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.

well thought through and argued piece.
The "American frontier" is a powerful symbol in the collective Amercian psyche.
Gun culture owes much to John Wayne and Randolph Scott and Rambo and the mythology of good triumphing over evil via Good facing down Evil on main street where good has the faster draw.

Rhrosty, your extraordinary, irrational comment above shows that you are quite a few cards short of a pack.

You say, "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!"

Given that the U.S. has killed 20-30 millions people since WW2, they can't be trying too hard to limit collateral damage, can they?

But to accuse me who is consistently anti-war of bloodlust shows how deranged you really are.

Better get back on your medication, old fellow!

ArthurN: If you outlaw weapons, then only outlaws will possess weapons!
It is not the gun that kills but the finger pulling the trigger.
Over fifty thousand, criminals, cops, and unarmed civilians caught in the crossfire, have been killed in the war on drugs!
Where is the horror or outrage there? Or are some innocent deaths more acceptable than others?
Yet people just like you, seem to believe, all we need ever do is remove weapons held by law abiding citizens.
Well even if that were possible and or removed the very reasons for these murderous rampages; that's a big ask in a place like America, where there are literally millions of unregistered weapons residing in private hands.
And, a knife is equally or more dangerous in trained hands.
Just ask all those who were Jack the Rippers multiple victims! Look, one small point 22 handgun, held in competent hands, by just one of those many victims, could have brought to a complete halt, his murderous activities!
This is the very point, which seems to escape the anti-gun lobby or people like you?
Japan has extremely tough gun control laws, yet as many as two thirds of that population, may well own handguns?
And are hardly likely to hand them in or risk prosecution?
I mean, laws have to actually be enforceable to work.
That is why we abandoned alcohol prohibition; and or, abortion prohibition!
Trying to prevent people having what they want by law, only ever works in totalitarian countries, governed by harsh or cruel regimes; and where unarmed civilians can be, and are routinely gunned down, simply for trying to flee, or speak their mind/publish the truth!
Is that what you would have for us, or the now armed camp that is America?
Personal freedom also has a price!
Better we should remove the very reasons why people feel they need to protect themselves, with any form of lethal weapon!
When you've worked that one out, give us another post and or the benefit of a wisdom, which has yet to appear on the planet?
Rhrosty.

Monday of this week was the third anniversary of a cluster bomb attack by the Americans on the village of al-Majala in Southern Yemen. That attack killed 14 women and 21 children (more than the Sandy point massacre). Where was the outrage over this killing, that Rhosty would no doubt claim was precision targeted?

Where is the outrage for the almost daily killing of women and children by American drones, almost exclusively in Muslim countries?

While it in no way detracts from the horror in Connecticut it takes a particular pathological personality system to give blanket media coverage to one incident yet ignore the deaths inflicted by that self-same political system on (literally) countless others who are dehumanised as "bug splat" and similar epithets.

This week's Der Spiegel carried a story about Brandon Bryant, a drone operator, who has resigned because he can no longer stomach the killing of women and children for which he was responsible. No major news outlet in the US or Australia has carried this story.

By our silence are we complicit.

The majority of the victims of America's gun culture are non White, as are the majority of the perpetrators.
Stamford Conn,Black citizens 13.9%
Detroit MI, Black citizens 82%

Rates of violent crime per 1000 head of population
Connecticut:2.81
Michigan:4.90

Connecticut, Black victims of homicide:39.8%
Michigan, Black victims of homicide:69.2%

Violent interracial crime is rare, 96% of Black victims are killed by other blacks, victimisation of Whites by Blacks and Hispanics occurs far more frequently, in about 14% of cases but my point is this:

The "gun culture" in the U.S.A relates to Black and Hispanic males between the ages of 14 and 24, it's not a White, Asian or Native American issue, dealing with the rate of gun homicide is a racial issue, to address this "gun culture" will have a far greater impact on minority communities than it will on mainstream America.
So why should everyone in the U.S.A be treated the same if the problem lies in specific ethnic/racial groups and geographic regions such as L.A county,Detroit, Washington D.C, New Orleans and Chicago?

Informative article.

America's grotesque domestic firearm laws are entirely America's problem, I'm amazed that the homicide rate isn't many times higher. As long as they massacre each other and refuse to change why should the people of more enlightened societies care.

The real atrocity is the way the US treats the rest of the world as targets.

I agree with James O'Neill's comments - the United States' war on the Third World is largely unreported or treated with callous indifference in America and the West in general. Unless of course, the victims actually retaliate.

When people talk about the White doomer/prepper/survivalist types they assume that:
A: These people are serious.
B: They can back up their talk of second amendment rights or fighting back against government oppression.

To use an American expression "They can't do diddly squat".
Cast your gaze back in time to Little Rock 1957, Philadelphia 1985,Ruby Ridge or Waco, or even the recent Police treatment of protestors in Seattle and Indianapolis, apart from the highly dubious case against McVeigh/Nicholls these "Gun Nuts" have made no notable response to government heavy handedness and murder.
When we talk about Militias and Cults such as CI or the various types of Neo Nazis few people realise that these groups are always quickly infiltrated and entrapped by the FBI. In a recent interview Robert N Taylor of the 1970's underground militant group the Minutemen estimated that at it's height the group was composed of at least 1/3 government agents or informants, the same is true today.
The FBI and law enforcement generally trample over people with alternate or eccentric views all day every day and no "Gun Nut"ever does anything, this hysteria over Mrs Lanza's alleged beliefs and by extension all people who share those sentiments is ludicrous, what did her son do? He didn't go and carry out a suicide attack on Police, soldiers or FBI agents like McVeigh or Nidal Hasan, he killed his mother, a group of defenceless women and little kids then himself.
These "doomers" and militia types are not to be taken seriously, they are not Hamas or Islamic Jihad, if a gun ban was enforced they'd give up their guns and find a new hobby like all good, law abiding White people.

So few seem to be bothered by the complete disparity between POTUS pulling his tear-jerking antics in Sandy Hook while doing nothing about the "bug-splat" that is part and parcel of his drone attacks.
It might be of interest to some that according to the most recent statistics from the Anglophone world, murders with firearms are NZ - 10, UK - 14, Oz - 59, Canada - 144 and the USA - 9,369.
Go figure.
America is not unique. It's just grossly irresponsible and supremely paranoid. There was an old adage in the days of the wild west. If you live by the gun, you will die by the gun.
Again, go figure.

Brendan O'Niell, a claimed Marxist, has written an interesting critique. I posted the link elsewhere. However it is as relevant here.

http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/13179/

Here is a small section, but the whole article is worth reading. Always good to get another view.

"No one knows what was going on in the mind of the Connecticut shooter. But what was striking about his shooting spree, like that which occurred in Columbine High School in 1999 or at the West Nickel Mines Amish School in 2006, was the utter lack of restraint, the absence of any moral code saying ‘It is wrong to violate a school’ or simply ‘It is wrong to shoot a six-year-old child in the head’. Such a dearth of restraining morality is something new, springing more from today’s culture of estrangement, and the individual nihilism it can nurture, than from the 200-year-old Second Amendment.

School shootings are better understood, not as the end product of American revolutionaries’ insistence on the populace’s right to bear arms, but as part of today’s trend for highly anti-social, super-individuated acts of nihilistic, narcissistic violence - from so-called ‘Islamist attacks’ carried out by British men on the London Tube to Anders Behring Breivik’s massacre of 77 of his fellow Norwegians last year. What such assaults share in common is a profound sense of cultural disconnection. They are, in many ways, the most extreme expression of the narcissism of our age, in which there is the constant promotion of self-obsession over socialisation, and individual identity over collective citizenship, giving rise to a sometimes volatile atmosphere - through both removing individuals from any sense of a meaningful social fabric and imbuing them with a powerful sense of entitlement, where one’s self-esteem counts for everything, and thus any undermining of it is a slight of the most dire order.

To try to explain mass school shootings through the fact that guns exist is like trying to explain the al-Qaeda phenomenon through the fact that aeroplanes exist: it fetishises the technical means as a way of avoiding grappling with cultural factors."

Onthebeach: Finally some informed comment. Rather than more of the same old same old Anglophobia!
Yes, as other less well informed posters have alleged, there are American drones in the air; and for very cogent reasons!
And yes, it's almost impossible to take out mass murdering extremist elements, without also eliminating the innocents they hide behind.
And yes, some of the support elements are screaming injustice!
All while ignoring the quite deliberate shooting of a teenage schoolgirl, just because she had the courage of conviction and a willingness to speak her mind! And the murder of a kneeling wife, allegedly because of adultery?
Well, her heroic husband accused her; and this was all the evidence he required to execute his kneeling wife, "from behind", all while she pleaded, he should get on with it, in the knowledge, this was the only way she could escape a cruel and vicious tyrant, or a stone age culture, where these sorts of things are normal, or accepted everyday events?
And then they cry foul over drone attacks! How dare the Americans seek reprisals!
If these innocent burgers, would simply stay on their side of the border, and stop planting IUD's, which discriminate even less than a nutter with a gun!
If they stopped forcing a poor population, at the point of a gun, to grow and harvest heroin, which also kills thousands per annum!
Then perhaps drone attacks could conclude.
Incidentally, we Australian long ago banned cluster bombs and land mines. So we don't have a case to answer for either!
Rhrosty.

@rhrosty. Your moral confusion, not to say your grasp of facts, is increasingly evident. You persist in alleging that those who criticise the lawlessness of US foreign policy are anglophobic. Are we supposed to remain silent in the face of the facts? The US has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people since WW2 alone, including hundreds of thousands of women and children.

Is the use of drones, a breach of international law quite apart from its killing of women and children to be excused because of the (to western eyes) barbaric nature of some of the customs of the victims?

Why not comment on the selective morality of US aggression? They condemn the Taliban, and bomb Yemen and Somalia, and arm and finance terrorist groups attacking Syria, yet are conspicuously silent on the brutal suppression of legitimate dissent in Bahrein or the even more brutal regime in Saudi Arabia.

As to your comment on the heroin trade it is so appallingly ill-informed that I wonder if you bother to actually study any facts before you leap into print for the umpteenth time.

David G.

The proverb states that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Australians have also done their share of killing, starting with our own indigenous people after we fist arrived.

Not all americans have bloodlust, and Ron Paul as one of their saner politicians has stated time and again that americans should withdraw from every foreign country and concentrate on protecting her own borders.

He could see that antipathy toward America was rising, and he knew the reason was as follows. Every time America was called on for help, to those asking they were saviours. To the opposing faction they were aggressors or territory grabbers, or both. So they've been in a no win situation whoever they help. Should they ignore calls for help then they would be termed selfish. As you must surely appreciate, they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

You would like to 'get rid of the lot of them? Who would you propose should take over the reins? Communist China has the largest military force in the world. Close behind are communist North Korea,and India maintains a large military force too. The Russian federation is almost on a par with the U.S., so the first 3 I mentioned with their superior strength should be your choice as an alternative to America.

Maybe you should give this some thought before so hastily passing judgement on America. Remember, that country has to deal with it's own internal problems as well as other nations'.

For myself, I'm happy that they stepped in and and helped save Europe from the Nazis - a sentiment probably shared by all Europeans who suffered at that time.

Again for David G,

How can you make such sweeping statements as 'they love killing and power and have insatiable greed' and that many if not most are pyschopaths and are happy their armies are overseas killing and plundering.

Nothing, but nothing could be farther from the truth, and if you'd lived there as I did for a few years, you would realise how wrong you are!

At this time of year I remember hugely enjoying their celebration of the festive season. The decorations were awesome, and not once did I see any of the elaborate decorations vandalised.

Back here in Australia it's a very different story. If we paraded such beautiful decorations and Christmas lights, they would be stolen or destroyed.
A man spent months preparing to decorate his house for his neighborhood to enjoy at Christmas in Perth, only to have the whole lot destroyed overnight by vandals. Another had the Christmas tree stolen from his frontyard. I could give you many more examples of the brutish behaviour we endure here, and the bad reputation we have earned in places like Bali, or Europe, where ordinary Aussies have not portrayed our country in a good light - to put it mildly.

How many Aussies do you see place their hands over their hearts when our national anthem is played? I remember from my childhood hearing- Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

And you have the temerity to call Americans names?

I am happy that the U.S., after waiting nearly two years, got involved in in WW2, Worldwatcher.

It's what they did after that that needs to be recognized and condemned. They took over from the NAZIS!

They have killed 20-30 million people during their grab for control of the world. Are we supposed to congratulate them?

And they are using Australians to help them, and the British, anyone who is blind to their ambitions, to their lies.

As a worldwatcher, you'd make a good blacksmith!

John Howard the consummate wedge politician knew how to make political capital out of the negative stereotyping of the US and Americans. Blaming the Port Arthur killings on a "US gun culture" was political genius.

It pulled votes from Labor and the Left, long-time haters of everything American, resulting in an election landslide for him. It also totally wiped any need for an inquiry into Port Arthur, advantaging governments including his own, that sold off government mental health and rehabilitation assets.

Almost daily there are complaints from carers whose own health is failing through lack of government support, and from relatives exasperated by their own inability to arrange urgent support or referral (to where?) for loved ones who are suffering serious problems.

There are hundreds of young students who are failing to thrive in education through depression and other problems which could become chronic conditions without assistance. All but few of those students will fall through the gaps. Student self-harm and suicide are common. Succeeding academically is no proof against problems. What secondary student doesn't have a friend who is presently self harming or is on suicide watch?

Maybe federal government ministers need to do more travel within Australia, instead of gracing the world stage, regularly disbursing millions of Aussie taxpayers' money to buy good favour and international headlines for themselves.

David G.
Just a couple of questions for you.
If as you say, Americans have taken over from the Nazis, why haven't they done what the Nazis did, and sent their people to populate the countries they want to control - as the Muslims are now doing.
Have researched the number of Americans living outside their country of birth, and the number is extremely small, which indicates americans are happy to stay in the country of their birth, although there are others who hold american passports and citizenship in a dual capacity with their original country. So they can choose to use either passport. This makes it difficult to assess the exact number of americans abroad, but I re-iterate it is a very small number - certainly not enough to class them as occupiers or controllers.

My second question is about where you have obtained the figure of 20-30 million people they have killed since the end of WW2. Would you please advise me of your source so that I may verify your figures?

You state these figures with such emphasis that I presume you are quoting from a reliable source which I will be unable to dispute. Only then can I take your figures seriously, rather than treat them as ones you have picked out of thin air.

If you Google 'People killed by the U.S. since WW2' you'll find plenty of reference, Worldwatcher.

Happy Xmas!

@worldwatcher. It is not necessary to populate a country with migrants in order to control it. The Americans have over 1000 military bases worldwide. They attack countries when they want regime change and have done so since at least 1953 with Guatemala and Iran. They also exercise enormous economic power through having the world's sole reserve currency, control of the IMF and huge corporations. Read John Perkins. As to the numbers killed by them, it is hard to keep up so busily are they going about their murderous business. Read Wiliam Blum for a nice summary.

If you Google 'People killed by the U.S. since WW2' you'll find plenty of reference,
David G,
Why aren't you drawing attention to the reasons why US military has to kill so many ? Is it because you don't want to admit that most of the morons who start conflicts don't stop until the US gives them Curry ?
The US would not bother spending it's resources on these morons if they didn't start the troubles in the first place.