Friday, March 29, 2013

A Brit Joins The NRA


No clue. No clue at all.
They have a cursory look at my driving licence, then ask me to select my weapon. I've no idea. "A small one. For an idiot," I offer.

What I get is a 45 that shoots nine-millimetre bullets (mostly in the wrong direction, it turns out, but that's me not the gun). It's alarmingly heavy and complicated. Even loading the weapon requires thumb strength and dexterity I seem to lack. After the fourth time of showing me how it is done, my guide loses patience. "You left-handed?" he asks. "Or just retarded?"

3 comments:

Roberta X said...

That poor, sad, scared little man.

ASM826 said...

Yup, a .45 that shoots 9mm. See 'em all the time.

RogerC said...

The funny thing is, every town in the UK seems to have a rifle club (I should know, I'm a member of my local one), and shotgun ranges are everywhere. It's just that people don't talk about it much. Guns and talk about guns really seems to freak people out over here, so you learn to keep quiet about it.

Still, there are approximately 1.8 million licenced firearms in the UK. That's about one for every 34 people. Walk down any high street in the country and the odds are that you've passed someone who shoots (not that you'd know it from the article).

The official Home Office estimate for unregistered guns is necessarily loose, but the number is thought to be between 1 and 4 million. That means there are probably *more* weapons in criminal hands than there in law abiding ones.