Mind's Eye Newtown Killings

It's impossible to think about tragedies like Newtown without just
wishing they didn't happen and sorrow for the victims and bereaved.
In western Europe we tend to see such events as American and a result
of lunatic gun control. A fair representation of this thinking can be
found in today's Observer - a liberal Sunday broadsheet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/16/newtown-shooting-america-gun-laws-failed-again

The gist is one in ten thousand will die through firearm use in the US
every year with more deaths than in Syria in its civil war. Arguments
on this issue quickly degenerate with some saying the answer is to arm
more decent people (so they can shoot the creeps and limit damage) or
the right to bear arms to protect democracy from government.

The real question is how we can stop scum, creeps, nutters and people
pushed over the edge from using violence against others. We are all
frankly wide open to this and the problem of what happens to our
societies because of measures taken in prevention. I wonder whether
answers to this may be well outside gun law and the NRA opposition to
it - this 'debate' has, after all, gone nowhere forever - much as we
have not prevented our governments pursuing imperialist wars or race
to the bottom global economics.

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