Greenknight,
I take your point - and you are right to point out that it depends what is actually being measured.
If we Brits are so imaginative that we only use firearms for 10% of our murders - imagine if we had similar access to them as a bunch that uses them for 2/3. One assumes the maths would work out as an increase to 1800 ish murders a year - the current 600 being merely the remaining 1/3.
My point, however, was about firearms in isolation - and I deliberately used the word 'stance' to avoid anchoring on any facet of gun control.
I offered the comparison because this thread is actually about the appropriate sentence for illegal possession and inappropriate stowage of firearms and ammunition. It then subtly morphed into a debate into what should be illegal vice what should be done if someone knowingly breaks the law. Perhaps I am at fault because I should not compare illegal gun ownership in the UK with legal gun ownership - but illegal gun use - in the USA. Mea Culpa.
As before. I love guns, have owned them in the US and UK and use them for military pruposes and leisure pursuit regularly.
The vast majority of my heart and head are very glad that Sgt Nightingale is a free man - but a small percentage is pretty sure that for a while at least he would have known he was breaking the law, and it sounds like a few of his colleagues were behaving in a similar manner. However - if you can't show a bit of leniency to such a man, maybe we're lost.
And I have perpetuated the thread drift which I didn't mean to and apologise again.