The sales of these weapons leaned heavily on reports of lone cyclists, usually women, being attacked by robbers and vagrants as they pedalled along England’s rural roads.
‘No lady or gentleman should be without one’ sang the Carryer advert. One American company boasted that their ‘Cyclist’s Revolver’ could not be fired accidentally. And just to show how safe it was, they portrayed a young girl playing with one as she sat on a bed, her doll pushed to one side.
Britain had no effective legislation to restrict the ownership or use of handguns. You could be insane, a hardened criminal or just a member of a shooting club and whether at a gunsmith’s, a local hardware store, in a pub or by mail order, you could buy a revolver or a pistol with cartridges, no questions asked. Colt’s, one of the major manufacturers, claimed that British sales of their Pocket Revolver, the Colt .32, had risen into the ‘thousands’ between its introduction in 1893 and the summer of 1901. Yet gun crime was comparatively rare and demands for stricter control were usually brushed off.
I am sorry for this late fact but 'Orwell' warned You and You still ALLOWED your 'gov' to disarm YOU so You could be made into slaves.
Read through this article + learn from history: how they do it every-single-time - 1901 'The cyclist's friend'
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Gun-Law/
Their first Gun laws were due to their fear of commie revolution,after the russian revolution and the attempted revolutions in Germany.
It had nothing to do with crime.
Always about protecting the status quo for the civil service, nothing to do with the welfare of the citizens.