LadyEllen
Posts: 10931
Joined: 6/30/2006 From: Stourport-England Status: offline
|
Popeye - it was over ten years ago now that firearms came under very strict control here. It was following two awful incidents when psychologically ill people went on rampages and killed loads of people; the stupidity of it being, that neither of them should have had a licence for weapons granted by the police in the first place. All firearms apart from shotguns were banned, and shotguns were not to be supplied with capacity for more than three shots before reloading. Thousands of perfectly ordinary, law abiding citizens saw their guns destroyed. My uncle nearly went to gaol when my granddad died and the house was found to be harbouring a collection of banned weapons, just because he'd inherited (he was actually charged with possession after calling them in, but he "got off" with a thousand pounds fine - see what I mean about respect for the police!?). Pre all this, it was fairly simple where I live, in a pretty much country style county, to get a license. As it was I had a shotgun - a matchlock musket for battle reenactment, and it was so easy to get the licence. Immediately following this though, we had regular visits from police, had to get cabinets installed etc. Bearing in mind the weapon and how its loaded, and how unreliable it is, this was total overkill. So now, several years on, the aims of this get rid of legal guns campaign have worked and we are free of gun crime.....NOT! I tell you now, for less than USD 2000-00, I could drive less than 10 miles right now and come home with not a rifle, not a handgun, but a fully automatic SMG of the type used by the drug gangs here - all of whom are armed to the teeth whilst we the law abiding are defenceless. Gun crime is going through the roof. It hasnt reached here thank goodness, but its less than 10 miles away now in the city, where weekly shootings are so fairly commonplace that they arent even headlines any more. Until we have government by the people for the people, as you so often rightly say, rather than government by focus groups and tabloid headline, nothing will change. Meanwhile, as Sleazy mentioned we have very few armed police; for my police area we have six armed response vehicles to cover three counties down the Welsh border, with twenty trained officers to crew them and another twenty trained for sieges and the like, out of 4000 police officers for the area. E
_____________________________
In a test against the leading brand, 9 out of 10 participants couldnt tell the difference. Dumbasses.
|