South Dakota allows teachers to be armed.

No I think it's you and most Americans who really don't get it- if every single Tom, Dick and Harry in the US has a gun guess what? You're going to have easy access to guns, lots of shooting and lots of people dead!

What do we have in the UK? Hardly any guns! What else do we have? Hardly any shootings! Why? Because nobody would know where to get a gun if they did want to shoot someone!

Do you get it now??? So arming your teachers is doing the complete opposite to fix the problem. What's going to happen next? The son of a teacher will walk into a school, kill a few people and we will find out he got the M16 assault rifle from his mum who is a South Dakota history teacher!

....Or much more lives gets saved because he is stopped in his tracks by an armed teacher.

by an armed teacher.

At the end of the day, I don't think anti-gun advocates have the right to jeopardize the lives of school children (or anyone) with their anti-gun policies. Instead of talking about how they want guns banned, their attention should turn to discussing ways to try and prevent something like this happening again. I hope you can understand why I feel this way.

does not that sound completely stupid or what? So are these teachers going to be marksmen-trained? What if they end up accidently shooting kids? What if one of the US nutters becomes a teacher because guess what.... they can sit in a room with 30 kids... with a gun!

I'll repeat this one more time for those not following:

NO GUNS- NO MASS TRAGEDIES!!!!

understood yet?

Based on your argument- surely every single person should carry a gun on them at all times just in case they walk into a mass shooting? Yes?

Gun control works in the UK because we don't really have a lot of guns. It has nothing to do with the legislation. Even before the various laws came into effect, shooting sprees were very rare. You can't compare it to the US, a place where guns are very common and cherished in the national culture

The right to bear arms that you spoke of earlier, is one reason why guns are 'cherished' (interesting choice of word by the way) in the national culture. It provides the validity to that culture. Had the idea been abandoned several generations ago, I firmly believe that there would be far fewer guns in circulation, a completely different mindset and culture, and your argument would look entirely different. In fact, there may not be an argument to have.

This 'right' and the stubborness of the people who champion it, have facilitated and continue to facilitate the easy access to guns for literally anyone who wants one. Two by-products of which are a five-digit homicide rate and the loss of the ultimate right, 'life'. We need an end to this archaic reasoning and paranoia.

What is needed is some kind of legislation that severely restricts access, making it more difficult (not impossible) for the average nutcase to source a gun. Obviously this doesn't erradicate the problem completely, but it mitigates it. Over a sustained period, I believe that approach will eventually yield results. It has to start somewhere.

Gun confiscation would start off the second Civil War. You've got many American civilians, some ex-military, some ex-police, and others just regular civilians, who have stated they will die before giving up their guns. More and more law enforcement officers are saying that they would refuse orders to disarm their fellow citizens, and thats people who are high up in the force - Not just newbie recruits.

Those people aren't troublemakers, they are law abiding people with a house a job and maybe some family, who feel that gun confiscation is a "red line". They are peaceful - They would never start any confrontation, but they would defend themselves against any gun-grab.

If that happened (people acting in self-defence when the authorities tried to take their guns) would Obama then give the most heinous order of all - The order for the military to turn on their own people, and start attacking the civilians who were resisting the gun grab? Maybe. But some members of the US military are saying that they would refuse to fire on their own citizens. It would probably start another Civil War, which would cost a great deal of lives - All because of gun control.



I believe I can answer this. Some anti-gun people have said to me that if everyone else was armed, they would want to carry a gun too for self-defence. That's why people in America want to carry for self-defence - Because gun control will have little effect on people who already carry guns illegally i.e criminals.

I do not believe you have the right to condemn people to death in order to "mitigate" gun crime. The current system at least gives everyone a chance of survival, gun control would reduce their chances. I feel this is the fairest system.

And with this barrage of hyperbole, you've proven my point about acute paranoia, stubborness and all the rest.

I think you've summed up the mindset perfectly and as a result I think the debate ends here for me.

Thanks and well done