I don't think the post office scenario is a good one to use. I don't think post offices or banks want their customers or staff challenging armed robbers.

The scenario that the US gun lobby would use is your home at 2.30am in the morning. You're upstairs with your family all asleep in your rooms when your front door is being smashed in. At that moment would you like a gun and the knowledge of how to use it, or are you happy waiting for the protection of the police, who could be 5 minutes away at the very least?

IMO there is no real solution to school shootings. The USA being the gun crazy country it is means school shootings are going to happen.

The NRA's "solution" is more guns - this time in the hands of teachers, cops inside schools and, scarily, even janitors. I'm against that. I think there will be lives lost through accidents that will probably mean that even more people are injured or killed than through school shootings. I think the cost of having an armed cop inside every school is a ridiculous waste of money that should be spent on teaching. And the cop would be the first person targeted by any shooter.

But politicians have to do "something". Which means stupid laws that sound like they might work but are often counter-productive.

Eh?

Why should anyone be more fearful of a janitor with a gun than anyone else?

I've actually been in that very scenario in a previous house - was woken up at about 1am one morning by two loud bangs, when you're asleep you hear the first but then have to wake up so you're not sure if its real or not, then came the second one and you think "Is that our house or next doors?"

Went downstairs making lots of noise (you really don't want to sneak up on a burglar) giving him/them plenty of time to scarper to find the back door kicked in and our Golden Retriever looking out of the door with a puzzled expression on his face, he slept in the kitchen but wasn't a guard dog by any description so had just laid there and watched while some scrote stole my wallet and mobile off the kitchen table.

The police caught him, he was well known to them for break-ins but I still don't know how he managed to kick in (with two kicks from a low down position as the back door was up two steps) a upvc door with multi-point locking plus two additional euro-bolts, he was a drug user so presumably that helped and I'm quite glad that his mode of operation was snatch and run - you really wouldn't want to tackle someone with that sort of strength when you're still half asleep and he is high on something and desperate to get away - despite what macho posturing some may take.

What is different about the UK and USA is that even if I had come face-to-face with him I could be pretty certain that a druggie burglar wouldn't be carrying a gun, probably not even a knife (I may be naive there) as going to break and enter pre-armed with a knife suddenly ups the sentencing, taking a gun is asking for a long time in jail.

He got a jail sentence because he was a repeat offender and had lots of similar break-ins to take into consideration, he wasn't a master criminal, could barely walk and chew gum at the same time - he ran to a nearby service station and bought some cigarettes with my debit card (pre chip and pin) then took £20 cash back and used my mobile to call for a taxi company based on an estate where he lived about five miles away - the police checked the mobile records the next morning and saw the number he'd dialled and checked the debit card record at the same time to find the transaction, then went to the garage and got their cctv, when they got to his house he was still wearing the same trainers that had left a big imprint on our back door - it was hardly Sherlock Homes stuff.

A screw driver or jemmy used to break in to your house can be used on you. Personally I have cricket bat downstairs and a hefty rolling pin up stairs (not enough room to swing the cricket bat) for protection. If the police ask, I like baking in the bedroom, honest.

The biggest difference between the US and UK is that the US home invader is risking getting shot and killed. If someone is crazy enough to break into a US home at 2.30am you pretty much do need a gun.

My best friend was a "crazy" gun guy who had a plan for what him and his family would do if there was ever a home invasion. I am a "it'll never happen" person and figure his kids are more at risk of being shot by accident because he has guns in his house than they ever would be of being caught up in a home invasion.

But if someone smashed my door in at 2.30am in America, I do feel my first thought would have been that I was the wrong one and I had let down my wife and daughter.

Some hope. AFAIK the recent school shootings seem to invariably have been by some nut with a deathwish so the risk of them being killed would obviously not be a factor in their calculations. They usually shoot themselves at the end anyway.


First though, unless he has shot someone then you don't know if he will. You don't know even if he is carrying a real weapon.

Second, realistically, are they seriously suggesting that a teacher, with maybe a couple of sessions at the local gun club, can be expected to draw their weapon, and coolly "take out" a madman with an assault rifle? I don't think so, and the thought of several parents and teachers all in a panic loosing off shots at random is surely a recipe for utter disaster. Not to mention a guarantee that a teacher will "take out" a parent or vice versa in the mistaken belief that they were the crazed gunman. It sounds superficially attractive until you think about it for more than 2 seconds.

One other opinion that I come across when corresponding with acquaintances in America is the Republican attitude of "government is bad" which is difficult to understand really, I'll add that these attitudes have been most strongly expressed in Utah by Mormons (not ultra extremist Mormons, but church members anyway) so there may be a slight dash of persecution in there as well - the attitude is that as citizens they do not want a high level of central government control and arm themselves in order to prevent this, basically they are armed ready for another civil war.

I think that this is where the UK and USA differ immensely in that here we elect a government to run the business of the country including law and order and when there is a law and order problem ( like the riots of a couple of years ago) we turn towards the government and expect them to stop it - its why they are there - the attitude that seems to prevail (from this outsiders view) in the USA is that the citizen will take care of law and order by the process of arming themselves and the police will come along later and clean up, those citizens then expect to be praised for their actions, whether or not they got the right guy.

I can't tell you how many casual internet conversations have escalated into complete lunacy ranting about not taking away their rights to protect themselves from an overpowering government and Obama's healthcare plan seemed to fit into this somewhere down the line too, I have actually been told by a normally sensible family person that they would rather die of a curable illness if they couldn't pay for their own treatment rather than accept a public health system subscribed to from their taxation - its a puzzle for a UK citizen thats for sure.

I don't get that crazy **** about arming yourself against the tyrannical government. For me that's crazyiness close to the American's belief in god and I just shake my head at.

But natural disasters are a different thing. If there's a large earthquake, tornado or hurricane and a massive area is affected then it could be a long time before help is coming.

I think it was 2009 that my area of Kentucky was without power for a week because of an ice storm. Basically the rain froze as soon it fell so all the trees were covered in so much ice that they couldn't carry the weight and they went over, dragging down power lines with them.

It was just a week and it was also only a few states that were affected so things didn't get too bad, but if the whole country was affected and it took a few weeks then things could get real bad, real quick.

New Orleans was an example of people going crazy. My friend said that the worst place to be was inside the Superdome because they banned anyone from carrying firearms. My friend said there were rapes and murders in there because people couldn't protect themselves. I'd never heard of this and have never checked reports, but it was something he believed in.

I don't understand how the American public can be so stupid as to carry on with their health insurance system when ours beats the living hell out of theirs. I did catch a Michael Savage rant on the radio. He was saying how he had a heart attack or something like that. And the doctor was telling him that if he was in Europe with their social health care then he'd have been dead. I was like, "WTF are you talking about???"

"Home invasions" is not a term you see used in common parlance in the UK at all. It is in the US. We talk of burglaries they talk of "home invasions" and there is a big difference in what the two imply IMO.

At least some US citizens clearly feel the need to protect themselves from "home invasions" when really they would probably be better served by letting the police deal with a burglary after the event (because I am sure that is what most home invasions really are).

As you say the risk of accidental shooting is probably far greater than that of home invasion and for that reason even if:



You would still justify not having a gun because it was more dangerous keeping one around despite this. I assume here the "home invasion" was a burglary and not anyone doing something worse that would constitute something to be labelled as a "home invasion" where they would have shot you in your bed before you unlocked the gun-safe which is where you would have to keep it to prevent your kids playing cops and robbers with live ammo.

BTW I read a case not so long ago where parents were fighting to get a life jail sentence overturned for a minor who had been an on-looker when a kid of about 12 shot his stepfather dead using the "family" gun.

IMO it comes out of the same kind paranoia that makes some US citizens think they have to arm themselves to protect themselves against their own government.

Like I said, in the US if someone is kicking your door in at 2am then they are risking being shot. That automatically means that there is a more serious intent in the US than there is here.



I can't say I agree with that premise either here or in the US.

If someone's trying to steal your things from your house then over here the reaction will be outrage and a strong desire to beat the hell out of the lowlife for trying to steal your stuff. In America the reaction will be to reach over for the shotgun and possibly blow them away.

I agree that the most sensible course of action is to barricade yourself away and call the police to let them deal with it. But part of that assumes a police response time of around 5 minutes. But there will be many places in the USA that you'd be lucky to get a police response within 30 minutes for a major emergency.



I agree. I'm an anti-gun guy and this is the way I think. I also think that there's a huge advantage to the "home invaders" in that they know exactly what is going on and are prepared while the homeowner is scared, panicking, frightened for their family and isn't sure whether it is someone breaking in or whether the wind has just smashed something against your door.

I also think that people don't handle guns in real life like they do in movies. I think most people would be shaking so bad they wouldn't be able to open a gun safe, never mind getting it out and using it.

My friend was totally convinced that he would be able to shoot someone who was threatening his family. I honestly don't think anyone knows how they would react in those situations until they are in them. I think that most people would completely freeze in situations like that.



The most ridiculous thing about protecting yourself from the government is that people have no right whatsoever to bear arms against the police. The easiest way to kill yourself is to reach for a gun in front of the police.

That was my first thought. What are they going to do when a teacher snaps after taunts from students?

Just the fact that you are 100 times more likely to be killed from arms fire in the US than here shows that an absence of guns is a more effective solution than giving them to everyone.

Or when a student attacks the gun carrying teacher and manages to relieve them of their gun?



It should be obvious whenever you introduce guns anywhere there is an increased likelihood they will be used for murder.

So introducing them into to schools is bound to increase the chances of another shooting.

The counter argument the pro-gun lobby will no doubt put is this is the lesser of two evils on the assumption any murders from a rouge teacher or pupil will likely be a lower order of magnitude than what we saw recently.

I can't say I can see how that follows. A trusted member of the staff wouldn't be challenged from walking into the school gym or an assembly.

In any case this kind of logic does my head in. It's like the death penalty. Yes they get it wrong sometimes but it's a price worth paying is the argument. Presumably when it doesn't happen to you and yours. Same thing here. Much hand wringing when one does go off the deep end but hey, the incidence of rouge teachers will still mean fewer deaths than leaving them unarmed will be the logic.

How about just doing the utmost to make schools secure?