Quote: Kenneth @ June 21 2011, 12:10 AM BSTBy coincidence, only this morning I was walking to the supermarket to buy some milk and apples when I noticed several people with feet and hands. Everyone would have felt much safer if I was carrying a gun to protect myself.
Think about it from a realistic standpoint: the law says that the firearm must be concealed, so the people you passed would have been blissfully unaware that you were carrying. But if one of those people had pulled a knife from his pocket and started stabbing the cashier you could have saved her life if you were armed.
A typical government response to something like a mass murder is to try to add another layer of legislation to existing laws in order to seem like they're "doing something about the problem." Murder is already illegal but someone will decide that the blames rests with handguns or "assault" rifles and try to ban them.
You nations reacted to such massacres by taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens to possess handguns for self-defence. My state reacted to a massacre of 23 people by passing a law to make it legal to carry handguns in public places instead of taking away our guns and leaving only the criminals armed.
This woman was instrumental in changing the Texas law. She watched both of her parents being shot to death and reached for her purse but then remembered that the pistol was out in the truck because she didn't want to break the law.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1u0Byq5Qis
Note the jab at the smug Washington politicians at the end of her testimony.
Quote: zooo @ June 21 2011, 12:18 AM BSTI think we could all learn a lot from Japan.
It's astounding how little violent crime there is there.
This stuff happens everywhere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_school_massacre
And let's not forget what they were doing in China, Korea and the Philippines about 70 years ago ...