Please to explain for the hard of understanding...

[DanaC]

Part of our history is sending over thousands of basic firearms, rifles and handguns, for Britain's Home Guard defense against potential invasion by Germany during WWII. The Home Guard was forced to drill with canes, umbrellas, spears, pikes, and clubs. When citizens could find a gun, it was generally a sporting shotgun ... ill suited for military use because of its short range and bulky ammunition. Britain had virtually disarmed itself with a series of gun control laws enacted between World War I and World War II.

It wasn't just because of disarmament. Britain ploughed everything it had into arming and supplying its regular army - up to and including melting down or reusing anything that could be used to make weaopns and ammunition. The Home Guard was always a 'back up' plan in case of invasion - the biggest push was the army itself. The Home Guard was armed with odds and sods of stuff. Much of it bought in or, yes, donated by the US. But had the population been better armed, those arms would have been commandeered for the regular army, so it is a moot point. We were melting down pots and pans and park railings for our bullets ffs. The army took absolute precedence in all of that. Why on earth would we have left the better weaponry in the hands of the home defence when the main action wasn't on our home ground?

The main reason for the formation of the Home Guard was political pressure and a huge upswell of people wanting to form a home defence, primarily ex-servicemen and people who couldn't qualify for full military service. The vast majority of the weapons used for that home defence were purchased not donated. The rush to arm that home defence was more a response to that internal political pressure and the morale boost it would provide than actual expected military need.

I've met British and French military personnel, those who've seen how fragile social stability can be up close and personal, who were embarrassed by their civilian populations' apathy in this regard today and how they had resigned themselves to it.

And I have met military personnel who really do not want to see our population routinely armed. Who consider it their job as trained professionals and don't want civvys sticking their noses in where they might get blown off. Many of those same soldiers are pretty disdainful of the 'toy soldiers' who 'play weekend warrior' and civilians who play with guns.

Might surprise you to know I have a few friends in the service and my wider family has a history of military and naval service. Including, funnily enough, my dad being in the Home Guard in the late 50s because he didn't pass the medical requirements to enlist.

At times of war, when the country's security is threatened even those who are nominally pacifists enlist in large numbers. In times of peace we leave it to the professionals.

Many in your own military find you* loathsome.

And many don't. And would be deeply insulted by that statement.