But did the students have the right to defend themselves?

Statistically, these sorts of massacres account for a tiny percentage of gun deaths and it's easy to blow them right out of proportion. These sorts of massacres need to be treated differently to most other gun deaths.

States such as Vermont, which have very "lax" gun laws also have very low rates of gun crimes, which is also in line with a country such as Switzerland, where people literally are armed to the teeth, yet they manage to avoid killing each other in large numbers in both places.

I think that rather than making crazy statements about Americans all being armed and ready to shoot first and ask questions later, it's perhaps more enlightening to break gun deaths down by factors such as age, sex, race, etc.

For instance, I just pulled this off a google search:

http://www.health.state.ok.us/Program/planning/sos99/firearm.htm

or this:

http://www.swivel.com/data_sets/show/1000427
(Note the declining rate of gun deaths across all categories.)

I'm sure you could go and find out who is doing most of the killing too, but it's probably pretty un-PC to acknowledge that some middle-aged, fat, white guy or his wife who let off a few dozen at the local firing range every week aren't the cause of the problem.

Nothing wrong with letting off a dozen at the local firing range, if that's your thing, but why do you have to bring the gun home with you? Why do you need automatic and semi-automatic guns in the home, or on the street, or in your car?
The trouble is that most gun owners may indeed be nice, responsible citizens but why can't they simply join a gun club, leave the guns there, or borrow them if they want to go on a hunting expedition? The few loonies out there can reek awful havoc with those weapons, so surely the rights of the rest of us to live lives free of the fear of being shot should outweigh the rights of the few people who enjoy guns as a hobby? And the author of this piece is correct, most massacres are not perpetrated by criminals or even gangs - who may be on the wrong side of the law, but are generally not suicidal or crazy - they are perpetrated by hitherto unknown nutters. Most law abiding citizens are simply not at risk from gun toting criminals - they prey on their own, but any of us could find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time with an armed lunatic, bent on a grandiose form of suicide.
Americans now live in armed fear. My husband was there last year and commented to his American host how courteous American drivers were. His host turned and said, "You have to be, you never know if the driver you offend could be a nut and pull his gun and shoot you." I never thought I'd see road rage as a symptom of a healthy society, but perhaps it is. The lack of guns in Australia means the most we risk is a punch in the nose, so we continue to make rude gestures at one another. Long live the safety (and freedom) to be rude, then.

Is Mise - in many posts you focus on the right to defend yourself, and the inferred link is the right to have a gun.

It's a fallacy. The right to defend yourself isn't the right to have a gun. So, yes. Of course people have a right to defend themselves. No, they don't necessarily have a right to have a gun. If you're going to argue that point, be honest about your intentions.

To arm the public, essentially means we've given up on a cohesive society. It sparks a situation where more and more people wield guns, which in turn fuels more people feeling they need to have guns, because others do as well. It's the wild west.

To argue that everybody should be able to arm themselves is to argue that society has broken down. We're not there yet, though I fear that if guns were to become common in public, we'd be well on our way.

ena: Yet states that have concealed weapon laws and so on have very, very low rates of gun crimes and deaths.

The whole point is that there's a very high likelihood that in any place there will be at least two people who are armed, and thus, if one person were to do something stupid, he'd have to contend with at least one other person ready to stop him (literally) dead in his tracks. It's easy to characterise Americans as living in fear, or as the place being the Wild West, but that bears no similarity to the statistics. The places with the worst gun problems in the U.S. are not those with the "laxest" gun laws. Likewise, it also doesn't take into account that there are many other nations (such as Switzerland) where there are high rates of gun ownership, yet very low rates of gun crimes or deaths.

"It's a fallacy. The right to defend yourself isn't the right to have a gun. So, yes. Of course people have a right to defend themselves. No, they don't necessarily have a right to have a gun. If you're going to argue that point, be honest about your intentions."

TRTL: You're wrong on this, and not because of the Second Amendment, but because of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments:

IX. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Those who wrote the Bill of Rights realised that obviously, they couldn't prescribe every right (they outlined what they considered the most important in Amendments 1-8). Thus, anything not prescribed (whether the right to own a gun, drive a car, etc.) is automatically a right. All of this was supposedly to limit the power of government and preserve that of individuals, although we all know how that worked out...

shorbe - I see your point, I didn't make it clear I wasn't necessarily referring to the US - under their system they do indeed have the right to bear arms.

I was referring to the idea that that should automatically extend to Australia by dint of some vague "right to defend ourselves."