What Salopian says is true.
Looking at our firearms law from the USA, it looks like a highly regulated system and is denigrated by most. What they fail to realise is that gun owners are a tiny minority of the population, each following his own discipline and most belonging to an association that focuses on their specific sporting addiction.
Furthermore, we don't have the tradition of owning and using firearms that you have in the US. Until relatively recently, the land and firearms were owned by a relatively small number of wealthy people. It is only since the 2nd world war that guns have become more commonplace with the working man, other than perhaps the farm worker or poacher.
We have also suffered from an establishment that has been terrified of facing a popular revolution ever since the turn of the 19th Century and the foundations of our gun laws can be found in that fear.
Please also remember we are a very small country with a relatively huge population. I prefer to know that anybody with a legally held firearm has been thoroughly checked out. In the UK it is not a right to bear arms and nor should it be so.
