Don't waste your time Ake, he's as bonkers as Choo.

"And there are plenty of gun crimes in Britain. And plenty of violent crimes not involving the use of guns. Hasn't "home invasion" skyrocketed since guns were outlawed? And aren't they now talking about banning knives?"

Gun owner - Some facts for your poor tired brain cell to absorb:-

1) We have between 50-80 homicides by shooting in an avaerage year in the UK, population 60m. The US has around 30,000 shooting homicides a year, in a population of 300m. 80 divided by 60 multiplied by 300 gives a figure of 400. 30,000 divided by 400 = 75. The US 'homicide by shooting' rate per head of population is 75 times that of the UK - Surely even you can see a correlation there with the comparatively lax gun controls in the US? If you can't, maybe you need to enrol back at High School (I'm assuming you've left already).

2) Guns haven't been 'outlawed' in the UK. Our laws provide, as they always have, for registered ownership of certain types of firearm by citizens who are able to prove justification for having them. However, the rules for registration are considerably more rigorous than in the US, and 'needing to feel safe' or 'self-protection' aren't considered good reasons for holding a gun licence. By 'outlawed' I'd guess you mean the prohibition of certain weapon types following the Dunblane massacre. Unlike the lily-livered US government, our political leaders had the balls to identify and deal with the issue of automatic and semi-automatic weapons in private ownership.

4) It has never been suggested here that the prohibition following Dunblane had any effect on burglary statistics (which is what I imagine you mean by the rather hysterical expression 'home invasion'). It could be true that burglary/housebreaking statistics may have increased a little (as they may well have in many other highly-urbanised areas like the UK) but, as hardly anyone here posseses, or has ever possessed a gun, the cause can have little or nothing to do with the ban. In fact, it's generally recognised that these petty offences are, in the main, driven by the increase in drug-abuse here.

4) Certain types of knife (e.g. flick-knives, or switch-blades as you might call them) have been banned for a great many years. There is a discussion at the moment regarding a possible ban on other knives which exceed a certain blade length, or have certain types of blade. In many people's opinion (including mine) that's a very good thing, and at least we have the will and the guts to face the problem.