That's cool. But here, it is completely illegal to own a gun. There are permits but only very special stuff like armed forces, a few police and a few highly regulated clubs.
Around here, we really don't need to defend ourselves as there is no gun culture. We are allowed to use reasonable force against burglars with other items to hand. Air rifles are allowed though and on private land you can shoot fowl with those double barrelled blunderbus thingies. We had an air rifle for a while to shoot rats but it wasn't very successful. So we got cats instead. That did the trick very well. We get lots of pheasants too in the area so I guess that would be worthwhile shooting if you could when they stray into your garden. I'd prefer a bow and arrow though as I suspect it would be cleaner. And far less noisy. Here, you are rarely far away from a town or village and noise or stray bullets could be a problem.
