You do realise you have no clue about statistical terms?

Actually I know quite a lot about statistical analysis.

You can prove anything with a sample size of two, you should have learned that in school. It's a bogus comparison to compare say, the US with the UK and say hey, this proves what I was on about.

If you're going to do that, comparing the US with the nearest comparable country, i.e. Canada would be better but in reality you need to compare more generally.

Compare the US homicide rate with, say, South Africa or Brazil, or any number of Caribbean countries and the US actually looks quite tame by comparison.

Also you can't take one factor and say the other factor is a direct reason for it happening, could be any number of other reasons, the rate of poverty, the way the criminal justice system works and so on.

Comparing countries is always a very difficult thing to do because there are so many factors in play.

Yes, but Piers Morgan is still a cad.

I don't believe that I said that it was impossible to kill people with a single round.

Joe Public having access to automatic weapons with large magazines makes it far, far easier for deranged fools to kill multiple people. I still maintain that there is no real reason why people outside of the military have a genuine need for such weapons. I appreciate that you may believe something different.

That's a patronizing comment. If gun enthusiasts have the proper training of course they should be allowed to collect and use these weapons.

Nobody is talking about "proving" anything or samples, for that matter.

There are often "many factors in play" but that does not invalidate drawn inferences. In this case, a correlation between gun prevalence and deaths due to gun prevalence would be very easy to compare.

If you like guns, feel free to assert your right to own one, but don't dispute obvious statistical evidence that over a population, gun ownership correlates positively with gun deaths.

They do - it's called joining the army!

I didn't intend to imply that gun enthusiasts are not able to handle the weapons appropriately, it was directed at whether there is a need for such weapons to be owned and handled by civilians.

I fail to see why anyone outside of the military requires the use of such weapons. I don't care how much training they have had, there is simply no need for someone to have one, when they have to potential to do such damage.

It's a question of balancing one right against another and, in this particular instance, it appears to me that the right of some people to shoot off multiple rounds is easily and comprehensively outweighed by the risk of the danger to lots of people if the shooter chooses to use their weapon to harm others.

Some car drivers are absolutely convinced of their ability to drive safely when they've had a few drinks.

Others are convinced of their ability to drive extremely fast and remain in total and safe control of their vehicles. Quite possibly some are right to think so.

Others, because they are licensed to and able to drive a car are confident in their ability to drive a big truck. They may be right too.

But we still have laws regulating such things.

To turn that ludicrous "cars kill people, do we ban cars?" argument on its head, do we have a free-for-all on the roads, no speed limits etc because some drivers are better than others? Or is there a set of rules for the greater good?

The gun lobby has plenty of twisted arguments. My favourite is "guns don't kill people, people kill people".

I have no issue with that argument as it is correct.

In that case you shouldn't be giving Oink a hard time.

It's really not, though, is it?

Granted, a gun without a person using it is an inanimate object incapable of killing people unaided.

Conversely, though, a person who can kill another person with a gun is quite likely not to be able (or willing) to kill that other person unless he has a gun.

It is the combination of people and guns that kill people. In order to avoid gun-related deaths, it is necessary to separate people from guns. Since removing the people is not a sensible option, removing the guns is the only obvious way forward.

The gun lobby cannot see that their point of view is puerile, so pointing out the logical holes in their argument is a waste of breath.

I don't believe I am giving anyone a hard time. I simply believe that there is no need for anyone outside the military to have access to weapons that are capable of firing multiple rounds in quick succession for a sustained period of time.

That does not oppose the statement that a weapon, without an action by somebody or something, is incapable of killing someone. Do you believe that it can?

Educating the misinformed is never a waste of breath, only a slow process.