Latest shooting

A week or so ago a councillor in North Norfolk shot and killed his wife and then killed himself. They were a gregarious, popular loving couple and there seems to have been no reason for it, just a few seconds of madness. She was a member of a gun club and there were guns in the house. If the guns hadn't been there the moment would probably have passed with a bit of shouting and they would both still be alive. We have strict gun laws and it happened here. I find it incredible that a so called civilised country like the USA encourages it's citizens to have lethal weapons in their homes as the norm. We only hear about the massacres, how many other shootings go on which are treated as everyday occurrences, like road accidents.

Did anyone notice a very short item in the middle of the paper yesterday about aman with a knife who attacked and injured twenty odd primary school children in China? Couldn't help thinking that it didn't get more publicity because it didn't involve a gun, but I would imagine it was a horrendous experience for the children and sheer luck that no one was killed.

Deeda It was quite widely reported in Australian news and I put a link on the America Massacre thread regarding the knife attack in China. After I read this article China attack illustrates US gun law divide. Apparently China has strict gun laws.

There have been several of these attacks in China recently, have there not?

I think the USA could do something. They could ban the ownership of combat weapons designed for soldiers in war zones, not for domestic protection. They could insist on a psychiatric test before the issue of any gun licence. And they could finance the enforcement of existing laws. There are 20 gun deaths to just one in other civilised countries: how can they live with that?

Now is the time, in the second and therefore final term of a president, when Obama has no worries about reelection. Our Australian conservative PM in 1996 managed to do it. We had a massive gun buy-back: before it, I could have legitimately bought a rifle: after it, no way.

I just could not, under any circumstances, live in America. The gun laws, the politics, and the police would all terrify me.

As for that mass murder - I thought the Norwegian one, targeting young people was the worst thing, but this one targeted 5 to 10 year olds, mainly the little ones ...I would have thought that was beyond even a madman. It is heart breaking.

I just read his Mum was one of those survivalists who hoard guns and food and equipment for an imagined breakdown of civilisation. Her son has Aspergers, and was a goth-style loner. The Mum encouraged her boys in target practice. She was not a teacher, but she had home-schooled the killer because of some sort of dispute at his hgh school. The more I read, the more sure I am that all the ingredients were building up for an atrocity.

But why little children aged 6 and 7?

How could he?

My heart goes out to all the families,not only the children`s but the teachers as well who tried to save them. We send our children to school, hoping they will be safe, only to hear that some are not. We will never really know what went on in that young mans head or any who do these sort of things.

We had Dunblane 17 years ago and there have been other atrocities. We are not guiltless, but how much worse might it have been with the easy availability of firearms that they have in the US? I am getting uneasy echoes of the novel, 'We Need to Talk about Kevin' and realising that there's a great deal of truth in it.

Butty put this link on Failure for Mental Health Support In America.. It is worth reading about a woman who explains what it is.like to be Adam Lanza's mother.

It seems crazy that a country would want to encourage its citizens to have easy access to pump action firearms - it's frightening how powerful the gun lobby is in the USA.

I think there is also an issue about how the way people who are different, or who don't fit into the mainstream, are ignored/shunned and become isolated. This must surely lead to feelings of complete alienation and contribute to mental instability.

The gun nutters' argument is that if those teachers had been armed, they could have 'blown Lanza's head off'.

They seem to have no concept that some people, many people in fact, are simply unwilling or unable to carry firearms and use them.

I think the mental health of the killer will be part of the whole investigation, and might lead to some new policies on dealing with marginalised young people with psyche problems.

(As for the mental health of gun nutters - no hope there!)

And where the Hell is a teacher supposed to keep a gun safe in a class of six year olds? It wouldn't have been readily available to blow anyone's head off. What idiots these gun people are!

I watched the article posted by Faye and its truly horrifying. It seems that mental health issues do need addressing as well. I trust no mother with a child like this would even consider having a gun in the house never mind an arsenal.

If President Obama tackles both issues he might carry more people with him and diffuse much of the Gun Lobby's argument. We can hope can't we?

Guns and the USA - a scary mystery.

I know many other countries have high gun ownership but lower gun death rates. There's much about the USA that outsiders don't understand - well, I certainly don't - and this was highlighted to me during the presidential election campaign. So much appalling right-wing rhetoric, so much religiosity, so much fear, loathing and dread of anything that could be seen to be vaguely approaching gun control, social justice, let alone socialism itself. (But in spite of all the language of hate against him, Obama won anyway!!)

Their attitude to guns will always flummox outsiders, I reckon. Not that taking notice of outsiders is the American way - far from it.

Anno Is it really 17 years since the Dunblane massacre? It is still very fresh in my mind. It need never have happened if the existing gun licence laws had been adhered to but a local Councillor and the local MP (a Government minister) exerted undue influence on Hamilton's behalf and his licence was returned to him. I have no idea what inspired them to do this but the conseqence of their actions did not seem to weigh heavily upon them afterwards. It was the groundswell of public opinion - remember the Snowdrop Campaign - which ultimately ensured that sweeping changes took place in both gun law and school security. These issues cannot be left to politicians who will always be more influenced by powerful lobbies than basic principals of right and wrong.

One of the problems is that hollywood presents gun use as easy. In a target shooting practice session it might feel easy. But it is not easy under severe fight/flight stress, when your hands are shaking and your brain racing. Chances of shooting like Leroy Gibbs are minimal and you will probably miss. This is the big flaw in the idea that having a gun will protect civilians if they are threatened by an armed intruder.
This is why soldiers have such hard training - to raise their resistance to stress and train them to react in particular ways when there is no time to think.

I agree completely Jess. The people who say the teachers should have been armed are utterly ridiculous.

More frightening than ridiculous, Joan - immoral and influential, a deadly combination.

And another:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20838925

I guess the NRA will now want all firefighters to be armed to the teeth too!

Guns, especially assault weapons in the USA are an insanity - those men who wrote the constitution 200 years ago must be gyrating in their graves. They didn't mean this - they just wanted to arm people so they were fully able to fight to gain and keep their independence.

Someone ought to tell the NRA that we don't want our old colony back. Honest.We really don't.

and
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2254758/Deport-If-America-wont-change-crazy-gun-laws--I-deport-says-Piers-Morgan.html

I'm guessing that today or at least this week children in the US will be gong back to school. This will be an especially sad time for the families if all the victims, children and adults. Let us take a moment to remember them and wonder if this incident will just become 'another shooting' and the memory of the horror is already fading from the public memory

I think it almost has jodie