Which is what I've been saying. Unlicensed gun? Adios Saudi style. Look at my earlier comments.

Sorry, John: You can go on living in fear of home, or alien invasion. Whatever. No one has to "prove" anything to you.

I want the guns gone. And it'll be the gun freaks who cause it. How sweet it is.

Giz: If you bothered to read my earlier comments, you'd see what you wrote.

And yes. I want nothing more lethal than a spoon in the hands of crazy, stupid, angry and desperate people.

An end to the "Merchants of death" and their damned weapons.

Tim:

We all remember. John would say, one man with a gun could have stopped that." No. One policeman. One Doctor, perhaps.

The fact that no system is perfect doesn't mean one should not be implemented. It means one should be implemented and refined.

If that crazy didn't have the means to kill large numbers with automatic weapons, and had only a spoon, how many would have died?

The guns have to go, and people need to grow a spine and report when a person starts throwing mental health problem signs.

People also need to get treated WITHOUT STIGMA. With or without insurance or money. An end to that variety of violence which might well be the worst form of it, as well!

[sorry this is a separate post - can't access the edit buttons with the iPad]

wow...  

I guess we're the lucky country.... I have no desire or need to own a gun to feel safe in my home or travelling on public transport....

we do have a measure of increased illegal gun activity here in Sydney....but as it's mostly the rival drug and bikie gangs out west popping each other off...I just consider  they're doing a public service...

what happened in that school is so desperately sickening and sad....as a human being, I like to think it could only have been mental illness....if that is so...what a pity his mum kept guns around, if that was the case... 

The only people who should have access to guns besides police, military and security protection, are country folk who have to keep rabbit and fox numbers down and put down the occasional animal....and people in gun clubs using them for target sport..... Other than that...no place for them in our little penal colony society...

your "personal freedoms" don't serve you well...

Absolutely correct.

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-kellermann.htm

JUST stop the weapon production and sale! No one has the balls to take on the NRA crazies.

Fact: Where guns are controlled, there are far fewer murders by gun. Fact: Where mental health care is equal to physical health care and both are openly available to all, there are fewer cases of mass murder.

Correct.

And as for Australia having been started as a penal colony, so what? I don't give a damn how it was started...I'm just grateful as hell they did! When you have time read about the transports and how they ended the incredible death rate...the men with the guns didn't give a damn about delivering tiny boatloads until they changed the system to pay only for live bodies. Lesson: Pay for the guns to be turned in. Don't charge people - encourage and reward them for doing right. Punish them when they're caught with unlicensed ones.

Just look at the continent - home to wonderful people and incredible beauty. Criminality (or some peoples' definition of it) IS NOT genetic. Those "criminals" were by and large people who were debtors: Victims of predatory economic practices. To imply they are somehow defective is beyond nonsense. It's ridiculous Soviet Lysenkoism. Utter and complete tripe.

Their societal preferences are not out of line. They don't march around toting guns and weapons of mass destruction. We do. The cops of the world.

Stop the predation on others. Stop the violence. 

Do more guns equate to security? No. They equate to more INSECURITY. They are an implicit threat. They tell another person, "I can kill you." That is NOT the way to live in peace. Being a decent human being and making sure the society you live in acts decently towards others is the way to peace.

Will there be missed cases? Yes. Some will result in violence. The way to decrease that is through the elimination of the means to commit mass murder and if it's one gun at a time and one law ensuring availability and equality as well as access to mental health treatment, so be it.

"My gun is bigger than yours" only ensures more madness. Fear engenders aggression.

Once more:

Perhaps a jet airliner would be your weapon of choice? Land mines? IED's? Fertilizer and diesel oil? Maybe just good old sticks and rocks? Whatever.

The problem is people, not weapons.  It wouldn't have mattered if a stolen school bus plowed them down. The same results could have been achieved if they were all burned to death. Home-made poison gas would have done the job. All of these are more "extreme" than guns. Should we ban fire, chemistry, and school busses?  No matter what the method used, dead is dead.

Using a tragedy such as this to stand on an anti-gun soapbox is pointless. My point is, of all the mass-murderers throughout history, few used a firearm. For a little current history of my home state:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/illinois-mental-health-fa_n_1234332.html

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/04/17/chicago-closing-half-its-mental-health-clinics/

http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-muckrakers/2012/07/as-mental-health-facilities-close-bill-awaiting-quinns-signature-to-add-safeguards-to-protect-patients/

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=204004

This needs fixing, not the "gun issue"

A few of you miss the entire meaning of the Second Amendment; Give Police, the Army and Security the guns you say. Take them away from law-abiding citizens. Then all you need is control of those elements and the game is over.

It was done in Germany. We all know how that turned out.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1791/did-hitler-ban-gun-ownership

Madmen care not for laws, public opinions or rights, yours or mine.

I'm done, debate what you want.

     I hate being able to see both sides of an argument. IMO...the second amendment was written long before there were local police departments, i.e militias, and back then it was a necessary evil. Today however the world is a far different place. Everyone without exception has a right, not a constitutional right but a personal right or god given if you go that way, to defend hearth and home. Eliminating all guns outside of the military/law enforcement regime will never happen because of the NRA and its proponents who have a lot of political clout. The president on down will not take on the NRA because that particular self interest group or special interest depending on how you perceive them, will use that clout and force you to back down. In my sixty years on this Earth I've seen all of that. I didn't serve in the military but I have a deep respect for the men and women who serve to protect this country.    

     In Pa. it is against the law to defend yourself, sounds stupid right, but its true. There was an instance during a home invasion where the home owner shot and seriously wounded the criminal. Said criminal successfully sued the homeowner for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. You can go to jail for defending yourself. Believe me I've seen enough of it. I'm sure the illegality is somewhat flexible, it has to be or the authorities would be looking to buy up all the uninhabited islands in the world to build more prisons, ala Botney Bay. The issue here is not about gun ownership or the right to keep and bear arms. Its about accountablity and responsibility. Gun control is vitally necessary but if you don't do it right, obviously, then events like this will continue to happen.

     Take assault weapons as an example. What does a private person need an assault weapon for? Hunting? Yeah right, you going to go out there and open up on a deer or a bear or whatever and rip it to pieces with an automatic weapon? A single arrow can do that. The NRA fought tooth and nail to kill a law that would ban assault weapons. Why? They cite the second amendment always. They hide behind the constitution and abuse of said constitution never even enters into it. Gun control out of sheer necessity must be made far stricter than it is. Those who wish to own one should be required to pass a physical and mental evaluation and 'stiff' fines and or prison time should be handed down if even one of the conditions is violated. This simply does not exist! Because if it did, in a reasonable form, perhaps most of what does happen wouldn't. As for mental illness......try and seek treatment or find another way to diminish its effects and you run into an insurance company's favorite response. Its too expensive and we wont cover it. The insurance companies are like the NRA, a political self help group whose only interest is taking your money and giving little in return. All of these special interest groups do the same thing. Why do you think they're called special. There is one truism here.......guns don't kill people, people kill people. A gun can't pull its own trigger, if left alone it will just lie there not doing a damn thing. Someone has to pick it up and that someone pulls the trigger. Outlaw guns and only outlaws will have guns. To me that's a cop out. Gun control, reasonable, restrictive and with enough teeth in it to do the job is what's needed. It has been tried but......there's that special interest group again crying foul. Eliminate the damn NRA. In my opinion it has outlived its usefulness as have most of these so-called special interest groups. Admittedly there are some who actually do care about those they serve but it seems as though they are a minority. Maybe its because they don't have enough money or not enough politicos in their pocket or perhaps not the right ones. Who knows...to hell in a handbasket.

Well...there goes everyone I know! I guess you guys can all start packing your bags.

Biggest load of utter bullshit I have ever had the misfortune to hear.

Get a grip or go elsewhere.

You have insulted every Australian [and others] on the planet.  And who, pray tell invented black slavery as a rite of existence?

It pisses me off when some arsehat imagines others as being a cause of THEIR ills, or a justification of it.

Australia decimated the original inhabitants of Tasmania...to a man, yes, that is true.

The US decimated 400 nations.

Fix your own world before you get all superior.

We [Australians] do not live with the false interpretations of some antequated 'bill of rights' that bears no relevance to current reality.  We are simply socially aware and die to support the rights of free people in every theater of war since we existed as a nation.... and no, not the 17-18 war...or the 41-45 war.... we were there all the fucking way.

Do NOT ever disparage the integrity of the ANZAC.... not if you want to be regarded as a social equal.

As an Australian, I am insulted.

End of story.

Wiz, we basically agree... Except for the utter nonsense about Australia. That was simply way wrong. I advocated two axes: Gun control AND mental health reporting and funding. Three, actually... ending economic violence (perhaps the cruelest of all).

One won't work without the other. Together there will be success. Will there be madmen who escape the system? Yes. Will there be fewer will less available means of mass murder? Yes.

Wiz... let's think critically for just a moment. Airliners are not guns or land mines, nor are they oil and fertilizer.

You are mixing two distinct things.

Guns and land mines were designed with one purpose in mind: Killing.

Jet liners, oil and fertilizer were not designed as weapons. Yes, the problem is with people. Yes, people need to be treated and I've discussed that.

Guns and other implements designed specifically to kill need not to be in the hands of the general public. Sydney's comment about farmers and varmints I agree with.

Well then allow me to rephrase that to be a bit less insulting.

Coming from a former Penal Colony, I'm not surprised down-unders have trouble grasping American "rights" and "personal freedoms"

Yes, our Constitution is old, our Bill of Rights outdated. Perhaps it should all be thrown out but that isn't for Australia (or any country) to decide that for us. Let we Americans decide if we no longer want freedom of speech, the right to assembly and the right to bear arms. Take away those, and we become a nation of sheep. Most of the not-so-free world would love for that to happen.

Apologies if I have offended anyone, anywhere, but blaming gun deaths on the guns is like blaming traffic deaths on the automobiles.

Thank you for allowing me to speak, 

Ah, the old gun debate. A few stats for you to digest.

Gun homicides per 100,000 population

Australia:   0.14

England and Wales:  0.07

USA:   2.97

So... you are 42 times more likely to die by gunfire in the US as you are in the UK. I'm sure glad I live where I do

[Moderator]

That is derogatory nonsense. You need to apologize to the Australians. You are dead wrong. Cease now.

A copy of a response to this event in a yahoo news article. Don't worry.....I made it. I can't steal from myself....I think.

For what its worth. I too am 60. I grew up among the families in New York, 50's
and 60's. Back in the day this sort of thing did not happen, there was a helluva
lot more respect for people. Today.......there isn't any respect! Its a fuck you
hooray for me mindset. A product of individual environs. All crime, however you
describe it, has one commonality, a weapon. A gun is the weapon of choice because
you can't argue with one, you do or you die! Too many things were ignored for too
long a time by the powers that be, for whatever reason, and today's society
reflects that. Wake up folks. You have no one to blame but yourselves. You put
the ones in office, in power, that are responsible for this. If some one you are
paying to do a job doesn't do that job, actually fucks it up, you take that person
and throw him or her the hell out! Period! Then you put some one in there that
'WILL' do the job right. Unless you have forgotten, we the people pay their
salaries through the myriad taxes levied upon us. We Pay Them! Get it. Time to
take out the trash. Rant over.

Link to yahoo news article.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/gun-control-debate-erupts-twitter-195914529.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html#ixzz2F4LRKtVV

My sincere apologies for my remarks concerning Australians.  It was indeed way out of line and not typical of my behavior or upbringing. I am sorry.

I did not mean to imply that all Australians were convicts, or of convict decent. I meant to point out that your country and mine come from two entirely different backgrounds and histories. It just came out ALL wrong.

A lot of American blood has been and is still being shed around the world to defend the rights and freedoms of others. I guess having the now free world say that our rights now no longer count just set me off.

Just to remind you, Wiz... Australians (especially their SAS) fight side by side with the SEALS in Afghanistan and did in Iraq and a thousand hell holes we don't even know of. They die for our "rights".

Let me try to put this event into its proper perspective. That same day some 60 million gun owners like me didn't kill anyone. That same day an estimated 80 people died in automobile accidents in the US. That same day an estimated 105 people died from second hand smoke in the US. Yes, this is cause for great sorrow for the families and friends of the victims, but to blame gun ownership, is irresponsible!

The problem is not guns, but screwed up priorities by governments at all levels and a misguided belief in mythological deities. Where was this God that everyone is talking about? Why wasn't He protecting these innocent kids?

One does not need a gun to commit the kind of act that occurred yesterday. In some countries they strap on explosives or use knives. Of course the most dramatic example was the use of airplanes in 9/11. The real problem is the failure of governments at all levels in this world to deal with the mental and physical conditions that lead to this kind of event. Unfortunately, the people in power are too busy battling with each other to worry about the little people.

@Jafo: I'm glad you don't live in the US either!

20 kids are dead who shouldn't be - explain your logic to them.

Oh...are you saying there are 240 million Americans who do not own guns?

Why is it that 20% of the population determines what happens with their ownership?  Is the lobby SO powerful...or is it simply that 60 million guns can TELL 240 million Americans exactly how they will live...and/or die?

OK...I'm having a lend of your number...without qualification...but I kinda get the feeling it's another of those...

"Hey Indian...give me all your land.....for these beads.."  "No" .... "I have a big gun..."  "Nice beads"....