I think you're missing the point. What harm does it do to own a gun if I don't use it illegally and I keep stored safely? There are laws against shooting people unless I fear for my or other's lives. I disagree with the laws in some states that allow the use of deadly force to protect property, if you want my lawnmower that badly, you can have it. But I should have the right, if some breaks into my house and threatens to kill me and my wife, to protect myself.

If there was any easy solution to these things it would have been done already.

Also I think American media tends to magnify these things because they've been going on forever (remember King Herod). Every time I talk to someone about it they're like "oh this never happened way back when". Way back when: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/nyregion/20unruh.html Before everything was on the TV.

For example I remember this also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/d...00/2478217.stm - but almost nobody else does.

And this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkseaton_shootings

And more recently this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings

I don't care what anyone says about guns, they aren't going to ban double-barrel shotguns.

I thought this article was quite good: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...t-to-own-guns/

Yes, because they were little kids!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't seen many pics of the kids so I can't comment on their looks, I feel upset because they were kids, not models

Exactly, it's the fact were kids and so young they would not have understood what was happening. I can't imagine sending my kids to school on Friday morning (probably in a hectic rush as school mornings tend to be) not seeing them alive and happy at the end of the day and then burying them on the Monday!!!! Every parents worst nightmare.

I can't comment on the gun laws as I know nothing about it only that I thought guns were controlled in Canada and I had a major heart sinking moment when Steve told me last week that it was not the case.

IMO mental illness is the biggest issue here and (just because I like to have something to blame) TV/Films - we watched that film "There's Something About Kevin" the other week and the story line is uncannily like the situation at that school!! It doesn't take a lot to influence a person with a mental condition into believing something is a necessary course of action.

Now I'm not a Piers Morgan fan but....................just how uncivilised is the US?

IMO the US is at about the same state of social development as England in the 1300s



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20838729

I sent Piers a tweet asking if I'd got it right that people want him deported for using his first amendment right to discuss the second amendment?

I was told years ago that Americans don't understand irony. Now I believe it!

Off topic but I have to include Canadians as well in the lack of understanding of irony................. led by their fearless leader Alanis Morrissette who managed to sing a song called 'Ironic' that contained no irony whatsoever.

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2011/08/0...tion-in-irony/

Haven't read the whole thread, and this may have been mentioned before. Will banning guns really help? Anyone remember Dunblane?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre

!6 kids shot, in a country where guns are (largely) banned. The problem isn't the gun.... it's the shooter.

Yes, wasn't tighter gun regulations brought in after this episode?

Probably... but they were pretty tight anyway. You had to jump through hoops to own a gun in the UK.

Yes

How? If you were given a gun, would it turn you into a child-killing murderer? If you took guns away from the sub-human scum that would harm children, would it stop them doing so?

Mr Hamilton was one of the "good guys" as the NRA like to call them. Coincidentally, so was the bloke who went postal in Hungerford.

I think some people shouldn't be anywhere near guns. I like them, I've fired them, but wouldn't want to own one or be able to access one easily.

I'm an extremely calm normally but I know I've had to use serious violence at one point in my life to protect myself, and I know the consequences would have been far more serious for both of us had I had easy access to firearms.

Though I bet the Police response would have been faster and consist of more than one car.