Here in the UK we have incredibly strict gun laws. It's a job even to get a licence for a 12 bore shotgun let alone a rifle, and a pistol is nigh-on out of the question.
Our Olympic small bore shooters have to train abroad!
This all came about as a consequence of two massacres, one involving schoolchildren.
Yet gun crime is an increasing problem.
As we told legislators at the time, people with illegally held weapons aren't going to surrender them and they will continue to stay outside the licencing regime.
We have four very urbanised counties with large cities where gun licencing is at its lowest per head of population.
Guess where gun crime is highest. Yes, in those same four counties!
A few years ago in London, a young Caribbean youth with a gun held up a small post office run by an eighty year old lady.
Another customer in the shop shot him.
Given that no one, not even our police, carries guns on the street this was highly unusual.
[Firearms officers only patrol openly in major airports with a Heckler and Koch, otherwise they patrol in cars with locked gunsafes until called to an incident.]
At the youth's subsequent trial [yes, he survived the shooting], it transpired that the man who had shot him was an American secret service agent guarding the American Embassy in London and he was legally permitted to carry a gun [but not for the purpose as used!].
Under cross examination, the little old lady who had been held up was asked by the defendant's lawyer if his client had been given a warning by the American before being shot.
"Oh yes - most definitely," said the little old lady.
"What was said?" asked counsel.
The old lady replied: "Go on, make my day you mother f*****!"
And the kid did!!
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