In the situation you describe, Swag, we'd be lucky if we had armed factions running around to extort food and terrorise people. We aren't a Third World country used to scrapping along on the bottom of the barrel and subsisting on what we can grow. We are a nation of nearly seventy million people in a country that you can walk across in less than ten days and walk the length of in two to three weeks. No area apart from a very few are more than a week's walk from a population concentration of ten million people or so.
Add to that the fact that we have about three weeks' of food in storage and the capacity to feed at best a tenth of our population off our farmland then any situation that led to a breakdown of our armed forces into warring factions is going to mean that we have seventy million starving people swarming the country in search of food.
I doubt that any amount of guns is going to be able to stop that. If you are positing a situation where society breaks down militarily yet we are still able to feed the population for long enough to be oppressed and terrorised by factions then I can't see what circumstances would lead to that.
The 28 Days later scenario needs some sort of major disaster hat kills off large numbers of the population before they can use up all the supplies. That means a disaster that kill 99% of the population in less than two weeks. If we have faced a problem of that magnitude, we're going to be more worried about the sixty million rotting bodies spreading disease amongst the survivors than a few squaddie survivors with guns terrorising a population of survivors.
That said, I have no problem with Americans bearing arms: it is the will of the people that the population can go armed and I support that with every fibre of my body.
I also respect your right to express your opinions about the political system that I live under and support. It is the will of the majority of our population that guns are regulated. There is no right or wrong in either system just different although I am a little fed up with the attitude of some American pro-gun supporters (Not anybody on these pages I hasten to add) who state that the British are some sort of sheep who are terrorised by an oppressive government who deny us our God-given right to carry weaponry around wherever we wish. I am a proud participant in our democratic process and whilst I disapprove of many of the policies of the governments that represent me I fully support the rule of law presented to us by our democratically elected representatives, just as I would support the same establishments in America and as I support your right to bear arms and engage in democratic lobbying ad discussion should you feel those rights are being eroded.
In short, I am not criticising the American ways and I would appreciate it if such courtesies were reciprocated.
As for my earlier posts, people from America expressed an interest in a UK resident's take on whether there was a right of redress established in English law before the American Revolution. There was, it may not have been ideal or easy for the common person to access, but it was there. That does not suggest that I feel it was better than the American alternative, it merely means that it existed.
Personally, I feel the American system was fairer from the start but part of that stems from the fact that the drafters of the Constitution were able o build upon precedent and correct the perceived injustices rather than try to work within a system that had been evolving through the use of interpretation and precedence over several hundred years.
I have nothing more to contribute to this debate and I'm worried that I'm getting combative therefore I'll bow out. This isn't because I have been offended by anything anyone has said, the quality of debate is, as always, excellent but I can feel my passions rising and I try to never post angry.
I will continue to watch the posts with interest.
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