At the risk of agreeing with some of the very people I can't stand - the presence of guns in a society is not a posteriori evidence of wide-scale gun violence. Canada has enough firearms in circulation to win half-a-dozen world wars and yet, despite its proximity to the States, doesn't suffer anywhere near the same number of casualties.

Americans have always feared the untrammeled violence of the state and widespread circulation of firearms was meant to discourage anyone from curtailing those freedoms many of their European ancestors didn't enjoy. I think the fear was and remains reasonable and so was the solution. That said, whilst prior to WWI citizen militias could probably hold their own against armies of the state, pitted against satellite imagery, Apache "Longbow" helicopters and Hellfire missiles it's doubtful the Minutemen could offer anything more than token resistance.

It's very difficult to argue for gun ownership in Britain without keyboards being tossed into the air in horror and mothers ushering their kids out of the room. Invariably the response is "Guns kill people, duh!" and before long one or more people are being labeled Nazis. If you are lucky enough to get beyond first base and point out that against the British state we have almost no means of defence should we need it the reply then is something along the lines of "We're not likely to". Given this country's long and bloody history in addition to the huge number of problems which have broken on us or are about to (the current economic malaise, the far greater one when this last debt bubble we've created implodes on us, global warming, peak oil, global shortages of water, food and other finite resources, overpopulation etc.) I'd say this is a naive assumption.

Why it is that there is almost complete unanimity on the question of guns in society is an interesting question. After all, alcohol has always been a far bigger killer than firearms in Britain yet you don't see 95% of people arguing to ban it. I think it's no-coincidence that the government and the media combined (in one of those rare moments when both sing exclusively from the same hymn sheet, which should be suspicious in itself) to hit guns when they were at their weakest post-Hungerford following decades when civil unrest was a major political issue (the miners' strike, Poll Tax etc.)

Returning to the US, I'd argue that it is the proliferation of guns within a fundamentally corrupt and unjust, militaristic and economically polarised nation deeply divided along lines of race, religion and class that leads to widespread gun violence.

The problem with a reasoned argument in favour of gun control is that ultimately the reasoned argument becomes meaningless when the gun licensing laws are made obsolete and they are on sale in Asda.

At that point every citizen who hasn't got a big enough cock wants the biggest gun that Asda stock that christmas whilst every citizen who can't be arsed working for a living but prefers robbing instead is also stood behind them in the checkout queue looking over their shoulder and wondering if they picked up enough ammunition or whether they should go back and get some grenades as well.

Its pointless telling those with small cocks, the criminal and the ones with brains that don't quite work the same way as the rest of us that the right to bear arms is purely for protection against an over-zealous state, should that ever happen, when that statement will whizz by fifty miles above their heads and you end up with the same situation here that they have in many areas of the US where YOU buy a gun because you want to shoot a burglar dead should you ever be visited by one, or the bloke down your street has got a gun and you know for a fact that he's a nut-job and you want to protect your family on the day when he finally flips.

The same point. Was put to a ex teacher who lives near the incident. The person asking this was a BBC news reporter.

So its not just those crazy Yanks.

I think that sentence sums it up nicely. Gun laws on there own wont do a great deal in a Nation that is fundamentally Paranoid.

But it is a valid point. If all the Teachers were armed they could have taken out the Gunman.


Although if the gunman was a teacher then that would make it worse.

Now if all of the children had been armed and trained then they could have taken out the gunman and would also be able to take out any crazed teachers who pose a risk to them.

The problem with America is that not everyone has a gun. If all the unarmed were armed that problem would be solved. I do feel that they should put Gun training on the curriculum for all children aged over five and that it is the duty of all parents to buy their children a gun at the age of five as a type of coming of age present.

Maybe that is what the gun lobby should be pushing

Nail....hammer....head.

The best you will ever get is a law restricting ownership to possibly one gun per household, and maybe a maximum amount of ammunition also.

I wouldn't expect that to happen any time soon though.

If guns were instanly banned tomorrow, it would probably take 50-100 years before guns did not become readily available, because of the sheer amount of guns in that country.

[quote=the usual mugwump diarrhoea.[/quote]

Yes, guns do kill people, but you still would need to justify why you would need and want to own a hand gun in the first place. The police don't want to be armed, and if we had referendum the outcome would be the same, the people of this country don't want guns in society. As for no defence against the state, so what, should I be having paranoid delusions that one morning I going to wake up and find myself under martial law?

Whilst there's no disputing that they have a lot, they wouldn't be anywhere near the top of the list. If you substitute the emotive terms "weirdos and idiots", with "people who randomly murder large groups of strangers" then you'll agree there are more dangerous places in the world. Would you feel your kids were safer in Connecticut, Helmand, Kabul, Bogota, or the Gaza Strip?

Can't disagree with a word of that. the only thing I would add is each child U-5 top becompulsorily accompanied by an armed guard paired up from the 5-11 age group. Ammunition vending machines on each corridor would be good too.