I know it sounds ridiculous, even to me, but that just goes to show you how traumatized I am...
The first step to recovery is recognising you have a problem. Now that you've done that, seriously, get real help from a real world professional. You'll never regret it.
Now, about paranoia.
I just watched the video that started all this. I've never seen such a dishonest, slanted, lying piece of [rule-10] in my life.
I'm not going to comment on the Australian stuff, let Mobyseven and others do that. But as far as the British stuff goes, it's lies.
There have
never been public protests against any gun control legislation in Britain. For the very simple reason that a dozen or so people don't make a good show.
Note that all the interviews were with individuals, a very few individuals who were miffed that their pet hobby had been interfered with. Their annoyance had some justification to it, because in fact the measures taken in 1997 were unlikely to make any real difference to gun safety, and were introduced more to appease
strong public demand for more legislation. They were cross, and some were over-reacting, but that's it.
Did you notice one man's reference to "60,000 people"? That confirms our earlier information that only 0.1% of the population were affected by these new laws. And you can bet that the speaker didn't minimise the number he quoted either. Why is this? Because
before the new legislation, practically nobody kept these sorts of guns. This was a minority interest in a minority sport.
What the NRA are doing in that film is letting US viewers imagine that the British situation is like the American one, with high levels of gun ownership. Then the assumption is that the new legislation affects many many people who are having their civil rights interfered with by a cruel and oppressive government. No. It was a very few people who were cross about having their pet hobby banned. The film makers then sought out the most narked of these people, the few who were prepared to voice their annoyance in the language of the US gun nut, and they had their programme.
What they didn't show was the actual public protests
demanding that gun legislation. Now these had quite a respectable turnout and significantly affected the decision to go for more legislation.
What they
did show was, as has been pointed out, footage of a demonstration about a diametrically opposed matter. The new legislation which actually
required people who wanted to control foxes to use a gun! These people marching
en masse were specifically objecting to being
told to use guns because they wanted to go on chasing the foxes with dogs.
How dishonest is it to use such footage to imply that this was a reaction to gun control legislation?
There was one particularly nasty part where an old guy turned to the camera and said that if this legislation went through, his way of life was finished. Well, that's what he thought, though I'll bet if you found him now he's still doing what he always did, more or less. However, his concerns had
nothing to do with guns being taken away. The use of this clip was just monstrous.
And where did they get that small boy in the school uniform? One ten-year-old who could be persuaded to say that he wanted his dad to take him shooting? One?? One little private schoolboy with an upper-class accent, that was it?
There was another clip (towards the end) of a smart chap talking to camera with the march in the background, exhorting the US not to give in to gun control. He spoke in an English accent, but who was he? The fact is that the march in the back of the shot had nothing to do with gun control. This was a contrived shot, either getting someone to express an opinion on an unrelated matter at the scene, or simply setting it up with an English supporter.
So if you want paranoia, you really need to worry about the NRA guys of yours. They are so dishonest that they are prepared to lie and misrepresent and deceive to get their twisted point of view across. They're your real concern.
Just read through the thread again and note the responses of the British posters here. Everybody is telling you that we're entirely comfortable with strict gun controls. That the gun nut lobby is so small it could probably fit into a single taxi. That while we may think our government are a bunch of morons, we really don't worry at all about the gun issue, because we like it that they clamp down on the bloody things.
You need to realise that the US attitude is the aberration. Almost alone in the developed first world, you have this weird fixation with guns, and they are invested with all sorts of symbolism of freedom and manliness and so on. To the rest of us they're just lethal weapons we're all better off without.
Maybe you'd feel better if you travelled a bit and saw that the US psyche really is quite screwed up on the issue. Don't let is screw you up too. Realise that the manipulative [rule-10s] here are the NRA. They are your enemy, becuase they want you to believe what simply isn't true, to make you afraid and paranoid, for their own purposes.
Don't give in to them. Get help.
Rolfe.
Yeah, but he'd also have an extremely competent army, navy and air force to compete against. Being sniped at on every corner certainly wouldn't help, but he would also have bigger fish to fry.