UK Gun Laws

I have a lot of posts I've been putting off posting...and I will put them up soon...but for now I have another topic I feel needs to be written about.

Murders by firearm per capita are nearly 3 times higher in the US than in the UK. Why? Well, probably a collection of reasons, but an obvious one would be the difficulty of procuring firearms in the UK. It is uncommon for someone in the UK to own a firearm. People in the UK apparently view Americans as all owning guns. My American friend and I were chatting with one of our professors last week and he asked us if we both owned guns, which seemed really funny at the time.

Procedure for obtaining a firearm in the UK
- must demonstrate valid reason for owning gun (self-defense is not a valid reason)
- verification of identity
- two references
- approval of the application by the applicant's doctor
- inspection of the premises where the gun will be kept
- interview by a Firearms Enquiry Officer
- background check

Procedure for obtaining a firearm in US
(note: this varies by state, so I have arbitrarily chosen Ohio)
- 12 hours of handgun training
- background check

My mom's coworker was killed on Sunday. Her husband shot her 7 times before killing himself. Her 17 year old daughter was the one who found them.

Weekly grocery shopping

Its cold and dark here in Edinburgh, but we're still bringing in a good haul from the farmers market every week. It doesn't get much below freezing here, but I still think its impressive the amount of food we are still able to get locally -- especially the veggies. We still supplement our farmers market food with stuff from the grocery store - mostly things like beans, pasta, milk, yogurt, fruit, and olives (I love my olives!). We also have started getting our olive oil and vinegar from a couple little boutique stores where you bring in your own bottle and they fill it for you from kegs of the stuff. Very fun, and it cuts down on waste (plus they have REALLY good olive oils and vinegars). I'm particularly fond of a very sweet strawberry vinegar (locally produced!) that we just got for the first time. I could drink the stuff straight. But then again I'm weird.

Here are our purchases from the farmer's market this morning:


A breakdown of what we bought:

- Whole wheat flour (locally milled AND grown!)
- Museli
- A pretzel and a cheese pretzel
- Breadcrumbs
- Chard
- Beets
- Strawberry jam
- Honeycomb (we're being adventurous this week)
- Porridge bars
- Multigrain bread
- Broccoli raab
- Dunlop cheese
- Farmhouse pickle (like a pickley chutney -- good on cheese sandwiches)
- Assorted salad greens
- Honey
- Carrots
- Kale
- Two kinds of potatoes
- Onions
- Clotted cream (Aaron is making scones this week)
- Butter
- Lettuce
- Leeks
- 1/2 head of red cabbage
- Eggs (some muddy eggs actually. Looks like the chickens played football with them)
- Yogurt smoothie drinks

Aaron is making some bread in the kitchen now, and I think I'm going to help myself to a pretzel. Thanks for stopping by!