And before you qoute me saying 'At no stage have I ever claimed to fly either the Wright Flyer or the Space Shuttle....' I was being sarcastic, and not without good reason, a trait lost on most Americans.
Ah, sarcasm. With a stiff upper lip, that's how you pronounce a lie.
Got it.
I think most normally adjusted people would at least recognise this as an over-reaction on the part of the police, even though I think it's fairly easy to accept that they were acting on information erroneously provided by another agency.
Most people in such a sheltered world, perhaps, that the mere wearing of a tee shirt with a picture of a knife on it can get one arrested. But not people in a free society where not only the police, but the citizenry are allowed to own firearms.
I'm only flying 100 hours a year, mostly PA28s and I work in an office, mostly between 9 and 5.
I fly between five and eight hundred hours a year on the average, do not work in an office, and operate (and live) internationally. Perhaps you should learn to manage your time better.
--As far as gun control in the UK goes, bearing in mind that the UK is roughly the size of a large postage stamp, we can pick a time period in the not too distant past...say 1997 to 2003 (the first five years of the UK gun ban), and find that firearm crimes doubled. In the last year of that period, firearms crimes rose overall in the UK by 35% (with a 46% increase in the use of 'banned' handguns, incidentally). This is in a society where ownership and carriage is practically prohibited, and where even "deactivated" firearms are banned. During that time, up to ten thousand firearm crimes were committed in the UK...a year. As of a 2004 report, the year 2002 had peaked with the highest number of murders in the UK in the last 100 years.
Gun crime doubled in the UK within the first five years after Labour took over.
It seems that gun control is really working for you. You're hardly in a position to preach to the US about how to control or use firearms.
In fact, a UN study published in 2002 noted that England and Wales topped the charts for crime, whereas the crime stats in the US continued to fall.
While you sit and cower in the UK and imagine all sorts of wild mythological stories about the USA being the wild west, don't forget to take stock and look in the mirror. Your gun ban isn't working for you. Everywhere in the US that weapons laws are more liberal, where concealed carry is permitted or open carry authorized, and where handgun and firearms ownership is allowed or encouraged, crime rates drop. Where gun control is enacted, crime increases, as one would naturally expect (take away lawful firearms and only the criminals are left with the guns).
While you prattle on and whine about police actions in the USA, which work, take great comfort in the unarmed police officer who can't come to your aid because he isn't equipped.
The police who handled the Kings used lawful firearms as preventative tools. These were not discharged. One may rest assured, however, that if one of those officers ordered someone to halt or be shot, then the officer can and would shoot. In the UK, the offer would be left to flap his lips in the wind. The Santa Barbara police responded in an orderly manner, executed a proper felony stop, secured the Kings and their aircraft until a determination could be made on their status, then released them unharmed. They were neither abused nor mistreated.
If you find the ownership, carriage, and use of weapons in the US to be such an offense, perhaps you would do best to stay on the postage stamp and forgo forrays to a place where one actually has room to fly, places to visit, far less restrictions, far more freedoms, lower prices, and the safety of an armed society. As one author noted "an armed society is a polite society," meaning that one tends to consider one's impending offense perhaps a bit more carefully if the penalty may result in one getting shot.