishable by 2 years in jail already - BEFORE the new attention on knives.

Lets get this straight - you belive that because some people will use a minor weapon (e.g. a bat, to use your illustration) that the public at large must be allowed knives.

But then criminals use knives, so the public need handguns.

So criminals use handguns, so the public need rifles.

So criminals use rifles, so the public need machineguns.

Before you know it you are allowing people to use WMDs to defend their homes.

I live near a harbour - can I have an aircraft carrier to keep myself safe from a criminal armed with a pointed stick?

I have noticed that many of your arguments repeat the falacy of Xeno's Paradox - the one that shows it is not possible to shoot a tortoise with an arrow, because as the arrow gets to where the tortoise was, the tortoise has moved, and so forth - the problem is that you are dealing with smaller and smaller slices of time.

In your case you downgrade the weapons aailable and you are dealing with smaller and smaller slices of crime - therefore the number of people that get hurt or killed in England with it's silly laws that keep guns out of the hands of normal people is vastly lower than in nice, safe USA with it's armed citizens.

If having a gun makes you feel safe, then I'm glad you are happy with your local laws - keeping guns out of peoples private ownership makes me feel safe, so I'm happy to live here.

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Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
And everthing is Green and Submarine
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