Sorry to jump into this discussion. I haven't really read much of it but saw these posts from Decyferon. Something I found out recently is that up until 1988 you were legally entitled to own a huge range of firearms in the UK, including assault rifles. The Firearms (Amendment) Act 1988 extended the list of prohibited weapons to include:
"fully automatic firearms, rifles other than those chambered for .22 rimfire ammunition, smoothbore guns other than those chambered for .22 rimfire and with a barrel more than 24 inches in length, smoothbore revolvers other than muzzle-loaders or one chambered for 9mm rimfire ammunition, and finally any rocket-launcher or mortar which fired a stabilised missile. It also prohibited exploding ammunition, as well as ammunition containing noxious substances and any form of grenade or shell designed to be projected from a firearm."
This legislation was put into place following the Hungerford Massacre and the rest of handguns were banned after Dunblane, but it shocked me to find out that these things were available before that.
The Hungerford guy had a lot of weapons including:
The point I really wanted to make though is that while these two events were terrible, Britain has never been known for gun crime and all that time a wide range were available to the general public. In fact it's only been recently that it's really become a fairly significant problem (I think it peaked around 03). It's not guns that are the problem for the most part, it's the mindset behind them. I mean, every male in Switzerland between 20 and 30 has to have one of these at home by law: