[lokken]

Gun crime will be rising so long as guns exist simply because criminals want to succeed, guns help them, so more get hold of them by illegal means. Linking the rise in gun crime to the fact guns are banned is simply absurd because making things illegal makes things more difficult to get hold of. Banning guns is not the cause of rising gun crime, yet in a nation where guns are freely available, people get shot and the public do not batter an eyelid because it is so common until people start rampaging in the compounds of educational establishments - I do not find that a satisfactory position for the United Kingdom.

What Yahwe is probably talking about is that handguns should be banned because the need to kill in self defence is actually very rare and to put them in the public population would lead to unnecessary loss of life that is well beyond this need and cause far more wrong than by giving people guns for so called 'self defence'. By making guns public, you have the following potential effects:

- people deeming it their right to shoot someone in self defence when it isn't, because situations of fear lead to manifest overreaction;

- giving access to guns in the population to people in sudden states of emotion/anger (which everyone is vulnerable to);

- giving free access of guns to mentalists who can go round killing people because the voices in their head told them to;

- let us say someone poor has no money, has a gun and is quite desperate. Instead of getting a job, or trying to improve their position in society, with a gun available you give someone desperate an option of a so called "easy way out" to commit crime and hold somewhere up. Yes you can do this with many household items, but a gun by it's nature is far more suggestive and can encourage someone to cross the threshold between law abider and criminal far earlier.

Let it be clear, I am not saying that banning guns stops gun crime or indeed stops people going into school compounds and massacring people. But it makes it far far harder and probably makes our society a lot safer than without a ban.

Guns are dangerous weapons with no use whatsoever apart from to kill people, it is their specific design aim - they bring nothing of note to society other than that, which is not the case with the items Qazok listed. In my view it's right that if we see someone with a gun, they should be told it's unacceptable, not just because they are likely to be criminals but also because of the dangers I've described above. The crime of being irresponsible is essentially the same, obviously the punishments we dish out should be very very different.