[brando]

..."Same goes for the Cumbria shooting, where they couldn't stop that maniac simply cos they didn't have any firearms to confront him with.. the core issue is that police forces in the UK are not pro-active or preventive, they're somehow anachronistic, thinking that you can solve things with a buff on the head and a patronising chat.. crime is changing, and so should the police forces: the reply to the London riots was a classic example of their utter incompetence "we weren't ready for this".. really? A city that had terrorist attacks? A multi-cultural melting pot of millions of people? A city that will host the Olympics next year?!
And mind you, when I talk about incompetence, it's not the poor PCs that I'm talking about, those poor people are just doing their job with the means they're given, I'm talking about all the heads and their stuck-up-their-own-ar$e police procedures and care for human rights and what not.. if you're a law abiding citizen you have nothing to fear when a police office carries a sidearm.
Once again, it's your government choosing for you, cos they don't like you nor trust you. Most of the folks at the government come from specific social layers and circles anyway, and have little or no understanding or care for "little Britain"....

All this rant and you want to relax the present laws on gun ownership? You're just sliding towards the "enshrined" laws of gun-ownership that allow psychopaths in the US to rack up really high scores when they flip out and go off shooting their class-mates and teachers, relatives or total strangers.

In response to an earlier post where you suggest that we enjoy shooting people on computers and compare Spitfires to the SMLE, as well as inferring that some of us do this and "hate firearms", I thought I'd mention my experience.
I've handled and fired all of the infantry weapons of the British Army up to and including the L1A1 SLR and the GPMG, and sidearms such as the the Webley MkVI and the Browning 9mm. All of them interesting and great fun to fire in a military context. In that one of the most important aspects of live-firing is discipline, both self-discipline and that applied by warrant-officers and N.C.O's to ensure that gunfire is both directed and effective in hitting the target. Outside this context firearms take on a sinister role in civilian life. Gun clubs had a good reputation for many years, especially during the years when mass call-ups were a likely response to international wars. Since the end of the cold war, and indeed before that time, the idea of conscripting gun enthusiasts to defend our shores had fallen in face of the modern army structure - small, eminently professional, and high-tech.

However, a series of events changed the public's attitude to gun ownership and gave rise to the current regulations. Hungerford, Dunblane and Cumbria have all showed up the dangers and shortcomings of the previous structure and the present structure in the case of Cumbria. No doubt it's galling to be restricted to muzzle-loading handguns, rim-fire .22 rifles and shotguns - but what are the alternatives? Michael Ryan showed the shocked citizens of Hungerford just how lethal a Chinese Kalashnikov, an M1 carbine, and a Beretta 9mm pistol could be in the hands of a crazed and indiscriminate shooter; while Thomas Hamilton demonstrated the effectiveness of alternating full-metal-jacket and hollow-point rounds in the four handguns he used to kill sixteen children, one teacher, and finally, himself at Dunblane Primary School. It should also be noted that a similar number of victims were wounded by gunfire in both these cases. It's fairly certain that not so much loss of life would have been caused had these maniacs only been armed with muzzle loaders and rimfire .22 rifles, although Derrick Bird showed that shotguns and a .22 rifle could indeed amass a double-figure score when combined with the use of a vehicle on back-country roads.

What's important to note is that none of the gun massacres in either America or Great Britain have been prevented by gun-carrying members of the public or armed police. And in most cases the shooters have killed themselves before they can be captured.