>>...
>>>What if your kids (and I mean this figuratively... I'm not trying to rile you up by bringing your kids into it) were playing outside and were attacked by a bobcat or a coyote? Or a wild dog? Or an angry bull that got out of your neighbor's pen? Or a rabid dog/racoon/fox? Are you going to fight off a predator with a stick? Sure you would try, but what if you can't get there in time?
>>
>>So that's why you have guns and we don't! We only have foxes here, and there's no rabies.
>
>Do you really have no rabies in the UK?

I was actually shocked to hear that rabies appears so frequently here. Back home, we had very strict veterinarian control, and the hunters were organized - want to be a hunter, become a member somewhere and do your duties. The duties would include feeding the deer in winter, making sure pheasants weren't hunted off season, and in case when a stray rabid fox would cross the border, raid the area until it's killed, and its head sent to Pasteur institute in Novi Sad or Belgrade. There would be one case of such an animal every four or six years, and it may infect one or two other animals, and that's the extent of it. And I got the data straight from the source - my wife was a health inspector, and the health protection institute (in charge of supplying vaccines and tracking epidemics) was our customer.

BTW, the hunters' clubs also have the duty to shoot off stray dogs around villages, when they overbreed. They only ask not to do it around their own village, where people know them - the occupation of dog pound operative isn't held in high esteem :).