[DanaC]

It's already meant violent crime has taken off into a growth spurt. To stop this, you're going to have to push Queen and Parliament into liberalizing concealed carriage of weapons and into active encouragement of private arms -- quite in accord with the long English tradition of limited government.

Violent crime primarily does not involve guns. There has been a spate of gun crime, which is due to a growth in American style gang-culture (by which I mean they take as their model the media depicted American gangs). Guns are not a part of English culture as a means of personal defence. Guns have always been for sport or for the armed forces and specialised police units.

Most of our violent crime involves knives. In the ward I represent, the crime levels are high and there is a gang culture amongst the youth. Despite this there are very few guns around. A lot of kids carry blades. Very few criminals carry guns. If guns were more easily available to the general public, every hard case on the estates would have one. Every time the police bust a drug dealer in the Close it would turn into a siege.

The answer to rising violent crime is not to increase the number of available weapons. All that would result in would be a tacit arms race between the police and the criminals. The more ordinary, law-abiding citizens that take up arms, the more accidental gunshot victims there would be.

We raise this kind of point from time to time, for we are citizens of a republic -- not a monarchy, however constitutional. Republics properly constituted are all about the broad distribution of political power.

However broad the distribution of political power in theory is in your country, in fact it not that broad. Large swathes of your population have abdicated themselves from political power (as have large swathes of ours) believing that they are already tacitly denied a part in it, or that any part they play is pointless. The laws on gun ownership are not because you are a repulic and we are a monarchy. Political power does not reside in guns. It resides in the ballot.

Netherlands and Poland have similarly tough restrictions on firearms. France has high gun ownership but in order to get a licence citizens must prove their mental state and concealed weapons are illegal. The American system of easily acquired guns and legal concealment is not a feature of republicanism it is a feature of American republicanism.