Why is the ''Right to bear arms'' so important?
Okay, just to clarify - I'm not American. Over here in England I know it's pretty tough to get guns, but from talking to people with guns... it seems so drawn out that I would never bother to go through the process. But why are they even important? I followed the gun debate in the U.S. with interest after the Sandy Hook incident, and it seems like a lot of you are stuck on this whole ''Right to bear arms'' part of your constitution (or whatever). For a start, since when are your rights to own anything more important than another human beings life? That's just ridiculous. Since when is ''Oh, I like to go shoot defenceless animals for fun, so lets not stop guns being made available to potentially dangerous members of society'' a valid argument? And again, when was this law first introduced? It wouldn't happen to be around the same time as when slavery was legal, would it? I mean, those guys were wrong about white superiority, so they probably weren't wrong about giving a gun to every idiot in the land. Seriously, give me an argument that proves Americans should be able to get hold of guns like they can now.
Is the UK really a police state?
When I lived in the UK the police were the most polite police I had met. They don’t carry guns. I parked my car illegally without realising. Being an Aussie the street markings were different.As I parked a policeman came up behind me and signalled he wanted to speak to me. Very kindly he asked me not to park there, didn’t issue a ticket, then because of my accent pointed out the road markings. I had an International licence, which he had never seen before.He asked for the proof the car was mine and registered. It had a registration sticker , in Australia you can’t get a car registered without a roadworthy certificate. I said it’s got a registration sticker, can’t you just call and check the car details as the Australian police would.This was quite a while ago and to my surprise they didn’t have a system to check stolen cars which linked to registration and roadworthies. I had to cart a mountain of paperwork to the police station the next day. There were so many papers I had to ask my partner what they all meant.I don’t know whether they still have white vans checking for people without a TV licence. I had no idea you had to have a TV licence and a white van with antennas would park in the street checking for people who had the temerity to not have their TV’s registered. I thought it was police surveillance. Nope they were the bureaucracy policing the very serious business of not having a TV licence. I’m sure it’s different now.A question should be is UK tied up in so much red tape is it a more a bureaucratic state than a police state? Mountains of paperwork for absolutely everything.The UK police are affable compared to police in other parts of the world. I don’t now why the UK police are so polite. Maybe it’s because they seem proud to be police. The most watched programs on UK TV are police programs, where integrity of policing is upheld. As the police are respected in the UK they seem to show the same level of respect to their citizens, I wish police in other countries would take a leaf from the UK police. Give respect and you’ll get respect.