Guns are bad

I grew up with guns in the house.  My dad enjoyed shooting as a hobby.  He took me shooting with rifles and pistols.  We had airguns that we would use when we were in the countryside. On one occasion, many years ago, I even got to fire an AK47.  My dad used to spend a lot of time in gun shops, chatting to the owners and other customers.  He grew up in the countryside and spent a lot of time shooting.  I think he even won some prizes for shooting in competitions.

As a young child, I enjoyed it.  To a young boy, guns seem cool.  They are macho.  Soldiers, policemen and heroes have guns.  Han Solo had a gun, the Transformers had guns, Action Man had guns, GI Joe had guns and the Punisher had guns.

As I grew older I became less fond of shooting and guns.  I came to realise that guns essentially have one purpose.  Guns exist to kill things. Guns exist for hunting, to kill animals in 'self defence' or for other reasons and to kill people.  Theoretically guns may exist as a deterrent, to prevent crimes or violence but they still have the underlying dark function of making death.

I thought some of the people at the gun clubs were a bit weird and a bit boring so I stopped going to shooting things with my dad.  I developed my own interests, I became more interested in other concepts and more suspicious of weapons.  In some ways I became more interested in pacifism although I do, sadly, accept that in some cases wars and violence become necessary.  However, should guns really be easily available to the general public?

In August 1987, a man called Michael Ryan used a hand gun and two semi-automatic rifles to kill 16 people before he killed himself in a town called Hungerford.  The following year the law was changed to make several types of rapid fire guns illegal.  At this point I think my dad became slightly disenchanted with his hobby but this was a 'lone wolf', an isolated nutter.  Guns were still available.

Sadly, things got worse.  When I was in first year at University, in March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a 43 year old suspected paedophile used 4 legally held handguns to kill 15 young (5 or 6 year old) school children and their teacher before killing himself.  16 more people were shot.  This happened in about 5 minutes.  Again, gun laws in the UK were tightened and after the Cullen report private ownership of most hand guns in the UK was made illegal.  My dad had a few hand guns and he got rid of them.

I think Dunblane really  sickened my dad.  He grew less fond of shooting as a hobby.

Since 1996 there has only been one mass shooting in the UK.  This was in 2010 in Cumbria, when Derek Bird, a licensed firearms owner, killed 12 people and injured 11 others.  There have been 4 major terrorist attacks in the UK since 1996.  Arguably these attacks could have been much worse if the terrorists had access to legal firearms.

I think that gun laws have made the UK a safer place.  Thankfully we are a small island and it is difficult for bad people to easily get guns in the UK.

The UK now has 0.23 gun deaths per 100 000 population per year.  The USA has 10.54 gun deaths per 100 000 population per year.  Honduras has 67.18 gun deaths per 100 000 population per year.

The USA has the most guns per head of population in the world (based on wikipedia information).

Overall, I think that tighter gun laws reduce deaths from guns.

I grew up with guns, my dad had a lot of pleasure through using guns for sport. Sadly, if guns are available bad people use guns to kill people and good people are more likely to accidentally hurt themselves or others.

That's all I'm going to say.