[Retlaw]

Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington

In school shootings the perpetrator seems to feel that they are victims of some perceived slight, either by teachers or their peers.
The whole thing is due to the way society has progressed(?). It is a societal problem...a way to gain notoriety...fame...but of the wrong kind.

People believe they have rights...and they want to cling onto these in spite of the fact that they may be detrimental to the community as a whole....and those who squeal that their rights are being compromised often do not accept the responsibility that goes with rights.

When young people are mown down in senseless killing sprees, I wonder if one of those who were killed would be the discoverer of a cure for cancer, or whether one of them may have made a vast contribution to peace in the world, or whether they might have come up with the means to feed those who are currently starving in countries across the world.

I know that this wondering is pointless, because it is a question that can never be answered.

How painful it must be to see your child...the centre of your universe,cut down before they have had a chance of any kind of life.

I wonder if those in the hierarchy of the NRA ever think about these things....contemplate what the loss of a child means and how it affects the whole of your life.

And all of these may seem trite and cliched, but that is my response to the situation with guns.
Guns are the only answer to a gun....so if all guns were removed and only the police allowed to carry them...and then only in certain situations....would it make a difference?
I don't know if it would...those who have money will always be able to buy what they want....and legal or illegal...a gun still robs the community of life.

Margaret, I can't argue with you, your reasoning is fautless, but Septic land is a whole world apart from how we live, some of them Yanks live in remote areas, there nearest neighbour could be a couple of miles away, and like every where else you always get some, who think your possesions are theirs, in situations like that a gun of any description is an essential tool to staying alive.
I think it would be nigh on impossible to rid america of guns, there are literally millions of them.
This country once had many fire arms, and we never had many problems with ownership until late 1918, the conflict at Archangel, where British, Canadian & the yanks were involved, hundreds of tons of arnaments were stored there for what was known as the white Russians, and the Bolshies were after it. The end result put the fear of god in our goverment of the time, so things started being tight'nd up, then during the 1930's things started happening on the continent which cause more worry, so the 1937 fire arms act came into being.
Over the intervening years, the Irish problem, and other events caused tigther and tighter gun controls, and the police blamed legitimate gun owners for every thing they could think of, and that we supplied criminals, now we are no more, and still it hasn't stopped gun crime.
Back when I was a competetive shooter, if you broke any of the rules in the fire arms act, of which there were dozens, many trivial ones as well, you lost your permit for life, yet commit a crime with a car, or any motorise vechicle, for which you recieve a punishment, or even kill some one, and before long you are driving again, and cars kill people every day, day in day out. Guns don't kill people, people kill people and they'l do it with what ever they can get their hands on, from knitting needles to felling axes. But what the heck blame the gun owners.