You’ve ignored all of the subsequent articles and data Neo has posted showing no connection between gun ownership levels and violence or even gun-related violence. Multivariate that.

http://thewarriorclass.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-concept-and-proposal.html

I am free to discuss it anytime with anyone.

But that’s harm reduction. What the world is witnessing is a failed social experiment, a cultural blunder playing out across centuries. Gun control in the USA needed to start a long time ago. Contemporary efforts are valiant and pitiable. Crazy Americans shooting one another up on the TV news is the new global reality.

There’s a lot to admire in American culture, 300M guns isn’t one of those things. See http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/the-freedom-of-an-armed-society/

rickl, thanks for the link to the sociopath outing herself in point (6).

http://www.peekinthewell.net/blog/the-sandy-hook-shooting/

“But it is that last part of the story excerpted above, that really makes me shake my head and go “what the?” The death toll is high. That must mean the magazine capacity was also high. Because everybody knows, in the history of shooting sprees, they’re all over when the shooter exhausts his first magazine.

Eh, no, ‘fraid not nanny-staters. High magazine capacity is not what makes a shooting spree go on and on and on like that. It’s that old nobody-shooting-back thing.”

It’s not the price of freedom, it’s the price of an anachronistic principle defended by paranoid romantics over a very long time. It’s the bed your culture has made. There’s nothing to be done in a country of 350M with 300M guns, short of letting the state produce and dole out the bullets while dropping smart bombs on Mexican bullet factories.

God, I wish Rachel Lucas was here. She would shove that idiotic comment up your ass sideways.

Me, I’m not nearly so good with words.

This has its own difficulties, too; for example, if an armed teacher is surprised and shot by an intruder with a gun, the perpetrator will steal the weapon and be even better-armed. And that’s only one of many bad possibilities; it’s not clear whether the net result of arming teachers would be good or not.

The same, of course, is also true of a guard, particularly if the guard has a uniform and obviously has a weapon, and there is only one of them. It is not at all uncommon in terrorist attacks, for example, for a guard to be shot at the outset. But compared to an armed teacher, the guard at least has the advantage of not being distracted by another task, and of also having the gun at the ready so that it can be used quickly. Also, since a guard would be at the entrance, if the guard wounds or kills the would-be perpetrator, that would prevent violence at the entry point rather than later on.

But either armed guards or armed teachers seem to be the only possible security that would overcome the advantage an armed perp has in an otherwise gun-free zone.

It’s not the price of freedom, it’s the price of an anachronistic principle defended by paranoid romantics over a very long time. It’s the bed your culture has made. There’s nothing to be done in a country of 350M with 300M guns, short of letting the state produce and dole out the bullets while dropping smart bombs on Mexican bullet factories.