Op2,

Welcome back, your well reasoned and moderate replies are always a pleasure to read and I, and no doubt many others, look forward to your future contributions.

G'day Issy, been on a unpaid sabbatical to the not so sunshine state. Just catching up.

Thought you were onto a winner with this one, yeah right! Steele as per usual has nailed your hide to the barn door. I can't add anything to that, other that to give you this weeks 'Lead Balloon' award, that makes about a zillion such awards for you over the years, right!

A little gem. "Op2... your well reasoned and moderate replies are always a pleasure to read"

Yeah! "WHAT A GOOSE!

Are you related to him Issy? (the goose)...lmao You could be brothers (brother goose's)...lmao

You probably have the same backward thinking genes (goose genes)...lmao

Right wing craziness is on it's way out Issy (goodbye goose)...Time for you to grow a brain (goose brain) or forget how to type!...lmao

How often an arrogant opinion might be correct. I agree often with you on a number of issues, but guns, we just can't see barrel to eye, so to speak.

I was up in Queensland last week, meself; tell me, Paul, what is the glue that holds the Greens together, can't be a natural product?

As for Steele, well, when he starts to give references that back up his observations then we'll all be much better informed.

A bunch of know-nothing school kids taking the chance to have a few days off lessons and/or throwing tantrums about things they really don't understand, aren't going to change anyone's mind. Gun laws won't change any time soon no matter how many whiny kids get on CNN.

But one of the interesting views being expressed on the whole mass-shooting phenomena in the wake of the recent events, is the research showing how the vast majority of these shooters are young men who have been raised without a father figure.

Stephen Baskerville, a professor at Patrick Henry College, says “by far the main predictor of shooting rampages — along with all other criminality and virtually every social pathology among young males — is a home without a father.”

“From shootings at MIT (i.e., the Tsarnaev brothers) to the University of Central Florida to the Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Decatur, Ga., nearly every shooting over the last year in Wikipedia’s ‘list of U.S. school attacks’ involved a young man whose parents divorced or never married in the first place.”

The link between dysfunctional young men and fatherless households has been long observed. But it seems to me that it is being canvassed much more thoroughly recently Cruz fits right into the pattern.

Everyone from the school to the sheriff to the FBI ignored or circumvented the rules and laws in this case to allow Cruz to remain free and able to access guns. Making new laws when the old laws aren't even enforced seems like an exercise in uselessness.

Fixing the disintegration of the family structure is a monumental and multi-generational problem, but it is attacking the problem at its roots.

G'day again Issy,

When we were kids in the bush, the sap from the Wattle made a very good natural glue, organic, sustainable, very Green indeed. I would see you as a bit of a 'Perkins Paste' fella myself.

Issy. the way I read the story, its a case of teenage love gone wrong. Sad, no matter what happened, who shot who, there's no winners. No need to try and score points on this one, by gloating that some gunnie freak who was not even a teacher, came along at the instant the deranged child blew is own brains out. This could happen anywhere, at anytime.

After all the marching is over, what will be achieved?

Will the mental health programs be reviewed?

Will a decent health care policy be put in place?

Will those in the front line, i.e. school staff be allowed to defend themselves?

By the latest accounts, the Resource Officer's shot hit the criminal's gun.