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While disowning “the American system” of gun rights (“it’s absolutely crazy that you can go and buy automatic repeating rifles down at the local gun shop that looks more like a supermarket”) UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage (no relation) called for lifting the Land of Hope and Glory’s ban on civilian handguns. “If you criminalise handguns then only the criminals carry the guns,” he opined. Needless to say, Farage’s suggestion elicited equal amounts of ridicule and righteous indignation – from both sides of the political spectrum. Academics and cops and academic cops too. “Mr Farage’s comments were irresponsible,” Peter Squires told the telegraph.co.uk. The Brighton University Professor of Criminology (and Member of the Association of Police Officer’s Advisory Group on the Criminal Use of Firearms) went on to assert that “If public safety is a consideration then it’s a particularly stupid thing to say. It opens up the problem that we have almost dealt with successfully.” Yeah, no. The good news: someone actually said it.

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91 COMMENTS

    • It’s laughably ironic that the Britons so conveniently forget their own damned history. Well, it would be were it not so damned sad to see. Anyway, even when we were still under the English Crown, all of its subjects in all of its colonies were allowed artillery pieces. In fact, it was these very same artillery pieces that the Continental Army either borrowed or purchased from the citizenry until such time that they could furnish their own.

      I’ve been following Nigel Farage’s political career for the better part of a decade now, and he’s been likened in many circles as “the Ron Paul of Europe”. Although he would still be far and away closer to an establishment Dempublican (or should I say Republicrat?) here, over there he is probably as Classical Liberal as one can get as a politician and still actually keep their job and have their words not fall on deaf ears, either.

      While I disagree entirely with his position, especially given his apparent and complete lack of understanding of the root causes of U.S. crime in general, he’s still taking a step in the right direction. A very, very small step, but a step nonetheless.

      You should hear this guy consistently ripping the E.U. delegation a new one every time he speaks, especially when it comes to economics. It’s beautiful and brilliant.

    • It’s jaw dropping to examine the differences in culture between two “western civilizations”. You had some Brits part ways 240 years ago and look at where the loyalists are now – absolutely devoid of any intellectual or moral concept of individual rights. Now think about America and ponder where we’ll be in 240. I don’t think there’ll be a revolution, but you already see people heavily migrating to regions of the US that are ideologically friendly, whatever your bent. Two Americas indeed.

    • It has been 80 or more years since you could buy automatic rifles in the U.S., what the heck is he talking about?

  1. Good for him, let’s get them talking and realizing they have been cooking the books on crime and that jolly old England really isnt.

    • TPTB will NEVER admit that, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Stiff upper lip and all that…

  2. The bigger problem is that when you outlaw handguns you turn an otherwise law-abiding citizen, or subject in the case of the British, into criminals simply because they decided to obtain a handgun with no evidence of an intent to use the handgun to commit a separate crime.

  3. I’m sure they’ll deal with this sudden case of logical thought and reasonable conclusions swiftly and justly.

  4. I used to live in the United Kingdom. If you want to see what the US will be like in a few years, look to the UK. Oh, and the people there are miserable with the society they have created for themselves.

    • Multiculturalism is a disaster. It destroys everything it touches. It ruins the quality of life of all imprisoned by it. It decimates unity. Weakens education. Turns citizen against citizen. Go to the Japanese embassy and tell them you want to immigrate to Japan. They will laugh and say, “Japan is for Japanese!” You can go there as a guest or as a conquering army, but either way you will not call yourself Japanese. There is no immigration to Japan. Now am I to believe the entire island nation of Japan is filled with a bunch of backward-hick-redneck-racist? Of course not! But they realize that allowing other races to immigrate to Japan would destroy it.

  5. I wouldn’t hold your breath on this changing anything. Ukip isn’t what you’d really call a major player in national UK politics. They hold 3 seats in the House of Lords, 1 seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and have never won an election to the House of Commons. Curiously, though one of their planks is withdrawal from the European Union, they’re tied for 2nd place with the Labour Party for the most number of seats in the European Parliament, only the Conservative and Unionist Party has more, with 25.

  6. Ah yes, the problem that they have very nearly almost but not quite solved. May it always be thorn in their paw until the “mere” civillian is again allowed to practice their rights without threat of assault by their government.

  7. Best shooters in the world? I don’t think so. The UK is the mother of all nanny states. It similar to what the gun nazi’s want here. I don’t see them ever allowing people to own firearms. After all if the serfs can be armed they can change the government.

    • I only had myself a laugh at that. “Best shooters in the world!” Dream on, Jack. We soundly beat them in the Olympic shooting events every single time. Hell, even a basically trained Marine fresh out of Paris Island that qualifies as an “Expert” at 600 meters — with their rack-grade M16s with duty ammo no less — are already in the top 1% of marksmen in the entire world.

      Some of those guys go on to shoot in the Wimbledon Cup, the President’s 100, 600, etc. I was in the running for the President’s 600 in 2007 myself, and though I fell right off the bottom of the leaderboards, I know for a fact that those people that finish at and near the top could easily be Olympic hopefuls at the least.

      If any place is home to the world’s best shooters, it’s here, buddy. Always was. Always will be.

      The End.

    • You can and people do own firearms in the UK, but the hoops to jump through are ridiculous. All I gotta say is “straight pull-only AR, AK, and FAL” and you go limp

  8. “it’s absolutely crazy that you can go and buy automatic repeating rifles down at the local gun shop that looks more like a supermarket”

    Where is this store and do they have .22LR in stock?

  9. There is no guaranteed right to free speech in the UK. The only reason he was not whisked off is that they successfully ridiculed him.

    • No guaranteed right to free speech doesn’t mean that black helicopters descend on you as soon as you say something inconvenient. What it means is that the Parliament can write laws that prohibit certain topics or manners of speaking. But you still need a law to put a man in prison, and there’s no law on the books in UK that prohibits campaigning against gun control.

  10. …the problem that we have almost dealt with successfully.”

    People over here in The Colonies refer to “almost successfully” as “epic fail.”

  11. Almost successfully? In the gap between where they are and full blown success lives a violent crime rate that would be more at home in latin america than western europe.

  12. On the road to recovery, the first step is admitting that you have a problem. Well done Chap. Well done.

  13. Did I read somewhere that the UK has higher per capita violent crime rates than the US?

    Also I occasionally peruse the British news and see that they are aghast about knife crime. Seems to prove that it’s not the tool but the contents of a person’s heart.

  14. Go to the article. In the middle of it is a poll as to whether UK should legalize handguns. I suggest you vote. There is already a majority in favor of legalization.

  15. Yes, public safety, they have public safety over there too. Who is the “public” that is safer without CC handguns? Was it the attorney in Jersey I believe that was just murdered? He couldn’t be public, as he was a sitting duck without a gun. So who is the “public” that is safer without handguns? We better dig up joly old Sherlock to shed some light on this one, Randy

  16. Unfortunately they would probably not allow you to use a handgun in self defense even if they allowed them. Don’t want criminals dying or anything!

  17. Nigel Farage speaks a lot of truth. Check his speeches in front of the EU Parliment out on YouTube. Great stuff. I can’t believe that he hasn’t “fallen asleep in the hot tub with the cover on” yet.

    • I’ve watched his many impassioned speeches there, and he just floors everybody. I don’t agree with everything he has to say, but in a lot of ways and on a lot of different subjects, he gets it right.

  18. No guns for sheep! The British gave up their rights. No one took them away. It was a knee jerk reaction to several murders and they’ve spent years lecturing Americans about how silly we are for arming ourselves as our violent crime rate plummeted and their violent crime rates soared. Now the inevitable regret begins to finally set in. Having rampant burglaries and soldiers hacked to pieces in the streets will do that. Sorry England. You gave up your rights without a peep…..No Guns For Sheep!

    • Oh, and one more thing – You Brits have a much bigger problem on your hands. Mainly that you’ll be a Muslim nation within 25 years by your own prognostications. Oops! I smell bloody revolution. How’s that multiculturalism working out for you? How was England deficient before you brought millions of sub-Saharan Muslims and Arab criminals to your once proud nation? You are still too afraid of being called a name to have your island back. It is coming though and I predict at least 40 million dead by the time the indigenous people of Britain get things worked out. Ouch….or you can go buy your children prayer rugs right now. Your call! Either way, no guns for sheep. Use your damn heads next time cowards.

      • Oh yeah, Muslims are soo dangerous. I heard they breathe fire and eat children for breakfast (maybe they have horns too?).

        • Hyperbole aside, the only two Muslim nations I am aware of that could be considered relatively free and peaceful by American standards are Turkey and Indonesia. Now, I am not saying that all Muslims are violent, evil, dangerous, or any other such thing, but name me another Muslim nation where you have real religious freedom- not just that the government won’t punish you for not converting, but will actually prevent the public at large from doing so. Malaysia is relatively peaceful, but apparently their Constitution says that if you are an ethnic Malay, and you renounce Islam, you lose your Malay status.

          I don’t care to make any predictions of blood in the street, but I think it’s not unreasonable to say that if any currently secular or non Muslim governed country has a crisis of government of any kind, and finds that they have a majority Muslim population, there is a real danger of an Islamic takeover.

          This is happening in some extent in Iraq, is happening to some extent in Syria, happened in Egypt until the secular military realized how bad it was getting, and could easily happen in fifty years in the UK. Again, no blanket predictions of doom, but ignoring this is as foolish as ignoring Feinstein. You don’t have to have jihad to have a fundamental change in your living conditions.

        • “Hyperbole aside, the only two Muslim nations I am aware of that could be considered relatively free and peaceful by American standards are Turkey and Indonesia.”

          Try being a member of the non-muslim, ethnic-chinese minority in Indonesia. There are entire local and regional governments that have been elected on platforms of “let’s get those bastard chinese Indonesians”. As to Turkey, Turks aren’t really known as non-violent, interpersonal pacifists.

          And the problem isn’t just “ethinic strife”, it’s baked into the ethos if Islam itself. Christianity says “thou shalt not kill” and “turn the other cheek”. Islam says “thou shalt not kill…unless they attack you first”. On the face of it, the latter stipulation is far more sensible; how are you going to survive as a people if you turn the other cheek for every predator? But in practice it doesn’t work that way. The “unless they attack you first” rider turns into “unless you can rationalize an excuse to yourself first”. A blanket “thou shalt not” sets a barrier to action of you *breaking with your own principles first* – and still feeling personally guilty afterward. In actual practice, the only barriers to violence in muslim communities are economic (if you hurt this person it will be bad for future business -don’t stab the tourists) and predictive (they have bigger guns than we do…).

          People say that the middle east has a long memory for grudges. Actually they have an elephantine record of “why there are no restrictions on my violent behavior”. So long as they can rationalize a “she hit me first, mom!” then they can attack a group (or member therein) whenever peak takes them. Hence, why muslim countries have “bloody borders”.

        • Not saying Turks are pacifists or that Indonesians are tolerant. I don’t personally care for Islam for a variety of reasons.

          All I was trying to do was point out the least bad of the Muslim dominated countries, to contrast them with places like Pakistan, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Sudan, etc. Even places like our ally of convenience, Saudi Arabia. None are what I would call free or peaceful.

          Do you think it’s fair to say the two I pointed out are the least bad, and that neither of us would want to live in either place? I think we agree more than we disagree, here. It’s just that if you express your concerns in the form of “Jihad!!! They’re going to kill us all!!!” people look at it as an equivalent to Godwin’s law and stop listening.

        • I was elaborating your points rather than refuting them, but I *have* known ethnic-chinese Indonesians and their stories sound like something out of early 1930s Germany -just with “casual day” dress code rather than Brown Shirts. I don’t know that Turkey and Indonesia are actually more peaceful than, say, islamic northern Nigeria; rather they seem to get better press.

          You do have to drill down and hunt a bit to get an insight to how living conditions actually are in a country (hence my passing query further up about “in what ways are Britons miserable?”). In contrasting example of someplace that gets *bad* press, a Czech acquaintance of mine was horrified when he learned I grew up in the American midwest because “that’s where the rednecks live”. I was like: Uhhh…you mean the people that praise hard work, are ubiquitously polite, will stop and help you fix a tire, don’t lock their front doors or cars because they don’t need to, and practice “honor system” sales method because it works in their locale? Those “rednecks”?

        • Iolinski – You made your little “fire breathing/children eating” speech and then waited for everyone to tell you how morally superior you are to that racist Marine 03…….and no one did. Why? Because Muslims ARE more violent than others. Muslims are exceeding violent infact as can be witnessed by, oh, I don’t know, maybe, suicide bombings of pizzerias, beheadings, torture, flying planes into buildings of civilians, child rape, etc., etc.,! You thought people here on TTAG would flock to your defense but you miscalculated. The hour is later than you think. Americans have had enough. Americans aren’t so afraid anymore of being called a name. It’s been tried too much as we watched our communities disintegrate and our values slandered. Personally you could call me a Purple, two headed, poka-dot, racist, homophobe, islamaphobe, redneck, gun-nut, Rightwing, hater and I still am not going to allow you to brainwash the children of our nation anymore. That just blows the Leftist mind because it worked for 50 years, but as I said earlier, The Hour is Later Than You Think! People are just tired of living this way. Pray to Allah we never meet Iolinski.

        • Not really. I don’t have anything against marine 03, except the obvious threat you made (“pray to Allah we never meet”).

          I just find the fear misdirected. Have you noticed how all those horrible muslim nations haven’t separated religion from state? That is what really is the problem, people thinking religion=government. All religions are equally shitty/poisonous only difference is what the news/media focus on. I have heard the horror stories of persecution of people who convert or become atheist/agnostic by muslims, christians (of various types), hindus, scientologists etc.

          To ruin the fun for you:

          No, we aren’t brainwashing and taking over countries. Although I am pretty sick and tired of being stereotyped as some savage, especially since me and my peers are more educated than your average Norwegian.

  19. We had some Brits at our gun range today , they loved fireing the full autos ( gee why is that?) And we had a conversation aboug guns in America.The leader tried the “crime rate in America” BS , I set him straight -gun crime vs crime.The Brits have way more murder and crime per capita than the US , just not GUN crime.

  20. When Britain allowed handguns a large number were owned by Police Officers. Those that carried while on duty were encouraged to buy one a practice with their own money.

  21. Hi, I’m British. There is absolutely no way I or most other Britons would back making firearms legal and accessible to all/most people in the UK. It is a non issue, and frankly looking at the number of high school massacres the US has, that is a sane thing.(what is it up to now, one high school massacre every 6 months? I mean compared to terrorists – I’m just curious here – compared to terrorists, how many people have been killed by US citizens wielding guns in high schools over the last 5 years or so? Someone should really look that number up) I feel totally safe on the streets in the UK generally, and never worry about some guy with a gun walking into a school and randomly killing my son. If I knew that anyone could potentially be carrying a gun – eh, not so much. Also, it was a misspelling – it was meant to read “The right to bare arms” – as in the right to wear short sleeves.

    • I was going to say “obvious troll is obvious,” but after thinking about it for a second, I realized this might be legitimate.

      If you feel safe, is it through ignorance of the rate of non-gun violent crime? Through ignorance of the rise in knife attacks, including a truly horrific killing of a soldier in the street, in broad daylight as some sort of statement about Islam?

      I believe the assertion that most British would not want the ban repealed- most British have almost completely abandoned responsibility for their own lives. It’s easier to let the government do everything, is it not? All you have to do is look at the rise of ‘health and safety’ to understand this mindset.

      Even if you don’t want to learn what the numbers actually say, what it really boils down to is this- freedom and personal responsibility versus being kept and cared for as a beast of burden.

      • Hasdrubal, I too thought “Troll” at first glance but actually believe the simpleton is sincere. If he feels safe walking the streets of Londonistan he’s delusional or insincere. I was recently in England and it feels like the 4th grade playground. The meanest kid controls the street. Brawny, young-toughs rule ever street corner. They are foul mouthed, rude, delinquent punks who almost dare you to walk too closely. In America I’d push right through the rable and say, “Your blocking the street boys!” If they assaulted me for simply walk on the sidewalk I’d blow 3 smoking holes through their chest before they even realized I was shooting at them. An armed society TRULY is a polite society! You just don’t find this conduct on the streets of American cities. People are polite or at worst they ignore one another. No jeering at women. No gang members “owning” entire blocks. What madness. I read per capita that London has 10 times the burglaries of New York. I can’t verify this personally but I assure you I believe it from what I saw. Legal Guns End Thuggery! I say again, Legal Guns End Thuggery!!!

    • You’re also ignorant of the fact that inanimate pieces of machinery does not a dangerous situation make by itself. You also do not and cannot speak for most Britons, either. I don’t put much stock in public opinion polls of any kind on any particular subject, but the fact that quite a sizable majority of the respondents to the poll linked in the article above says that Britons in fact do want the handgun ban repealed should tell you something. There’s that and as Nigel Farage rightfully pointed out in the video above, gun crime actually dramatically increased in the U.K. during the years following the ban.

      As a matter of statistical fact, it’s still higher per-capita than pre-ban levels.

      All of this in spite of the fact that, since 1967, crime rates are reported based solely on convictions, not initial reporting data. Add that to the realization that multiple criminal acts committed by a single perpetrator in a single spree are counted as a single crime, as Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary has pointed out numerous times (among other things), it makes comparing crime rates between different countries to the U.K. problematic at best. Not to mention differing definitions for the same categories of crime, and different ways of even litigating those crimes in court. Let’s not get into even the differences between justice systems and the basic functioning of the government (like the U.K.’s complete lack of Judicial Review, no right to remain silent, etc.).

      Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that the U.K. is an island, without the additional thousands of miles of coastline and over-land borders that it doesn’t have to deal with as does the U.S., which easily lends itself to explaining why the U.S. has a far larger problem with drug trafficking and illegal immigration in both scale and scope that the U.K. never had. Even the population constructs are vastly different, with the U.K. having just one-quarter of the total number of large metropolitan areas of 250K residents and more (which account for the vast majority of reported crime by geography in the U.S.) and that the U.K. is largely a monoculture, with the vast majority of Britons sharing the same ethnicity, ethnic background, and socio-cultural core values — not so in the U.S. Not even close.

      And even in spite of all of this, you still lose the statistics argument because the reported per-capita total and violent crime rates are for an unarguable mathematical fact three and and four-and-a-half times higher respectively. That’s in spite of, once again, her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary saying, not once or even twice but three times just in the last decade, that most or all of the U.K.’s 43 police forces are guilty of deliberately under-reporting and miscategorizing serious crimes in order to artificially deflate crime rates.

      Mass shootings in the U.S. are not trending up or down. Statistically speaking, they happen so very rarely in comparison to literally every other reported crime that there isn’t even a sufficient number of them to establish any sort of pattern at all. There are close to 200,000 public schools in the U.S. plus tens of thousands of private schools and, running the numbers, your son literally has a better chance of stumbling across a winning lottery ticket on the ground to hand to you and being struck by lightning on a clear, sunny day at the same time.

      That’s not even an exaggeration, either.

      Also, there was no mistake in the wording, spelling, arrangement, or interpretations of what the Founder’s meant and intended when they wrote the Second Amendment. It is, as a matter of undeniable historical fact, “The right of the People to keep b>and bear arms,” in spite of whatever revisionist history books that you’ve oh so obviously been reading. It’s 27 easy-to-digest words, all written every bit as plainly as as they could have ever possibly written it in their day.

      Rights do not change with time because they are inherent to all of us and are supposed to be unalienable. Never as there ever been a more blatantly foolish, unforgivably naive, and willfully ignorant notion than to sincerely believe that rights are based in social utility or are subject to public opinion. That is not true now, it was never true at any point in the past, and it won’t ever be true under any circumstance for the foreseeable future.

      /thread.

    • Careful how you speak for “most other Britons” there, please; for sure you aren’t speaking for me.

      Interestingly, the Telegraph poll is showing a majority in favour of repealing the handgun ban, though I think the real mainstream view in the UK is “don’t really care”.

      I’m not used to being in a majority… must try harder, I suppose.

    • “and frankly looking at the number of high school massacres the US has, that is a sane thing.(what is it up to now, one high school massacre every 6 months?”

      9 people died in high school shootings in the US last year, not counting suicides. Getting struck by lightning is a lot more common.

    • Many times more children die in swimming pools in England each year than all the kids killed in US school shootings. It’s an inevitable consequence of sending children into water. Therefore if you really want to protect children there should be a ban on British swimming pools. The fact is your child is about 100 times more likely to die of food poisoning from school food than a random school shooting. These school massacres, like airliner crashes, only get press because they are horrific yet seldom occur. I’ve lived around guns my entire life and do not know a single person who was killed by civilian gunfire to my knowledge. I read about them but I’ve never known someone personally that was shot dead. I’m nearly 50 years old. If American gun violence was so prevalent I’m sure I’d have friends and relatives, co-workers and school mates who I remember being gunned down. Honestly I’ve never ever witnessed an accidental discharge of a firearm and I worked on military rifle & pistol ranges for years. You’ve allowed media hype to overcome your ability to reason.

  22. Send their so-called “academics” a couple of John Lott Jr’s books. Or better yet, send them John Lott Jr., he’s the stat master.

    They can also have Piers Morgan back, too. Permanently.

    • Lott’s a Doctor of Criminology and has some credentials in Statistics as well last I checked, and those are the only relevant fields of research in this particular debate. Of course, simply for the mere fact that he is the one telling the truth — the real unbiased truth drawn from real-world data — and the truth is absolutely not what the liberal media wants to hear (because it doesn’t sell well or jive with their anti-rights agenda), they’ll deride him in any way they can.

      They’re just pissed that they can’t refute him.

      • Actually, Mr. Lott’s Doctorate is in econonics. The crime rate studies came later.

        http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Lott_CV_1-19-07.pdf

        Pick up a copy of “More Guns, Less Crime”. I had to write on it for an “English” class. (irony intended). It’s like eating sand, but has enough statistics for anyone.

        Cheers mates, good luck and Godspeed.

        • I’ve written on gun control for two English classes, ironically enough, and I’m piecing together yet another report for (shocker) a genuine Critical Thinking class for my Humanities requirement. I was surprised to find that a lot of my fellow students share similar views to mine, at least in so far as bearing arms is concerned.

          I have the Third Edition of Dr. Lott’s book which I used extensively for the second paper.

    • How’s that multiculturalism working out for you England? Go buy your children prayer rugs now and start growing a beard. Get burkas for the little girls because by the time they’re grown women they will be required attire. Calling Americans “Racist” doesn’t really have much effect anymore. Leftist can’t believe this but we’ve heard it too much over 60 years. Multiculturalism is a disaster. The Brits are still scared of being called a little name, but not so much Americans. We tried harder than any nation to make it work. It doesn’t! You’ve made a disasterous mistake and only violence will set it right unfortunately. Too bad. Allah Akbar. God save the Queen!

      • The brits don’t even have the manhood to call them muslims. They call them “Asians”.
        Which BTW really pisses off the Indians and the Oriental’s. They are also having a problem with the gangs
        from the Caribbean Islands. They can’t bring themselves to say black. You can’t fix a problem until you admit
        the problem. I used to live in NJ and you could always tell the crime was committed by a black or Hispanic
        because the news would give little to no description beyond male/female but if it was a white guy they gave a
        detailed description down to how many freckles he has on his butt.

        • People use to call it White Guilt but more recently have realized it has more to do with white’s desire to be friendly and help those less fortunate. This has turned out to only appear as weakness to those who we wanted to help prosper. Slavery was a terrible chapter in our history and I truly wish it never happened. But no one feels guilt that’s white. We are simply a people who wanted to make things right. We have failed regardless of our repeated attempts. Multiculturalism is unfortunately a disaster. A huge disaster that simply never could work. People are waking up to this now. Solutions????

          • ” Solutions?”

            As with everything else, the answer is more Freedom. “Multiculturalism” means everybody has to fit into the same rainbow-colored honeycomb cell. “Diversity” should mean everybody is free to be whatever they want to be as long as they allow others the same. You could have a nazi skinhead cultist next door, a snake-worshiping cult member on the other side, a polygamist across the street and a buddhist across the alley, and if they all stayed to themselves and didn’t bitch about you having guns in your house, why would there need to be any problem? The problem is thuggery in general, and each person’s ability to protect themselves and their loved ones from thugs. Everyone else, who cares?

            Live and let live.

  23. “If you criminalise handguns then only the criminals carry the guns,” he opined.”

    Somebody gets it.
    Are we witnesses to the birth of a “common sense” approach to gun laws in the UK ?

  24. “…you can go and buy automatic repeating rifles down at the local gun shop…”

    Where? Where? I really want one of those automatic repeating rifles and my local gun shop isn’t a NFA dealer.

    • I think he said they were at the supermarket or something like that. I’m going to go see if they have any .22LR there, too.

  25. “It has been 80 or more years since you could buy automatic rifles in the U.S., what the heck is he talking about?” You can still buy fully auto rifles in many states in the US right now. Just need to pay the Federal Tax. Same with silencers.

    • Except it’s not exactly the “same” with silencers. Silencers are cheap, ranging from just a couple hundred dollars to just a bit over a grand. Not a huge stretch for most people. Machine guns, however, belong to a club where the cost of entry is measured in the tens of thousands of dollars, which puts them out of the realistic price range of the vast majority of Americans. That high cost of entry is due to nothing more than government induced scarcity. So while you’re right that they can be purchased (legally), they’ve been, in effect, unavailable for several decades.

  26. Ran into a lady in WA state that imigrated there from England. She said she actually felt much safer here than she did in England. Asked her what she thought of our gun laws here. She said in England, London as I recall, it is common to have gangs of thugs hanging around on the street corners intimidating people. She says she has never seen that here. She seemed to imply that you probably would not see that here as you never know if the person that you might be trying to intimidate might be armed. Not the case in London of course. Thought her perspective was very informative. She obviously does not like the fact that it is almost impossible to carry a handgun in London. She seems fine with the fact that it is not so difficult to carry a gun here if you really want to.

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