By Slanted Light

Very true - and no matter what laws anyone has, they're not going to stop some people doing what they want, and for some people that involves carrying a gun. And unless there is money given to implement those laws (and all the others) the police will have a hard time trying to do so. Don't even get me started on the terrorism thing.

I take comfort though in the fact that in Britain it is still considered wrong and unneccessary to carry a concealed weapon or even to own a gun unless you have a very good reason!

The first comparison that popped into my head was that of apartheid in South Africa (just go with me here a minute!) There will always be people who are racist, who treat people of different colours badly, but the fact that the law in South Africa allowed them to do so was what was wrong - it gave no power at all to the people who this hurt, and the people who fought against the innate wrongness of racism itself. But just as bad was the way that fear between the different colours was whipped up, thus propping up racism even outside its legal protection of apartheid, and thus prolonging it even once the law was dismantled... And my gun class was a bit like that - it wasn't the guns or the laws that were the worst thing for me here, it was the fear that was being propagated through their existence... and I can't see the rest of the world being able to pressure for change in this case...

And I agree, I would equate the chances of being attacked by a grizzly bear up here at roughly the chances (for the "average" person) of being attacked by someone with a concealed gun back home. Pretty unlikely. And in both cases there are a hundred other ways of being killed way up there jostling for first try. What I don't like over here is that the concealed gun way is given a headstart - because alot of people carry, or have them at home, or take them with them while they go out walking. So not only might you get hit by a car as you walk out the door, but the idiot driving could get out and shoot the person who distracted them and made them hit you in the first place...

Gosh, what an awful lot of words I've used to say "Yes, good points Bamfie!"