In the UK I'm pretty sure that pump action shotguns are off the agenda, and that seems fairly sensible. A double barrel, whether side by side or over and under, should be OK for spiders and snakes.

For things we don't have in the UK, like big cats or bears or high-foodchain dog variants, a bolt action rifle seems adequate. I'm not a stellar shot (and pretty crap with a pistol) but I used to outshoot on clay pigeon (using a horrid single barrel 12 bore Webley) some people with very expensive over and under cushion butt Japanese things, and I'm trying to remember the "rapid fire" routine I had to do with a bolt action rifle to get my "marksman" badge in the school corps.

Now my nutty mate who used to shoot for the Navy at Bisley - he's different. I think he was 9 when his grandfather took him into the back garden to teach him how to shoot German invaders with a Lee Enfield 303. The war had been over for over 12 years but grandpa forgot that. He later was one of a very select group of special snipers for Mrs Kween, one of those people with a special relationship with wind and temperature variation for very very long range shooting. He was just as deadly with a handgun. His brother in-law was competitive at Welsh national level with a target pistol, but said nutty mate could halve his group diameter with a gun he'd never seen before.

The point of the story is that I'm not kneejerk antigun.

But there is absolutely no legitimate reason for a civilian to carry a multiple-fire weapon or a handgun - or even to have one for use other than a handgun for competition use on the target range (in which case it should be locked up at the gun club) for the very simple reason that their only purpose is to kill people. That in turn can only be justified if you think that might is right.