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PeonForHer -> RE: Gun control in the U.K. (3/21/2014 5:30:53 PM)
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FR
The man cited in the OP is just a fruitcake. We get them here in the UK, occasionally. Elsewhere, I've talked of gun-nuts being people who have a solution that's desperate to find a problem. The rare gun-nuts that we get here in the UK display that propensity probably more than do their American counterparts.
There just isn't a movement here in favour of guns: not amongst lefties, liberals or righties. Certainly, there's a strong current of opinion that has it that after WW1 the powers that be were scared of a Bolshevik uprising here in Britain, with lots of ex-conscripts returning from the trenches trained, armed and angry. But we'd historically never had anything like the gun culture of the USA and, after the slaughter of WW1 there was no great taste for any bloody revolution here.
If, if . . . any of the zillions of gun threads that had started here by Americans (er, have any at all been started by non-Americans?) had produced any sense that our society would be better off if it were armed, it might make a difference. But such threads have always done the opposite: they've only ever confirmed to us Brits that we don't want things to be the way they are in the USA.
I think that at bottom there's one very fundamental difference: In relation to the subject of guns, particularly, arguments around freedom/control of them by Americans seem to be conducted much more in terms of what is good and right for this or that given *individual* (a given homeowner who finds a youth in his daughter's bedroom, a young man wandering suspiciously in a well-to-do neighbourhood by a security guard, etc, etc) - and relate it back to him or her, the poster, himself or herself. Guns and gun control don't seem to be talked about in terms of American society as a whole; they seem to be talked about as a collection of disparate events involving individuals. Here, and I think across most of Europe, people tend to think of our respective societies in the round.
It boils down to this: I *would* prefer it if my girlfriend were able to walk home late at night without fear of attack. If she were to be carrying a knife or a can of CS gas (both illegal here - as indeed it is to carry anything that's meant as a weapon) - I'd be happier. But I wouldn't condone that as formal policy for all people, everywhere in the UK - because that would make things cumulatively worse for all of us. If anyone wants to comment, 'Ah, so your social view clashes with your individual view', I'd say, 'Go right ahead. Of course it does. The good of society just does, in multiple ways, demand a sacrifice for the individual.' I have conflicted feelings. That's inevitable if you're an individual who wants to live in a society that works well as a society.
Partly by design and partly by historical luck, we've ended up in a position here, in the UK, where people eschew guns. It's like a bit of decency has crept in through the back door and quietly settled in to stay, unnoticed. Most of us tend to think (if we compare ourselves to gun-owning societies at all - which we generally don't), 'We've fucked up a lot of things as a result of conscious and concerted policy over the centuries; this gun-free society just kind of evolved. But thank *God* for that'.
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