FWIW handguns are "restricted weapons" and registration has been the law since the 1930s!

You are right about enforcement though.

My boss was telling me about the guy who used to train the TO police in gunmanship. He winters in Florida. While he was away theives with jackhammers burrowed through reinforced concrete to get into his locked gun vault. It took them 2 days to do this. They stole a bunch of stuff.

Who did the TO police go after?... the owner (who they disliked cos he stepped on a few toes) for "impropper storage". He had a custom built concrete gun safe for ****s sake! Apparantly hes decided to stay in Florida indefinitly.

Well your prick is probably bigger than mine anyway. Let's just agree to differ.

If you intended running people over presumably you would do so. If you ran people over ununtentionally you'd likely stop. The plates aren't much of a factor in either case.

Jeeze Crist... temper.. temper.

You get low marks for that paper.

^^^BANG!

The suspicious thing about that case was that the gun safe was in a project in Scarborough, Malvern iirc, but he lived in the west end. It was a very odd story all around.

Here:

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...d=968332188492

Was that registered?

Thats the one. Safe was on the 17th floor, not in the basement. They had to take the 500lb door off it to get it up there in the first place in the elevator. Anyway, something aint right with that situation in so many way.

Right. It was a public housing complex and yet they allowed him to tear up the floor and install a safe. It was a rent geared to income apartment which he got because he had a low income and yet he could afford the safe and all those guns. The rules are that the gun safe must be at home or in a club; somewhere with people, but the apartment was unoccupied. A dodgy business all around.

May I just jump in for a sec and suggest a (probably) crazy idea?

Why not make it illegal to buy/sell or own semi-automatics or automatic guns? If hunters and "gun club" fanatics can't get their kicks having to reload between shots, then they're probably not that interested in the "sport" of it in the first place.

Also wanted to mention that it is now illegal in England to go on the "traditional" fox hunts... a few of the more elite population raised their upper lips at it & it had been difficult to enforce, but the occurence of fox hunts has dramatically gone down in the past year or so since it was made illegal.

I don't think that shooting racoons on your property is a justifiable method of pest control for non-farmers... wildlife coming onto your property is largely based on avaidability of food (ie: garbage left exposed) perhaps the public needs to be educated on proper storage and disposal of rubbish?

Fortunately the fox hunt is not illegal here and there's no need to trouble with carrying birds of prey. One hopes that good sense will prevail and that it will be reinstated in the UK.

How do you suggest controlling the raccoon population given that is to mandatory to keep buckets of food scraps for weekly collection ?

Feel free, but semis and autos are already heavily legislated against with strong controls in law. But if you dont bother to follow through and actually check up on people when they apply then it makes no difference.

Make them all illegal, and what do you think will happen to all those legitimate guns out there? Some people will try and recover there considerable expense any way they can.

And as for the racoons, its just part of life here. The destruction is caused while they look for food, not while they eat it. Perhaps if everyone left their garbage out, then although it would be a mess, who knows, maybe there would be less actual property damage. I dont think too many people are seriously shooting racoons in built up areas, dont believe everything you read on the internet eh!

Note that I have tried the following methods:

- poisoning them with anti-freeze

- beating them to a pulp with a shovel

- poisoning them with proprietary solutions

- gassing them with the car exhaust

- turning the dog on them

- running them down with the car

Each of these has its problems, primarily the risk to children and domestic animals and the need to get out of bed to take action. Shooting them appeals as one need not get out of bed and, at night, there's very little risk of hitting anything else.

My neighbour shot one in his attic! Crazy behaviour even by my standards.

Do you not have basements in your houses or sealed garages? As far as I know, racoons don't unlock doors and let themselves in.