Britain is the grandfather of all modern rifles (bolt action now not automatic), Vicars has done a hell of a lot for the arms industry although lately the americans and the swiss have taken over and britain's arms industry fell in quality after WW2. although i think there is no excuse to the SA-80... that is just a bad rifle.

There is a big gun culture over here, i myself have 4 rifles which i use for hunting although i use them more for pest control for hunting foxes and things than i did in finland where i killed for dinner.

It is becuase of the few that pistol ownership was deemed illegal but if you look at it there are still hundreds of thousands of guns out there and most are conversions of airpistols, its not hard for a criminal to have a gun but if you have a gun for protetcion your breaking the law and that isn't right, people who want to commit gun crimes will do so and they always will.

I myself am a big supporter of having armed police officers, i mean look what happened in Birmingham on new years those girls got mowed down, if the police were armed they could cut the crime rate not significatly but it would help.