My Personal Thoughts
The UK has become a dangerous place in recent years and people living in the UK know that unprovoked attacks are all too common situations. Anyone who disagrees should read newspapers and watch the news more often.
Disarming victims of crime hasn't reduced violence in this country, but arming them might be the solution. Criminals generally respond to deterrents, and the risk of being killed every time you commit a crime is a powerful deterrent indeed.
I hear people say that if victims are armed, the criminals won't be deterred but instead will obtain guns before attacking so they can meet the threat from their potential victims. If someone is willing to attack you, even though they know you may be armed, then you're dealing with the worst kind of criminal; someone that fears nothing and doesn't care whether he lives or dies.
Thugs like this won't
care about armed police, prison, the death penalty or anything else either. In this case, there won't be any deterrent to criminals and violence on our streets will only get worse. It's also safe to assume that those who don't fear prison would think nothing of executing witnesses to their crimes, whether they co-operate or not.This makes arming yourself for personal protection
even more necessary.
Despite this, gun control advocates wish to remain
unarmed against those that not only have no pity, remorse or fear but also have
no regard for human life; for some strange reason they continue to believe that
the police will save them if they're in trouble.
This is foolish thinking at best; there have been many cases in the UK
of people being raped, stabbed and even tortured to death by intruders in their
own homes.
Disarming yourself in the hope that criminals will play nice
can have fatal consequences.
The current situation means that as long as
the attackers are armed, they win every single time. Nobody wants to get shot,
and allowing law-abiding people to be armed means a criminal risks his life
every single time he attacks.
My argument is based on one undeniable fact; there are far more decent and sensible people in our country than criminals. Therefore, if gun laws were to be relaxed, there would be far more good guys with guns than bad. This places the criminal element at a severe disadvantage and makes their job very dangerous indeed.
If the risk of being shot dead isn't a deterrent, then I'm afraid that nothing is. On the other hand, if some criminals decide that it's just not worth being killed (and it's fair to say that some of them will), then logic tells you you'll see a reduction in violent crime.
Arming yourself isn't about being violent towards others. It's about taking responsibility for your own safety, instead of relying on strangers to do it for you. If you're unfortunate enough to live in an unsafe part of the UK, being armed will allow you to walk the streets at night without the fear of getting beaten, stabbed, robbed or raped.
Gun ownership empowers the elderly, weak and disabled, so they can defend themselves in the best and most effective way possible. Society's most vulnerable members are regularly targeted by cowardly street criminals due to the massive power advantage that the fit and able-bodied criminal has over his victim.
Firearms would remove this massive advantage and create a "level playing field".
Some people oppose gun control because of the murder rate in the USA, which gun control advocates insist is higher than Britain's simply because guns are easy to obtain in that country.
However, the US murder rate has dropped by more than 40 percent in the last 20 years, yet gun laws have become more relaxed and gun sales have increased during that time.
It's also interesting that over the past 2 decades more and more US states have passed laws that allow their citizens to obtain "concealed carry" permits so they can legally carry handguns in public.
That isn't proof that the drop in crime rates has occurred just because gun laws have become more relaxed, but the fact that violent crime in the US has declined and not risen IS proof that that allowing people to be armed certainly doesn't make things worse and might actually contribute to a decrease in violence.
If that's the case, then what reason is there is oppose the relaxation of gun laws ?
I also keep hearing is that the US has more "gun murders" than the UK. How is a murder carried out with a firearm any more serious than one carried out by stabbing, beating or any other method ? What exactly is the difference ?
We need to understand that it's not difficult to stop guns getting into the hands of criminals, it's impossible. Unfortunately many people in this country still believe that if we make gun laws even more strict then criminals will eventually start obeying them. The truth is this is never going to happen.
When it comes to defence against criminal behaviour, individuals are responsible for the safety of themselves and their loved ones. The police are not your bodyguards, and they never have been. They'll never arrive in time to protect you from violent thugs, but they WILL get there in time to launch the murder investigation following your death.
But by then it really isn't going to matter to you anyway.
Banning gun ownership and leaving decent people defenceless whilst the criminals remain armed isn't going to make people safer. But many anti-gun people don't think with their minds, they feel with their emotions, and sadly logic and common sense often have no place in their conclusions.
Gun control advocates can talk all they want about getting guns off the streets, but if they've failed to get gun crime to even 1 percent below 1997 levels despite 13 years of effort, then what chance do they have of reducing it in the future?
Preventing people from owning the tools they need to protect themselves and their families is a grevious erosion of civil liberties and needs to rectified as soon as possible.
The fact remains that until the UK gun laws are repealed, more and more lives will be devastated by violent street thugs that have no regard for the law, the police or human life.