Agreed, Lurkaloid.
Unless it's Friday / Saturday / Any other day of the week; between 6pm - 3am, or longer if it's a 'special occasion'. Then you're lucky to get a response within the hour.

Still, at least this means conscription or national service will never be re-introduced. After all, if apparently we can't be trusted to operate a firearm safely; we'd do sod-all good in the armed forces. How does that lyric go? "So if I can shoot rabbits, Then I can shoot fascists".

Oh, and althegeordie - as long as there are state-controlled armed forces, there will exist the risk of misuse of those forces. Don't think the passing decades have changed human nature.
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Mon 9 Feb 2009, 16:19, 2 replies)

Presumably because
If you join the army, you are trained to use your weapon and you are trained to follow orders in a disciplined way. You are not given a gun and sent home to practice are you?

Quoting the Manic Street Preachers should be subject to something akin to Godwins Law.

And with reference to your final point, do you really think that things in the UK will get to the stage where the army starts stealing food from the public at gunpoint?

If so, can I suggest you just head over to the daily mail forums.
(Bazongaloid, Mon 9 Feb 2009, 16:42, closed)

It is interesting that in Switzerland:
I believe that all men in a certain age group are in the military and are required to keep their weapons at home. I don’t know if they have any more crime than the UK or a higher murder rate.

I am NOT a believer in people carrying weapons around (even though you can do it in my state (Vermont) without any license or restrictions other than guns being banned in schools and other government buildings), there is no need for it. I do wonder however if a lot of the crazy things that some people do with guns has more to do with the culture of the country they live in and socialization. I would imagine that every Swiss male with a military weapon at home has been fully trained in its use and more importantly, what it actually means to use a weapon versus the yahoo people who go crazy with guns after watching old Rambo movies.
(MichaelS wasn't picked again, Tue 10 Feb 2009, 13:00, closed)

The point there being
that everyone with a gun is trained soldier who is legally obliged to undertake a certain amount of training each month. They aren't just any Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to own a gun. (edit - sorry this pretty much mirrors the last paragraph of your comment, I didn't read it properly)

They do have a lower crime rate, but I don't think you can just attribute that to the number of guns, Switzerland is a very wealthy country with high education levels, which I'm sure plays a fairly strong role.

Also, on an unrelated note, they are very behind everything being Swiss being better, so if a shop sells Swiss tomatoes at a higher price then imported tomatoes, many people will buy the Swiss ones, just because they are Swiss.
(Bazongaloid, Tue 10 Feb 2009, 13:40, closed)

This is tricky.
You see, I agree with some of your points, and some of his. I'm against public-carry like you. I'm in favour of gun-club ownership like you.

Poor logic of me, I know; and a lazy quote at best. I meant to refer to the ethics rather than the skill. The army recruits from the general public, the same subset of people deemed unreliable for private ownership. But just becasue they're being paid to carry arms does not imbue them with extra mental stability. If it's too dangerous to let someone shoot inanimate objects or vermin, how will they cope with taking another persons life? My argument here is as much for better forces "after-care" as it is for letting people plink targets.

I didn't mean to suggest *our* troops would do things like steal food; even though there are some shocking lapses in discipline in the present day (I'm sure no-one was directly ordered to bully new recruits to death in Deepcut barracks, or abuse prisoners in Iraq; but it happened). The americans had historical problems with an *external* military force, not their own.

edit: And as an aside, police "cover" is an illsuion, just like any other service. You can move in additional help from surrounding areas, but create enough demand and any service will fail.

The miner's strike drew in cover from nationwide and it still wasn't enough to keep complete order; and you can't keep that level of deployment up for long without leaving yourself short elsewhere. I'd like to know the real crime stats from when cover is stretched thin. Even peaceful events place a heavy demand on finite resources (eg. football matches), and if an officer is pulling O/T to cover one, then in theory they're unavailable again until rested.

But I'm getting distracted now, from my original point: If someone breaks onto my house, possibly carrying a weapon, definitely making a deliberate choice to do wrong; why are my options currently limited: Barricading myself away / asking them politely to leave / getting savagely beaten with a claw hammer? Why can't I hold them, (after training and certification) at gunpoint, until officers can arrive to apprehend the criminal?
(The Incredible Sulk Finally remembered his password on, Mon 9 Feb 2009, 17:30, closed)

"If someone breaks onto my house".

Examine someone's motives for doing this for just a moment. Usually, someone will break into another person's house to steal posessions. A person doing this will have no reason to become violent unless threatened, with violence or capture. Why would you WANT to prompt an intruder into violence for the sake of your posessions? Announce your presence and let them flee. Let them rob you if they don't. Is your life so worthless that you'll risk it for insured goods, or for your pride, or for a worthless principle that you shouldn't be robbed? If you're going to risk your life for something, do it for fun, or for something much more worthwhile than a telly and a laptop!

Getting savagely beaten with a claw hammer? This brings up the other issue here; an unrealistic fear that someone will break into your house for the purpose of deliberately harming/killing you and your family. Psychopaths of that variety are so very, very rare. And where they do occur, don't you think that someone who has planned the attack in advance is going to have the upper hand no matter how much money you spend on guns? You're going to be asleep in your bed, after all, likely until it's too late. The chances of someone randomly picking your home to commit murders just for kicks? Has it ever happened to ANYONE you've ever known, even a friend of a friend of a friend?

Filling your home with guns, putting deadly weapons in close proximity to yourself and your family, exposing yourselves to great risk, just to protect yourself against an extremely unlikely risk?

How about you douse yourself and your family in petrol and walk around with lit matches, so you're ready to protect yourself against the cold in the event of a sudden global ice age? Because that's just as sensible.
(Musuko, Tue 10 Feb 2009, 16:55, closed)