With the horrific news from the States...............

[debih]

Mick and I were talking about this yesterday (who wasn't ).

There has been the odd madman go on a rampage here over the years but more are reported in America. But I wondered if this is because guns are easier to access in America or if you look at the number of people in America and the size of America compared to us is it proportionately the same. Or would it still be that there are loads more of these rampages in schools, shopping centres, etc in America.

And the same with the "every day" gun crime - if you took it on a percentage of people would we be about equal with America or would they have much higher figures than us.

Does that make sense.

[Kaz]

I did read that there are 200 million guns in private hands in the States..............So I'm not sure that applies TBH Debih

[Suff]

And the same with the "every day" gun crime - if you took it on a percentage of people would we be about equal with America or would they have much higher figures than us.

Does that make sense.

Pretty much what I was saying with my post Debih. But there is another dynamic which I had written about. The US has virtually no welfare state, people have approximately 2 weeks holiday (on average), per year plus public holidays and firm related holidays. The employment laws (or lack of them), allow virtually anyone to be dismissed with 2 weeks severance (and no more), without really even giving any reason.

People can wind up jobless almost instantly then find a job almost impossible to get with no DSS and very little public healthcare. consider the desperation in that.....

Then you have the dynamic in the US that approximately 40% of US citizens are in the "learning difficulty" category when it comes to reading and writing and you have a situation made in hell.

Then you add in 200 million hand guns and the number of these situations actually map to roughly the same amount as we see in the UK, per capita.

Consider our advantages, the lack of weapons in the UK (5 times as high in the hands of criminals since Dumblane), and perhaps we have to ask ourselves why the UK has "so many" of these incidents, not why the US should change their gun laws. Just look at the UK knife crime statistics, even with our draconian knife laws..

This is not about knee jerk reactions. This is about feeling for those who have lost, supporting them and then taking slow and very measured steps to work out what really went wrong, how we can try and recognise it in the future and either avoid it or stop it before it becomes a disaster.

I'm sure that is much more what parents want to hear than "ban the guns". What will they ban next? Air pistols/rifles, crossbows, longbows, all knives (kitchen as well as others), Scissors, sledge hammers, pickaxes.... The ways for people to kill each other and relatively defenceless children at that, are virtually endless.

Personally I'd love to know how Andy Murray feels about that.....

The last thing we need is a knee jerk "ban the guns".....