ARM EITHER THE POLICE OR THE CITIZEN - ARMING NEITHER WILL NO LONGER DO

Following the appalling events in Cumbria last week, talk has once more turned toward banning guns, as it did after Hungerford and Dunblane. We probably have the strictest gun laws of any other country (certainly on the European continent). Yet gun crime has, if anything, increased since the law on gun ownership was tightened after Dunblane. But it seems that those wanting a total ban on gun ownership will not be satisfied until the legitimate gun owners are disarmed, leaving only the criminal armed.

Derek Bird was a legitimate gun owner who went off the rails and slaughtered 12 people and wounded over twenty others. But given his state of mind, he would have gone to any lengths to achieve his end. Unlike those who use guns in our inner cities, Bird can legitimately claim insanity as a motive for his deranged behaviour.

It is not the legitimate gun owner whose numbers, I read, surpass the million mark, who cause the real damage to society; but the drug gangs who will still manage to come by their weapons whether a total ban is in force or not. Derek Bird took with him a .22 rifle and a shotgun, while the drug gangs use Uzi machine guns and powerful hand guns, none of which would ever be licensed to a legal owner. Between now and this time next year dozens of people will be killed by illegal gun owners, yet, because their numbers will be spread over 12 months, no debate about ownership will take place. Only when a legitimate owner goes bad, do we once more debate a full ban.

It seems to me that when gun crime is on the increase, people want to disarm the ordinary citizen. Only a liberal society such as ours could countenance such twisted logic. In America it is within the constitution that every citizen has the right to bare arms. For if the state cannot fulfill its part of the social contract with the people, then the people themselves have the right to protect themselves and their families.

I do not blame Cumbria police, but some of those deaths could have been avoided. I believe that had this scenario been played out in America, the police would have eliminated Derek Bird and saved some of the lives Bird put paid to. For in America all of the police are armed, as they are in many other parts of Europe.

But we still like to see the traditional unarmed bobby on the beat approach - the police themselves also prefer it. This attitude can only encourage the criminal in the modern world. Until 1920 every citizen had the right to gun ownership, except the police. Believe it or not the crime statistics involving guns were lower then than they are now. They were lower because the citizen was given the right to protect his or herself from assault. On top of which the criminal faced the ultimate penalty for murder.

The families of those killed by David Bird should, when they have finished grieving for beloved ones, campaign for the police to be fully and properly armed if they wish such a tragedy never to unfold in the future. At the same time there must be a change in attitude toward arming the police from the police themselves. They have an ambivalence to a fully armed police force, but if such a measure is not forthcoming then the people can no longer be protected by the state, and as in America, the people will demand the right to protect themselves.

A total ban on every fire arm would not stop the criminal, but would leave the ordinary citizen unprotected by the state. I would sooner take my chances with a gun in the event of an armed burglar entering my house, than just wait upon whatever fate the burglar decided for me. At least the armed burglar would think twice before entering a property illegally.

The right to self protection should be enshrined in every constitution whether it be a written one or not. If our police force refuse to be armed, then for our own self protection, we the citizen must be given the chance to protect ourselves. We cannot go on waiting for the next atrocity to take place, accompanied by the next rubbing of hands and the media circus.