Reply #44: not quite true.

[Mr Kilroi]

"And the best part of the plan was this: the British people were, for the most part, defenseless. Decades of a culture that taught that guns were bad and should be eschewed had taken their toll. About the only guns extant in England were fowling pieces owned by the privileged gentry. The only tools available for the average British subject to defend his country were broomsticks, spades, and pitchforks. In other words, much like it is today in that country. What to do? Here was the most invincible arm of all time massed across the Channel, ready and willing to invade, rape and pillage a defenseless British populace."
this is actually incorrect

Bill of Rights Richard Munday

"When Britain introduced her first Firearms Act in 1920, the Bill of Rights provision was respected: the normal "good reason" for the issue of a licence for a pistol was self defence. This remained the case following the Firearms Act 1937; a change of policy was only indicated when the Home Secretary stated in October 1946 that he would "not regard the plea that a revolver is wanted for protection of an applicant's person or property as necessarily justifying the issue of a firearm certificate".(9) Perhaps because applicants were advised that other "good reasons" were open to them, this shift of policy went unchallenged. But if the right to weapons for defence fell in abeyance. it was not thereby extinguished: In 1913 it had been ruled in Bowles v. Bank of England that "the Bill of Rights still remains unrepealed, and practice of custom, however prolonged, or however acquiesced in on the part of the subject can not be relied on by the Crown as justifying any infringement of its provisions"."

http://www.rkba.ca/
http://libertypages.webs.com/Bill%20of%20rights%20munday.pdf