To feel scared in my own home?

[Colabottle10]

Last November we were burgled. During the daytime, I came home minutes after they'd fled.

We live in a rural village, it's a drive through as in not a dead end, and is a through route to the local town.

Took me a while to feel better about being in the house and slept with a shotgun under the bed for a long time.

The culprit hasn't been caught.

Friday just gone I noticed a car driving back and forth through the village very slowly with two men inside eyeing up all the houses. I saw it again tonight parked up at one end of the village. DH went for a drive to see if he could see it and found it just outside the village at the other end and stopped and asked if they were lost (man and woman this time). They said they were trying to get phone signal. I called 101 and logged it.

I feel scared again. I want to move.

Chilled - knock it off. Your posts are inflammatory. And as for you disagreeing with our gun laws, well I'll just lets facts do that talking. The last time we had a armed maniac walk into one of our schools was the dunblane massacre of 1996. A Scottish newspaper held a petition to ban handguns and raised 428,279 signatures within five weeks of the shooting. In 1997 the Labour government under Toby Blair banned all hand guns. The United Kingdom hasn't had a incident like it since. The facts speak for themselves. I personally think America's gun laws are insane. Soldiers and police offices are highly trained, give a gun to a nervous, glittery person and all hell could break lose when the cat moves and is shot at. I expect you'll say you know how to use your gun, great. But can you say that for everyone else who owns one? Let's leave the gun toting to the professionals.

Op - I'm sorry that you feel scared in your own home. It isn't a nice feeling. I have no advice other than change the windows to lockable ones. Get a big dog.

Chilled what you may not realise is that many Brits feel very strongly about this issue - and we're not naive to think banning guns work, our experience tells us it does.

In 1987 a gunman killed 15 in a massacre in one town (Hungerford), as a result ownership of semi-automatic weapons was outlawed.

Devastatingly, in 1996, a gunman entered a school in Scotland (Dunblane) and killed 16 children and their teacher. As a result private ownership of handguns was banned.

It hasn't happened again. That's the point, 20 years and no more school shootings, because we banned guns. We believe in gun control because it works. And the US is less than 5 times bigger than the UK, it is not just a numbers game.

Cross-post with FreeSpirit

I wasn't the one who hijacked the thread and turned it into a topic on American gun laws. I find it distasteful that your laws force you to feel afraid in your own homes, and expressed how distasteful I find that law. I'm not responsible if others chose to turn it into a debate on American laws, I've repeatedly tried to get it back on topic, it's not my fault if others continually take it off topic.

Better afraid than dead, chilled

But Chilled the fact the perpetrators are able to get their hands on high powered weapons and shit loads of ammunition, makes it an easier crime to commit than almost anywhere else in the developed world.

So in 1987 semi automatic weapons were banned, and in 1996 when someone went into a school with a semi automatic weapon you banned them again?

I wasn't the one who hijacked the thread and turned it into a topic on American gun laws
Yes, you were.

I'm not advocating for laws that kill lots of people, what an ignorant and disrespectful thing to say
Yes, you are. You are advocating to arm people, which leads to them killing people. Thats what guns are FOR.

I find it distasteful that your laws force you to feel afraid in your own homes, and expressed how distasteful I find that law

Stupidest comment yet. As if its a LACK of guns that make people feel less safe. We ARE much safer than you are. You are far more likely to be shot than we are. You are far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime. We do not need your guns or your laws. So go away and take your NRA nonsense with you.

Better to be neither Kitsch, which is why I dislike your gun laws so much. Yes ok, at the end of the day it's your country and you can make whatever laws you want. But the thing I don't get is that you say you feel safe without guns, but the very existence of this thread proves you don't. You feel vulnerable to things like home intruders because you can't defend yourselves.

The 1996 massacre didn't involve semi-automatic weapons

No chilled, this thread proves that this particular OP feels unsafe at this time because she has just suffered the traumatic event of a burglary. I would wager that the vast majority of the U.K. doesn't feel unsafe - I certainly don't.

As is happens, I've heard gunshots just this morning! Doubtless a farmer after rabbits or the like in a nearby field...

No Sylvia, I'm not advocating for laws that kill lots of people, any more than you are advocating for a law that kills people because they weren't able to protect themselves. But hey, if you want to keep repeating lies about me then feel free. I hear that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. Those of us who carry for protection don't want anyone to die, we just want to have the means to protect ourselves and our own if necessary.

UK gun laws have been tightened after each incident, chilledwarmth. That's why we have so few of them. We have had 3 mass shootings in living memory. The US has one nearly every day.

US gun laws are insane, and you were the one that brought up gun laws on this thread - with this statement: I'll try and be as polite as I can but I think your gun laws are very very bad.

We have demonstrably fewer shootings, and a demonstrably lower murder rate than you - so I'll vote to keep our gun laws thank you very much.

I would be more afraid of burglary if odds were that burglar had a gun. Not likely here...that isn't rocket science surely? Legal gun ownership means more criminals with guns. Now, we have a shotgun. But it is locked away and doesn't make me feel any safer because unless my life was demonstrably in danger as against merely my property I would be in big trouble if I shot someone...as it should be.

A person who carries a gun is more likely to be shot.

Kitsch en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre it says the weapons were a Browning Hi Power 9mm and a Smith & Wesson M19 .357 Magnum.

You might have noticed that the OP has left her own thread. Well done.

Because contrary to what you suggest, our law does not allow people to go and shoot innocent children.
That's exactly what it does.

Semi automatic guns were banned first, leaning out 22.calibre I believe, and then after Dunblane we outlawed ALL guns. Because we saw the problem, and made the choice to protect our people with our laws. The majority of our police force don't carry guns, why because they don't need to. Guns are so very difficult for your average person to get hold of, that we very rarely have a crazed maniac on the lose with one.

Gun related deaths:

United Kingdom - 2011 - 0.23
United States - 2014 - 10.54

Of that 10.54
3.43 was murder.
6.69 was suicide.

Which also proves that mental health should be a huge factor here too.

I honestly don't understand, how despite the facts. You still feel safer with your guns?

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listoffcountriesbyyfirearm-relateddeathh_rate

Yes, I brought up UK gun laws which are relevant to this thread because the OP has said she feels scared in her own home and even kept a shotgun in her room to feel safer. Others chose to go off at an irrelevant juncture, namely American gun laws.

As a responsible gun owner who carries every day, I know that I'm safer than someone who is unarmed. I know that I have the means to put down a threat if god forbid it came to that. I've never understood the arguments that you're in more danger by carrying a gun. If a guy ever managed to take my gun off me, he clearly already intended to harm me so he'll kill me with a gun rather than killing me with his hands, what difference does it make. Like I say, we're all entitled to an opinion, and I realize I have no say on what your laws should be but man, the fact that the OP would actually be breaking the rules of her license by keeping a gun in her room for protection is mind boggling to me. Your laws don't seem to care for the victim too much.

I don't have a definitive answer but what I do know is that a large number of the gun deaths happen in areas where it's already illegal to have a gun. So banning them would just be like saying it's illegal twice. It didn't work the first time, why do people naively believe it will work the second?
Perhaps we could go for a statement that actually makes some sense. If you want to debate this, you should really start your own thread. You've been asked to do so more than once. It's not fair on the OP.
Try starting it with the statement you've made above, it makes as much sense as the monkey typing Shakespeare.

As a responsible gun owner who carries every day, I know that I'm safer than someone who is unarmed.

You might believe yourself to be safer, but the people around you are in more danger by virtue of you carrying a gun. No matter how 'responsible' you think you are.

FreeSpirit, I feel safer because while the overall stats show we have more of those crimes than you, most of those crimes actually happen in areas where guns are already banned. To me that says it doesn't matter if we ban them, because the criminals will still do what they do. What I pay attention to is the areas where there is much less of those crimes, and those areas are often the places where law abiding people can carry. That's my own personal methodology, but like others pointed out I'm just one person in a country of hundreds of millions of people. I certainly don't speak on behalf of them all, and there's millions of different individual beliefs about our gun laws. Your country seems to be more or less unanimous in support of a complete ban.

But if you hold a gun the other person is more likely to shoot you to protect themselves.

In a gun toting culture there is more of a 'shoot first, ask questions later' because you cannot risk the other person carrying and drawing first.

So yes, you are more likely to be shot it you carry. And more likely to be shot if it is legal for others to carry.

How is this so incomprehensible to you? It really isn't rocket science. If a culture allows carrying every frigging day, more people are likely to get shot.

If a guy ever managed to take my gun off me, he clearly already intended to harm me so he'll kill me with a gun rather than killing me with his hands, what difference does it make.

The stupidity of this sentence is mind-boggling. Guns are far, far more lethal than bare hands, or knives, or pretty much any other non-automated weapon. If you consider yourself a 'responsible gun owner' while spewing nonsense like that, no wonder the US is in such an awful place with regard to gun violence.

Hey Maud, the people around me are perfectly safe as long as they don't try anything stupid, and I'm perfectly safe around them as long as I don't do anything stupid either. If you want to believe what you hear in the media, that we're all potential mass murdering psychos who would not hesitate to shoot you if you looked at us wrong, then that's your mistake.