Virginia.

[Roger Kettle]

Events in this world keep reminding me---not that I need it---of the triviality of what I do.
Yet another campus massacre and there's not a single thing we can do but shake our heads. I remember, after the slaughter at Dunblane, one of the seven-year-old survivors said that the gunman was a "bad man". And, really, despite the investigations and the psycho-analysis, there is no better definition. Sadly, there seems to be an awful lot of bad men around. Even more sadly, a lot of them are in power.

[The Peepmaster]

It's horrific. Children see things so simplistically and "a bad man" is sufficient a description for them. Of course as we get older we realise there are such a things as mental illnesses etc. which can cause people to behave entirely unnaturally.

Thank goodness I've a content life in pleasant surroundings, and am perfectly normal.

[Malc]

I wish all these separate incidents could be lumped under a single heading, but despite their similarities they are very different.

The second worst thing about Dunblane (the worst being the loss of the innocents) was that it gave pinheads in the US an excuse to keep their guns.

"See?" they said, "the UK has no gun culture yet the same sh*t happens there. Guns aren't the problem, people are the problem".
Then Columbine, then a few other massacres and now this, and the gun nuts still won't believe that their inadequacies, fear and paranoia (the reasons they only feel safe with weapons to hand) are responsible for the deaths of hundreds.

So why are they afraid and paranoid? That's a whole new debate.

[Diamond Lil]

I think one of the worst images on last night's news was the re-run of a speech Charlton Heston gave in his capacity of president of the National Rifle Association where he holds his gun aloft and says something along the lines of "if they want my gun they can prise it from my dead hand"

A book well worth reading is "We need to talk about Kevin" by Lionel Shriver - fiction but prompted by previous school killings where a mother looks back on her son's upbringing for reasons why he could have become the shooter...and no trace of mental illness, just the culture he grew up in

[Colin]

The Second Amendment:

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

Chuck Heston is always going to bring the second amendment up every time something like this happens.
And it will happen again.

[Malc]

He's not the only one, I used to frequent a couple of US cartoonist boards (I still frequent one of them) and though opinion was generally against gun ownership by private citizens, the pro-gun lobby minority was insanely vocal.
Some believed everybody should be armed at all times, because that would make everyone play nice.

The 2nd Amendment was formulated during a time when the US didn't even stretch from the Pacific to the Atlantic and had virtually no standing army, each state had its own militia, formed and heavily backed by citizens who were responsible for their own arms.

The gun nuts are relying on that ancient legislation to allow them to keep their toys.

[Fyodor]

A quick word here on behalf of the mentally ill: we don't know we're mentally ill until normal people tell us.

[Roger Kettle]

True, but sometimes the mentally ill don't know they're mentally ill until a lawyer tells them.