It's less restrictive than just banning guns entirely. The practicality is we want to prevent guns being available to people at the point where they are in a mental state where things like what happened in Cumbria seems a sensible thing to do. We cannot do that if we allow people to keep guns in their home. That's the long and the short of it. We can still have guns and people can use them for the use they intend, we just need to make them unavailable (or at least very hard to obtain) to people who might be generally law abiding but become mentally unstable.

I see what you're saying and on the surface of it, it's not a bad idea. However, the expense and the inconvenience to people like myself who occasionally fancy going out for an evening's shooting at short notice seems too much for the benefits.

hmmm.. I do apologise, but making gun use convenient seems to me to be something that maybe society as whole could learn to live without and making gun use just inconvenient enough would make a big difference to the likelihood of this kind of thing re-occurring.

I disagree. These killing sprees are rare, but they will happen from time to time – look at all the incidents in China of people going into schools with machetes. I think the gun laws are about right in this country at the moment, maybe a little draconian, perhaps handguns should be allowed in shooting clubs.

It is so rare we can name all the times it has happened yet more people are killed daily by cars.

Cars serve a necessary societal function i.e. moving us about. Guns have no necessary societal function. Guns serve two functions : recreation (which is essentially optional from societies point of view) and violence, which is unacceptable from societies point of view. Therefore the analogy is poor at best because restricting car use would cause massive disruption, whereas restricting gun use would cause next to none. A better analogy might be with cigarettes - we know they can and do cause harm, some people enjoy using them, quite a lot of people want them banned altogether but doing so is probably impractical...

Jon

Well then let's also ban archery shall we Jon?

Just ban all sharp point things, especially kitchen knives, and issue all households with safety scissors.

You know they do actually prohibit who can buy kitchen knives somewhat, right?

Archery is an interesting one. When taken as it is, a lot of the logic that applies to restricting firearms also applies to restricting archery equipment. After all, bows and arrows are weapons - their job is to harm or kill, be it prey in hunting or other people in conflict. So on that level they're actually no different to guns. The only practical difference is you have to be a bit more skilled with them and you can't carry as much ammunition. And obviously you can't carry one as concealed weapon .

The only difference, and it's a marginal one, is that the bow and arrow does have some cultural significance in England, whereas the gun doesn't. After all, it wasn't all that long ago when all Englishmen were required to be skilled with the bow and to practice or else. So I think banning the bow in England would have some natural resistance within the wider public who know about Robin Hood or the Battle of Agincourt; much like I'm sure banning the six gun in Texas would meet very stiff sentimental resistance. However at the end of the day it's a lethal device with no real beneficial function that firearms don't have. If you were being entirely objective it would have to come under similar legislation to gun ownership, if not the exact same regulations.

Bear in mind though, I've never actually said we should ban guns. In fact I said doing so would be pointless and counterproductive. I've simply said you should keep them where they are used under security and that there's no justification that I could see for having them in people's homes.

You do know they prohibit who can buy and use guns somewhat, right?

Not all that well, apparently

Rubbish. I could run outside and kill someone with a stapler, that doesn't mean that the sale staplers isn't regulated at an appropriate level.