Utilising an account of the development of gun control legislation in Britain and the work of Norbert Elias, this paper argues that there are a number of processes that influence the development of such legislation, both in Britain and elsewhere. It argues that while processes such as the state's predisposition to consolidate its monopoly on the use of violence and advances in people's threshold of repugnance at violence influence the development of legislation, they can also lead to a blurring of the distinction between legally held sporting guns and illegal firearms in the hands of criminals. The paper concludes by considering other factors such as the efficacy of the prohibitionist lobby on the one hand and the gun lobby on the other, together with historical factors that may, in part, account for international variation in regimes of gun control.
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