Well I'm pretty sure that if we had 'the right to bear arms' in this country, all the nutters that you see screaming their heads off at each other on the Jeremy Kyle show would be queuing up to buy a gun. We would have just as many dead people from gun related incidents as the USA did.

As for the comparison with Ireland. God alone knows how making guns available the Catholic and Protestant murder gangs would have improved the situation. 'Thrown off the English oppressor' - its a great line. would that we could get thrown off! By the 1970's (forty years ago!) I'd say all English people were thoroughly pissed off with their Irish neighbours' inability to get on with each other, and REALLY pissed off with our young soldiers, prison officers, and policemen getting murdered for who knows what.

The gun laws in England probably don't work as well as they should - its like the health services. They're worth theri weight in gold.