Reply #20: Hmmmm.......nice try.

[Pert_UK]

"So, you're saying that an illegal shooting with a legally owned gun is somehow morally worse than an illegal shooting with an illegally held gun?" - nope. Not saying that at all.

What I AM saying is that LESS shootings are good. When you could legally hold guns in the UK, several people misused that privilege to commit massacres, others accidentally shot themselves and others, others used their guns to commit suicide or commit individual murders. None of those have happened since the ban on guns.

"Since all handguns were banned, has the number of homicides committed with firearms increased or decreased in England?" - not sure, although it could easily have risen, but that's IRRELEVANT, as I keep pointing out...Violent crime in the UK has increased. Gun crime has increased alongside it, given that gun crime is a violent crime. However, and ONCE AGAIN, the handgun ban has nothing whatsoever to do with this issue. Increased use of firearms by drug gangs and other criminals is an entirely separate issue to the ban on legally held firearms. More criminals are choosing to use guns and there are more guns around, hence the rise.

Here's the point, which you've managed to miss repeatedly.

As an example, there were 42 gun murders in the UK in 1999. All of them by criminals using illegal weapons. The ONLY POSSIBLE RESULT of even more guns being available, is that this figure would rise. Maybe, in a perfect world, none of the legal gun owners would have used their weapon illegally in 1999, but the only way to be sure is to ensure they don't have a gun.

"You no longer have the right to defend yourself. You have to "lie there and take it". That's not a condition compatible with personal freedom. " - complete crap. You are practically making the assumption that each and every person in the UK is going to be attacked and be unable to defend themself solely because they don't have a gun. Thankfully, the vast majority of people in the UK never find themselves in that situation, and virtually nobody has to face the trauma of being held at gunpoint. Freedom is always about compromise and the UK public have chosen that they neither need or want personal access to firearms for self-defence.

I agree wholeheartedly that every year a handful of lives might be saved and attacks/robberies prevented if UK citizens were able and chose to arm themselves with guns. However, the flipside is that overall deaths by gunfire would rocket, including the inevitable accidental deaths, misuse of guns in crime and suicides.

"The level of gun ownership world-wide is directly related to murder and suicide rates and specifically to the level of death by gunfire."

'International Correlation between gun ownership and rates of homicide and suicide.' Professor Martin Killias, May 1993.