In a comment on my post on Brit policiing(to misuse the word), Wolfwalker said
Deal with the yobs themselves? In Britain? Where it's illegal to own any kind of firearm, and even kitchen knives are required to be dulled so they can't be used as weapons?

Not bloody likely.

It is a problem, but not the big one. There are firearms; not many legally owned, true. But people know that "If the yobs can get them, so can we." And I guarantee the thought of that scares the politicians, without and with badges, more than anything the yobs do.*

And there are always knives, swords, cricket bats, golf clubs... The Brit authorities keep forgetting the truth that 'the mind is the weapon; all else is tools'. If the police cannot or will not do the job, unless Britain has completely lost its collective spine(and THAT is the big problem), a point will come when bad guys start showing up with the marks of a lesson. Or flat disappearing. And then what?

This is where it has the potential to either force changes, or get so monumentally ugly it'll either fix things or go completely to hell. Say a bunch of people in an area have enough and start quietly going out and dealing with the people the cops won't, and when some cops show up and start the usual threatening they do to honest citizens they're told to go to hell: "Since you won't do the job, someone has to, and unless you kill us you can't stop us."** Unfortunately, I lean toward it going to hell; there are enough stupid and stubbon and authoritarian people with badges and political titles to decide that these people need the stomping they won't give the criminals, and from there... And some will be intimidated against acting, or any further action, but the rest? In one of the Matt Helm novels Helm is talking about intimidation and notes that for eight or nine people out of ten, it'll work, either because they're scared or just decide it's not worth it; but one or two out of that ten will pick up a knife or club or gun, or just their hands and the homicidal impulse, and kill you because some people just don't intimidate worth a damn. You take a whole bunch of honest people who hit the breaking point at their kids being beat up and killed and raped and their cars and homes damaged or destroyed and being threatened and beaten and killed and all they work for being stolen and the politicians and police refusing to do the job, and there will be a few- say the Three Percent- who won't just yell at the politicians(without and with badges) who don't listen, and will start acting. And won't stop because they're threatened.

So it's not the question of weapon availability; as demonstrated by the youths of Obama's Chicago, you don't need guns to kill people(and isn't it comforting that the Safe Schools Czar had a big hand in creating that problem?). The questions are
1. Will the people of Britain hit that point and actually act, or has it been trained out of them completely?
2. If they do act, will enough politicians have enough brains and honesty to act as actually needed instead of by the socialist tenets they've been following so long?



*After all, the criminals are the 'disadvantaged' the politicians and brass are brainwashed(or stupid) enough to think need extra breaks and 'compassion'; the honest citizens don't deserve consideration in their view. So the idea of them arming...

**Coppers liked to say that people shouldn't take the law into their own hands, and they thought they knew what they meant. But they were thinking about peaceful times, and men who went around to sort out a neighbor with a club because his dog had crapped once too often on their doorstep. But at times like these, who did the law belong to? If it shouldn't be in the hands of the people, where the hell should it be? People who knew better? Then you got Winder and his pals, and how good was that?
From the comments on Kevin's post here

And let us remember where the term 'vigilante' came from: from people who became tired of law enforcement and government too corrupt or incompetent(or both) to act, so they formed 'Committees of Vigilance' and acted. I've said before, having to dispense justice on the freelance system is not good, but it can occur that going by the rules is worse.