Basically, we Brits don't like the idea of ordinary citizens becoming Judge, Jury and Executioner. Even the full legal processes go wrong too often and incarcerate innocents, but at least they can usually be released and given some compensation some way down the line.
There can be too many cases of mistaken impressions in the USA where a possible criminal gets shot dead for just seeming guilty. And there has been at least one recent case where a young man (foolishly) did a prank attack on a girl friend and was shot dead by a different friend of the girl, who had not been told it would be a prank. Also in this past year in the USA there have been far, far too many cases where the police have opened fire on persons with mental instability usually killing them, yet they usually get off any severe punishment.
What I fail to understand about the American attitude to guns is why the NRA and gun-lovers are so reluctant to have the manufacturers put effort into creating guns that can only be fired by the owner (or approved substitute). As far as I can see after phasing in such controlled weapons (itself a difficult task), this would put a stop to school massacres and also to toddlers accidentally firing guns and killing parents; yes, that has happened. It would also make it more difficult, though not impossible for criminals to use stolen guns.
Admittedly the present personal-fire technology is too slow and that needs to be overcome, but the prime reason that I've seen put forward (mainly by the NRA) is that the Government/Police forces could create over-riding transmitters which would prevent the gun firing, so preventing those guns from being used to attack the Government forces. The NRA attitude seems to have stalled the efforts to invent/create a reliable & fast personalised-fire-control system.
In my opinion this is due to mis-interpretation of the infamous Second Amendment to the constitution. All too often we see that espoused as "it is necessary that citizens can be armed, so that they can displace a bad government". Actually there's nothing in the second amendment to support that, it is far more clearly intended to ensure that the citizenry are armed so that they can quickly become a Militia to assist the Government forces to defend the USA against EXTERNAL invasions.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiTi4-Xy_TuAhXFlFwKHdF5DDMQFjAMegQIIBAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.govinfo.gov%2Fcontent%2Fpkg%2FGPO-CONAN-1992%2Fpdf%2FGPO-CONAN-1992-10-3.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3jkpQvfBt1uwv-qI6PV-Hm
This latter was a technique that worked/works well in Switzerland and kept the Nazis out.. Swiss men having done their equivalent of National Service and having been trained to use guns, were/are required to keep their supplied weapon at home {with a very small quantity of ammunition} and to head for the mountains and become Guerilla fighters if the relevant national alarm is raised. This fact was/is well publicised to potential enemies, so became an effective deterrent.
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