In Britain only certain members of the security forces and a small number of specially-trained police officers are allowed to carry hand guns or automatic weapons. Shotguns and rifles are strictly controlled and licensed. Anyone else is treated as a potential murderer and, if found out, will be arrested and imprisoned or even shot.
And the violent crime rate in Britain is accelerating, from what I hear. You have to get over the illusion that if something is made illegal, it'll just stop happening. Making stricter criminal laws creates more criminals, not fewer.
No law-abiding citizen needs to own or carry a hand gun.
Given an environment that is entirely free of violent crime, you're right. But what does "need" have to do with it? No law-abiding citizen NEEDS to own or carry a guitar or fiddle. And definitely not a banjo or bodhran.
If you don't feel safe in public without a gun...
As I said in an earlier post, I feel quite safe without a gun here in Vermont, where it's perfectly legal to carry one. I don't feel safe without one in the cities, but I'm not allowed to carry one there. I can't help but think that there's a connection.
...or if you don't trust your police force to protect you...
But who's going to protect me from my police force?
...you should be insisting that your politicians do something about it...
OH, COME ON! Where am I going to get the cash that a politician wants before he'll listen seriously to anyone?
Whatever the circumstances, carrying a gun implies that you expect to kill someone...
I have fired hundreds and hundreds of rounds through handguns, and I have never in my life killed any living thing with one, larger than whatever worms or bugs were living in the sand bank I was using for a backstop. And I never will unless someone or something is trying to kill me or mine; or I or mine need food really badly.
...and having millions of potential killers wandering around does not make for a civilised society.
You're right. It doesn't. That's why we need fewer of the potential killers carrying guns, and more guns carried by rational people who don't wish to use them for anything but practice, but who will use them if needs must.