"".then, with huge metropolitan areas in several parts of the country and a rise in crime (you have serious urban crime in the UK also) guns were touted as item for "defending ones family"""

For defending one's family, we use the police force, which is trained to use guns responsibly.

I know from watching reality TV that the majority of your cops use guns responsibly (a pity sheriff John Burnell can't manage to do the same with commentary). Perhaps it is time that somebody told your citizens that.

Our cops have, to a reasonable degree grown out of institutional racism, misogyny, corruption and indifference,and in the main, do a pretty good job.

We leave that to them except in extremely rare circumstances.

It is also true that up until about 1900, many British people went armed with handguns for self defence against a very real possibility of violent attack and robbery.

However, the gunfighter mentality never took hold and as Robert Peel's invention, the police force, made the streets safer, the majority of the public left their guns at home and gradually got rid of them altogether.

Don T.