interesting that Conutries where citizens are allowed guns have higher murder rates, do you think it might be because the average person is an idiot and arming them is dangerous?
I don't think the average person is an idiot, and there's no simple causal rule that says "more guns = more crime".
Stat time, I'm afraid. Brief, I promise. Vermont, which has no gun laws whatsoever, saw 12 murders for pop. 621,254 in 2007.
[1] Florida, which legalized concealed carry in the late 1980s, saw murder drop from a peak of 1,416 (pop. 12,377,000) in 1988, to 859 (pop. 15,111,244) in 1999. Murder then rose to 1,168 (pop. 18,328,340 ) in 2008, which is still less than the 1988 figure.
[2]
We lump all guns together, and call them evil, when they're a morally neutral object that can be used for good or evil. If legally held guns caused crime, that above statistics simply could not exist. Nor could England's past, where people were free to carry whatever weapon they liked (check out the Sherlock Homles stories) but gun crime was vanishingly rare. It's illegal guns that're the problem, and "gun control" has no effect on them, just like drug prohibition has no effect on the flow of narcotics.
More than that, it's the fact that an increasing number of thugs have no scruples about committing murder, or serious assaults that could lead to it. This is a matter of the human heart.
I fully take your point about cultural influences; in a way, I was making the same point.
If we were to rearm (Azrael is right to insist that the police are and must remain citizens in uniform; if they can carry weapons, the general public must also be allowed to carry weapons), it is something that would have to be done very carefully.
I agree completely. I don't want people to feel the need to carry guns. I do think it's important they have the legal right to do so. Self-defence is the most essential right we have. Even authoritarian-meister Thomas Hobbes allowed it.
Much is made of our unarmed police, although it's becoming more fictional by the day. The flip-side, that law-abiding people were free to carry arms, is forgotten.
I don't buy that at all. Yes, the crime shouldn't be committed in the first place, but that's not to say the situation cannot escalate from there. And escalate it would in many cases.
Robbery at gunpoint might not be as common as it is in the USA, but it's more common than it was when English men and women were free to carry arms. If the criminal decide to escalate it unilaterally (for example, by killing a witness to another crime) we're helpless. Why escalation is worse than placing yourself at the non-existent mercy of a hardened thug, I don't know. Maybe the criminal would win. Better than now, where it's guaranteed.
There's no simple causal relationship between carrying guns and not. The right to bear arms isn't a simple cure all: the certain threat of execution for murder is just as important. (Not the case in the USA, where a tiny, tiny number of folk devils are executed to dupe the voters into believing the system is tougher than it is.) So is the return of conscience in general, which is much harder. No wonder politicians choose an easy but useless tactic like banning pistols, or carrying locking penknives.
It should be our choice whether we do or don't carry weapons. Personally, I doubt I would, having fired a gun and knowing just how dangerous they are. But that's the point: it should be up to me, or anyone else, to decide. Not some pettifogging bureaucrat. No people which gives the state and criminals a monopoly on force can call themselves fully free.
)
I don't much fancy having an armed raid on my place looking for guns. 
and I am starting to get paranoid. 
