Jean Charles de Menezes verdict

I don't know what the skill level of an armed British police officer is. As to the rest, it really is irrelevant to the issue. If the public were allowed to own guns what would the general proficiency level be? I just don't know.Those are issues for you folk to decide.The question remains, "Was the suspect in this particular case in custody when shot? Was the shooting justified?"I am not trivializing any part of the case. For example, even if the person was in custody, if there was still a means of him setting off some possible bomb, the actions would likely have been justified.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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but it is hard for someone who shoots a few rounds annually at qualifying to be as competent as someone who practices regularly often firing thousands of rounds a month.

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British firearms officers do shoot regularly and have to requalify on a regular basis (I *think* it's every 8 weeks or so). The basis course to handle firearms is something like 65 days and this is before taking refresher training and other courses.

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If the public were allowed to own guns what would the general proficiency level be? I just don't know.

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Those are issues for you folk to decide.

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That's easy to answer - I own 2 shotguns, the general proficiency level was that I didn't have a crime record and got a gunsafe fitted - that was it.

Neat, just for my FYI I would love to know what qualifying consisted of, for example things like decision making and precision/discrimination drills.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Also neat, but shotguns are not really known as selective. Just out of curiosity, what guns?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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Do you realise how unlikely a situation that is in a generally gun free culture compared with say, the US?

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I do, I was just making a point.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

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The biggest problem is the majority, if not overwhelming majority, who claim to be moral aren't really moral at all. In a democracy, the majority always wins.

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Not true. We live in a republic, not a democracy in the true sense of the word. Decisions are made on our behalf by elected (and often un-elected) representatives. That doesn't mean they represent the majority opinion. If that was the case, Britain would never have participated in the Iraq invasion, for one.Today we have the technology that allows us to practice democracy, as it was meant to be, i.e. the public voting on all public matters. I somehow doubt that I'll live to see it, though.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

A pair like this -UK Gunroom: Greener, W. W Set of 4 12 gauge Shotgun (for sale)(I'm ashamed to say I don't know the correct model as my brother got them for me).

Wonderful. Greener makes some very, very nice shotguns. Enjoy them.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I read the linked material.So a man deliberately shoots to kill a 16-year-old would-be burglar and ends up serving three years. He was convicted of murder by a jury that rejected the lesser verdict of manslaughter.That he only served three years seems perfectly consonant with the police shooting an innocent man 7 times in the face.I don't see any hypocrisy there. Wrongness, yes; hypocrisy, no.

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Martin was a psycho...

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That's irrelevant. He's a householder who was confronted in the middle of the night by intruders.

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he's not someone I'd hold up as a good example of citizens holding licenses for firearms.

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I'm not holding him up as an example, I'm mentioning him as a well-known case in point.

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He shoot a young boy in the back while he was running away.

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To you and I reading the newspapers, yes he did. To him, in the middle of the night in his remote farmhouse: he shot an intruder who was going to /pick up his weapon /call his accomplice / return the next night / etc.

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His own brother had to leave the country due to harassment from Martin, who went around and shoot out his windows - the guy is a nutcase.

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He's also quite ugly - so what? All this is irrelevant to his right to self-defense in his own house.

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And he wasn't locked up by the justice system - he was locked up by a jury of his peers who found that he was guilty of murder rather than manslaughter.

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The justice system prosecuted Martin for killing someone who was committing an act of aggression towards him and his property. The same justice system absolved highly-trained police officers who repeatedly shot an innocent man in the head in a public place.Or is it that if the policeman responsible was a middle-aged, solitary farmer with mental problems he would have been criminally prosecuted too?

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

You realize that this is the same reasoning that got us into the war in Iraq?

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Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. -- Rick Perlstein

Routine huh? Exaggerate often? Sensationalize lately?Pretty much what I expected from you, making statement assertions without backing them up. Just took longer for your response than I expected.Well at least instead of invoking 'nazis' you chose to invoke 'medieval'.-x

Have we conversed before?

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Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. -- Rick Perlstein

Really? I don't recall any Iraqi armies on British / US soil, do you ?

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."