Gun Control in the UK

For most of my life I've believed in gun control. Over the last couple weeks, I've changed my mind. Besides the fact that gun crime figures have increased four-fold since the UK brought in stricter gun control laws, I find it tips the balance of power too far against law abiding citizens.

Most of the gun control laws are brought in as an emotional knee-jerk reaction to some high profile killing -- such as The Dunblane Massacre. As horrible as that event was, only seventeen people were killed. Not much in the grand scheme of things.

You could argue that guns are only made for killing other people, so there is no non-sporting reason to own one. Unfortunately this isn't true since other people are always going to break the law. It just so happens that in the case of gun crime, a gun is the only adequate personal protection against guns. Similar to how if someone tries to beat you up, the best defence is being able to fight back. Convicted criminals have even testified that they prefer an unarmed population to an armed population. If you look at America, the controlled states have higher levels of gun crime than the uncontrolled states, and most shootings occur in gun-free zones like schools.

The UK can try to ban guns but criminals will always manage to get their hands on them as long as they're being produced anywhere in the world. Consequently, all that happens is we end in a situation where only the military, police and criminals have guns. Should someone break into your house at night, you'd better hope they don't try to kill you. In fact, we'd also be defenseless in the case of a military uprising. I don't think we should be as extreme as to allow unregulated purchase of weapons without licenses. A background check and cooldown period could be implemented, as well as registration of ammo and guns, but I don't think gun control laws are helping us as much as the government would like you to think.