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Reggie Perrin wrote:

> So where is the link saying that gun ownership was really
> popular in the past? Where are the figures?

If guns were on open sale without restriction, as all guns were before 1920, and shotguns were before 1968, there are no figures, as there were no controls. You are free to argue that gun controls on the law abiding are a good thing if you like, but there is no point trying to say that we have always had gun control in Britain, we haven't.

In the case of shotguns, there was no registration until 1988. I can tell you that in the 20 years up to then, 250,000 pump action and auto shotguns were sent through the Proof House, and that was after shotgun certificates were introduced in 1968. The number of ordinary shotguns proved was of course far higher, so you can see that even as late as the 80's gun ownership was widespread.

Nobody I knew growing up, no one in my extended family or friends ever owned a gun before I was born (1965) or after. None of my friends family or friends of their families have ever owned a gun. So the term "most" would seem at best a major exaggeration. I have never ever known one person who has owned a gun, or anyone who even knew of someone who did

NeilUK wrote:

> Nobody I knew growing up, no one in my extended family or
> friends ever owned a gun before I was born (1965) or after.
> None of my friends family or friends of their families have
> ever owned a gun. So the term "most" would seem at best a major
> exaggeration. I have never ever known one person who has owned
> a gun, or anyone who even knew of someone who did
>
>

Yawn. I never said "most" people in Britain owned a gun, merely that in the past gun ownership was widespread. There were no controls on any gun sales until 1920, and none on shotguns until 1968. I know loads of people who owned and still own guns, but that proves as little as does your experience. However, as a consequence of dliberate government policy since 1920, it is of course true that legal ownership of guns is now very low in Britain, under 2% of the population, whereas in many European states such as France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland etc it is much higher.

Reggie Perrin wrote:

> I forgot to mention that if there are more guns in circulation,
> then the gun related deaths increase, it's an obvious
> relationship. Looks pretty high in the USA doesn't it?
>
> Look here's a graph....
>
>
> http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF01.htm

Obviously anything from the gun control network is coloured by their views. You will note that the homicide rates in countries such as Switzerland is much lower than the USA, although gun ownership is common throughout Swiss society. I also note there are no figures for countries such as Mexico, Columbia or South Africa, were legal gun ownership is much lower, but homicide rates are much worse. Crime is a function of society, not gun laws which only affect the law abiding. Most armed crime in the USA is concentrated in the ghetto areas of big cities, whereas the highest levels of gun ownership are in the more rural states where crime is rare. If by magic it was possible to make all the illegal guns in the ghettoes vanish, do you think there would be no more homicide in those areas? I don't.