You are right though, we have strayed from the OP. The problem is the OP is a political challenge, so it is difficult. Esprcially given the second post of the OP. Which I post here now...
But all the same I apologise, and with this I will leave this thread.
To be honest I do lean very much towards one side of the gun control debate. But that was not why I opened this thread. The reason I laid out a "pro-gun" argument was to respond to another post asking:
why would we Brits need guns? The only predators here are the occasional psychotic seagull. Gun crime is minimal.
I now see that was not the best idea, as it sidetracked the thread, and made it appear that I was looking for a political chat under the guise of starting an AH thread.
I was (and am) a lot more interested in discussing the specific history of the U.K., and how its laws and culture have diverged from the United States' regarding firearms. I find this interesting because they started out (in 1689 and 1776) from almost identical philosophical and legal positions on the issue of the Right to Bear Arms, but in terms of laws and culture diverged at some point, no later than the 20th century, but according to some people here, even earlier.
I was also prompted to start this thread by my experience of growing up in a very liberal US state that largely seems co-exists with a framework of gun control that is far more lax than any part of Great Britain. While there are certainly political forces in the state that would prefer to outlaw guns altogether, or impose such stringent requirements as to make it prohibitively difficult, those forces have largely been kept in check, while in the UK they have largely triumphed.
What I find intriguing is the question of whether or not any plausible POD could cause the roles to be reversed. Could there be a US with a largely symbolic and/or neutered Right to Bear arms existing in a world where the U.K. has preserved that right?