Huguenot

"If you look at the customer rights act, you will find out they were not acting in accordance with it" You're saying they broke the law? Which law was it and what was the particular element they broke?

The principal question regarding issuing or renewing the shotgun license is whether information has come to light regarding whether ownership may be a danger to public safety or the peace, amongst which the police are asked to consider any 'intemperate' behaviour. In much the same way as you can't make jokes about bombs in airports, I would recommend steering clear of producing this thread - as it could be interpreted as demonstration of a desire to use the shotgun to deliver capital punishment upon offenders without recourse to the legal system. Whilst you may think it funny, they would be aware that if such an incident occur after you had produced the thread, that they would be held criminally liable for issuing the permit. So no, I don't think they'd issue it.

Except that a responsible intelligent shotgun owner would have been aware that waving a firearm in the back garden was likely to rise anxiety levels and result in calls to plod. Right? So either, you're not intelligent or responsible enough to realise that, or you did it deliberately. Shooting burglars is not 'taking responsibility' it's extrajudicial execution. If you or your wife cannot recognise that fact, then you are not sufficiently responsible to be granted a shotgun license, nor to keep it in your house.

I can't quite believe someone who insists that their 'rights' to do whatever they want 'within the law' are more important than their responsibility to their neighbours not to wave anxiety inducing shotguns around in public view. Utter self-serving vanity.

Here's the thing Carter, you're not just telling us a story there are you - you know that guns make people feel anxious, so you're not 'surprised' by that outcome at all. What you're actually doing is boasting about it. Well you're a hard man Carter, with a steely eye and a big jaw - everyone is weak compared with you no? You can 'handle' it, you know it's 'implications'. With you there is 'no argument', it's either your way or the highway. You are a man. Secretly you enjoyed making the neighbours scared, and getting Plod round was a thrill, especially as you set them right. Do you read Bravo Two Zero and imagine how much better you would have been? Ha ha ha ha ha. :D

Well, if I were to put the extrajudicial execution of suspected burglars on the one hand and the ridiculing of people who think firearms are a bright idea on the other, I'm not exactly struggling to see which is the greater crime. But I'm surprised that a man hard enough to pack a gun and act as judge jury and executioner would wilt so readily under a few choice observations.

Carter, you were at pains to point out you were not a suburban hero, but a responsible sporting clay pigeon shooter. I'm quite happy to accept you at you word, so why would you think the last post was about you?

Burglars haven't demonstrated any particular intelligence to get where they are in life, and it seems patently obvious that their craving for cash and fear of death would more likely to result in the appropriation of handguns for a 'shoot first' policy that would come into play if homeowners came home or woke up. The reality is that the surprised homeowner, not being of a sociopathic bent and unaccustomed to the scenario, is unlikely to come to a trigger pulling decision before the burglar. Surely so much is obvious. Those people on here thinking they would defend their family to the death are imagining ridiculous scenarios where they step cat like down the stairs and surprise a burglar with a hard stare, a cool mien and 2lb of heavy steel levelled at their forehead. The reality is a messy tragedy of partners blaming it on the cat, negotiations over whether there really was any noise, a decision to get a glass of water, and then a bullet in the guts from a petrified burglar who thinks you might have a gun and might want to shoot him. The sooner suburban heroes get schoolboy fantasies out of their head and think about real life, the sooner they'll understand that liberalised weaponry in the home is a pathetically stupid idea.

I've just read the link, it's not a 'good' thesis at all - in fact the authors clearly state when they are collecting data from 'anti gun' authors which by implication positions them as 'pro gun' authors. The data they're use is highly selective - they don't compare gun homicide rates at all. Instead they focus on a very wooly 'violent crime' comparison to prove that 'violent' crime is not the consequence of gun ownership. No, but gun deaths are - you can't kill someone with a gun if you don't have one. The UK 'research' once again is wooly opinion - in particular quoting authors who rage against the 'millions' (I kid you not) of illegal firearms in the hands of criminals in the UK. Frankly we don't even have enough criminals for that to be the case, let alone armed ones. The authors quote this as 'proof' that the UK has millions of guns and a low gun crime rate. As for comparing the US with Russia in the 90s as 'proof' that Russia had a bigger murder rate, the mind boggles. Russia was a country that had just gone through an extended period of revolution and social unrest, and the rest of the Central European states are still living in the middle ages. The US is not. That piece is simply bollocks - but full credit to Harvard

That paragraph doesn't tell you anything. It's a straw man. Several straw men - that much is obvious. We already know that guns are not available uniquely in the USA, for example Carter on this thread has one. Nobody has claimed any such thing. Likewise nobody has asserted that guns are solely to blame for high murder rates. What you're trying to do is use thar ridiculous statement as an assertion of the defensibility of firearms ownership, when you can do no such thing.

Because he's a quarter of the way to the full back?

Wrong inanity.

Tony Fart (showing my age)

http://www.customink.com/designs/proofs/yrj0-000r-c5x0/front.jpg?862be08a6741eaa2a40de04ae19526827a84b055

Yeah, I guess so. I think I would have real difficulties using a weapon on someone with intent, but defensively I'm guessing I'd use whatever was there.

Alan, I'm not saying that there is no situation in which using a firearm to defend yourself is inappropriate. I will say that there were 63,000 burglaries in London in the last 12 months, and 96 homicides. None of the homicides seem to have taken place during burglaries. Hence being burgled is not a life threatening situation, and consequently a capital punishment is completely and extraordinairily disporportionate. We don't execute people for crime in the UK anymore, and that doesn't mean that you have the right to do it yourself whenever it suits you. There is only any point in getting a gun out if you're going to use it, and using a gun entails the assumption that it can end in death. So that's the fairly obvious side of it. The other persepctive is simply that unless you're a psychotic, the only likely consequence of posessing a gun in your house is that it will be used on you, not that you will use it on others. So from the point of view, getting involved with guns is just plain stupid.

Eh? I don't have to assume you would shoot people Carter, you said you would. Twice. All I've done is highlighted what a stupid thing this is to say. Your rather silly tirade seems to be because you feel I've made you look foolish, the real thing to think about is whether it is in fact you who has made yourself look foolish? I get it, you're the big man down the pub who boasts about shooting people. You think it makes you look big and clever, you think you're a straight talker who tells it as it is. You think people admire you for that, you think other people are weak because they wouldn't shoot people. Daft.

Sorry, I wasn't 'having a go', I was trying to present the reality of 'shooting burglars', which is actually about blindly implementing horrific and gory capital punishment upon people in circumstances which you cannot understand. Do you know that most people who die of gunshot wounds drown in their own blood? A nasty choking, terrifying way to go. 'Shooting burglars' isn't about some heroic Pulp Fiction moment where you enact some biblical correction. It's only sad people who talk about buying guns with 'stopping power'.

Nah, he didn't need 2 barrels to finish him, he needed two barrels to satisfy his righteous anger by disembowelling a child ;-)

I don't want to make you paranoid, but have you considered that it might be personal? If it's a communal ariel and others can get the BBC but not you, it may be there's a group of people in a room looking at your reaction.

Little 13 year old Timmy Jenkins was of Welsh mining stock, but spent most nights on his own whilst his mum did her shifts at Kings College. Keen to get a sense of belonging, he reluctantly used to get dragged out to hang around on street corners with a small crowd of competitive teenagers. Goaded by his new mates one night, he clambered through an open window and cast about for a worthless trophy. The first barrel smeared his liver over the television and fireplace, as his face was still registering the shocking recognition that his teenage braggadocio was a capital crime, unbelieving that his heart was already dead, his splayed fingers desperately jerked out to scoop his flesh back inside his body. As the life drained from his arms, his final thought was that he probably wouldn't get to hand in his Maths homework. Suburban cowboy spattered his cheeks and nose across the floorboards with the second barrel. There's never anything so straightforward than a gun nut and his justification.

And so our hero, faced with a dinner party where the conversation was going against his right wing soundbites, lurched from his chair and announced that everyone was trespassing. 'fuck you burglars' he said as he gave them both barrels. There's nothing so cut and dried as the scenario that trigger pillocks paint to justify their ownership of a firearm, there's nothing so messy and innocuous as the moments these daft prats actually pull out their penis extension and murder someone. Suburban cowboys are obliged to keep gun and ammo in separate safes because people brighter than them know that if they have a gun in the house they are more likely to be murdered by it than actually defend themselves in a heroic TV moment.

Haha, you're not seriously suggesting that the BBC is conspiring to deliver a secret anti-cat agenda are you? That would be extraordinary heights of paranoia!

Don't get yourself in trouble, unless you're using an encrypted VPN to an overseas supplier, they'll know what your up to: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19474829 Whether you end up in court for it will simply be a lottery - not necessarily a bright gamble to take. The upside is minor compared with the downside.

All good points DJKQ, but I do take umbrage with you unwittingly letting silverfox get away with the idea that marriage is a religious institution. It's not. It predates it, and will outlast it. Marriage is a social contract that makes public a mutual commitment to co-dependency and a pooling of economic resources. There is no reason that gay people should be excluded from such arrangements based on their sexual preference. The vigorous homophobia that characterises the church's current attitude is fairly recent. Organised religion has an issue with gay marriage because it weakens the 'moral' and emotional flagellation that allows it to control the lives and efforts of vast numbers of people to its own nefarious ends. It's clear that some people, like battered wives, will continue to defend the outrageous offences of religion out of some misguided sense of loyalty - or failing that, use it as a pivot for their own identity. The more closely that people create a sense of identity from religion, the more preposterous will be their defence.