There is also this thing called the Royal Ulster Consta-someting or other, not exactly against the right to their guns, or rubber bullets, or tear gas, or any number of lethal weopons. I think the IRA should give up their guns when the RUC gives up theirs. As for America, we were a frontier society not to long ago, we industrialized relatively over night, and the amount and number of guns as well as the attitude towards guns is simply a hold over from that period. Until recently, most americans were farmers and guns were a logical tool on a farm. We also like our drugs, and guns are a logical tool for drug running as well. Thirdly, blacks who have been totally denied access to the mainstream society have found gang membership a logical alternative, and I can't say as I blame them. What you Brits did to Catholics, we do to blacks and other minoritys, and I don't blame them for not waiting for the elite to become enlightned and take matters into their own hands. The word is a very dangerous place, and their was this thing called the British Empire that is most culpable for it, so if you don't like the way things our, you have your nation/state to blame.