I believe it also lies in the frontier ideals of survival and hunting.

I think that's the key to the difference - Britain hasn't had this "frontier ideal" for centuries, since the ancient forests became deer parks.

Mick, I disagree with you (as you know ;-) about legal ownership, because although the legal owners might not be the criminals (although the example of Switzerland makes that questionable for violence against friends and family), it increases the pool of guns to which a criminal could get access. I have to say though that I don't have any evidence for it though, so it's just my gut feeling.

Eddie's point about whether illegal guns were ever stolen is very interesting, and is certainly something which might make me change my mind. For the UK though, private gun ownership is low enough (and the guns are stashed in safe enough places) that stolen guns can't be a significant source for criminals. For comparison, I'd be *very* interested in knowing what proportion of illegally-held (or more importantly, illegally-used) guns in the US are stolen.

If the US example shows that most illegal guns have come in from Mexico, Russia or wherever, then my position is clearly wrong. But if the US example shows that more illegal guns were *once* legal and were stolen from their owners, then restriction on gun ownership (or at least restriction on gun storage to being kept in a safe in a well-secured armoury) is very likely to reduce criminal use by getting rid of that possible source. So would anyone be able to get numbers on that?

Graham.