It's never the fault of the people who pull the trigger is it? Always blame the inanimate gun.

When only the police, military, private security guards and criminals have guns, will you feel any safer?

The main problem is that many if not most Americans are psychopaths. They need to have guns to make them feel powerful, in control. The bigger the gun, the safer they feel.

As the author says, "Being American, even if it involves being peppered to death with bullets in shopping malls, cinemas and schools, necessitates an armed populace."

The article doesn't say that most Americans are happy to have their armies overseas killing and plundering and seeking global domination as well. Since WW2, 20-30 million people have been killed by them.

Americans are unique: they love killing and power and they are filled with insatiable greed.

The world would be better off without them!

Agree with DavidL!
America is unique, in as much as there are literally millions of unregistered guns in private hands.
It's no good slamming shut the stable door, after the horse has bolted.
The latest atrocity was committed by a nut job with a borrowed legal weapon. This tells me that the security of this weapon, was remarkably lax.
Surely the mental state of every member of the family, ought to come into question, unless private firearms are stored, when not in use, in a secure off site armoury!?
City bound folk can't mount much of a case for holding high powered hunting weapons, unless they head off every other weekend on a hunting/training trip, in sanctioned areas.
Ditto members of the national guard!
One of the reasons Switzerland was able to remain neutral, according to released Nazi secret documents, was the sheer number of firearms held in private hands, by people properly schooled in their safe handling and use.
Even so, the number of guns didn't ever correlate to increased gun crimes, whereas, the number of nut jobs and or criminals, nearly always does!
Just look at the war on drugs, and the sheer number of, death by gun numbers, in that war!
If all these drugs were available legally, the illegal market would fold, along with the deaths created by it.
If in the act of breaking into a legally sanctioned gun free area, the nutter had died at the hands of a security guard/adequately trained teacher; most or all of these deaths could have been prevented!
I mean, the Principle died trying to disarm this nut job.
Better he/she had a gun and was prepared to use it, to limit the death toll, to preferably just one; that of the intending perpetrator, who died of a gunshot wound anyway!
All of these incomprehensible crimes are copycat killings of UNARMED victims. They would be far less palatable, to even the maniacally motivated, if the only result was a bullet in your own brain pan!
End of story.
Rhrosty.

MAD: Mutual Assured Destruction.

That is what the gun lobby thinks will bring about peace. If everyone has a gun no-one will want to use it because there will be more guns pointed back at them. But MAD barely works for countries, see the 'cold' war, it doesn't work at all for individuals. We don't know the motives of the gunman in Sandy Hook but we can pretty well guess that the threat of being shot would have done little to stop him.

And then we have the problem of scale. If everyone has a gun, but some have assult rifles and some don't, those without will want to get assult rifles to feel safe. Then there will be some with larger guns and/or more guns, so others will go out and get larger/more guns themselves. Eventually it spirals out of control. I only caught a snipet of the stoy on the news but I beleive that a child was caught with a gun at a school after the Sandy hook incident. He said it was 'just in case'.

The only sane option is removal. Get the guns out of the hands of those that may missuse them. People will inevitably argue then that if it is not a gun it is a knife, well here is a hard truth for them - people will try and kill people. It's not nice but it happens. It must now become a numbers game. Can you live with 20+ people being killed by a gun in minutes or only a few with a knife?

The US has to wake up a realise that it has gone down the wrong path, before there are too many more headlines.

DavidG. You seem to be judging all Americans by your own highly flawed/blood lusting, personal standards?
Arguably, your completely empathy free comments tell us much more about you, than the par for the course, anti american rant!
It's Leaders who commit whole nations to war, rather than a peace loving population.
And arguably, those most against war are the very soldiers, who we send into harms way, to fight them!
And yes, American Leaders would rather fight all their wars on the perceived enemy's territory, so as to limit the collateral damage to the enemy's population!
That is why there is a reluctance to put boots on the ground, and instead, the resort to massive carpet bombing raids, or more recent, precise and surgical, missile armed drones.
And if there's a better way than drones; to deal with gutless, gun totting maniacal miscreants, who want to wipe whole populations off the planet; and or, hide behind and or kill their own womenfolk, I'd like to hear it.
If as you say, the world would be better off without Americans, then you in particular, would have to agree with the latest mindless murderous killing spree, which removed some twenty more of them?
Personally, speaking for myself, I believe the world would be a vastly better place, if we simply removed blood hungry people just like you; who blame everyone else for problems of their on maniacal making?
And surely that has to limit the death toll to just a few hundred, rather than the millions you would expunge, if only you had your druthers?
Rhrosty.

Americas chattering classes, following a long election campaign, are kept busy arguing over the sentimental content of their President’s Newtown speech.

Analysing his every gesture of spontaneous emotional display, they somehow neglect to inquire: “Isn’t this display of rehearsed precision coming from the same guy who, without a hint of regret, orders drone pilots to launch Hellfire missiles that have killed far more children and innocent parents than all the psychos in the past thirty years of U.S. school massacres? And why isn’t that well spoken guy, who talks peace one minute and authorises military action the next, in handcuffs or in a padded cell along with his smirking and less dangerous predecessor?”

Only in America.

It will be very interesting and informative to see what, if any, mind altering medications the 'shooter' may have been prescribed by his Doctor.

It is also now evident the shooters mother was a prepper/doomer, no guessing then where the 'shooter' received his indoctrination.