Well,

Up late, aren’t you?

some of the above. I take your point about self-infliction but hear me out.

Take drink-driving, that kills people, innocent people, and we need to drive, but do we need alcohol? Why not ban alcohol completely and then the drink-driving problem would be solved, right?

(Etc)

Yes, a combination of drinking and driving is never going to be a vote winner, but you will not convince the vast majority that they need to give up their personal transport or the legal way to get off their heads; and you will always get the idiots who believe that a little drink doesn’t affect them, or even helps them drive better. Offering the choice between driving and drinking or guns is a pointless argument since it will never happen. The main thing here is that a gun is designed to be threatening and to maim or kill, whereas a vehicle will get you from A to B usually, in the vast majority of cases, without killing anybody and alcohol is a mind altering drink used to lower inhibitions and raise self confidence.

Allow guns in every class room.

Yes, yes, yes, so you’ve said. Did you ignore the bit where I said about not a gun in every classroom, or is that your entire argument and answer to everything? Rather than re-educate Americans about guns you would rather surrender the initiative to the threat and even create opportunities within a place that should be a sanctuary from such things. (And you said moronic quip about my enquiry!)

Perhaps putting the insane back into the asylums the liberal freed them from may help but then liberals control the press and Washington right now so that is not going to happen.

Nice – blame the mentally ill for each massacre, but would taking them out of the equation actually have an effect? Why not ban the mentally ill from owning or having access to guns, or does that infringe on the rights of Americans to own guns?
Oh, but when was the last massacre actually caused by a truly mentally ill person – rather than by somebody with depression, or who felt the world owed them a life that they hadn’t had until now, or who wanted to get revenge on society for perceived injustices?
If you are in the mood for refusing a section of society their right to have a weapon (which, it seems, you are not) why not ban caucasian males? How many massacres have been carried out by African Americans, or females?

As for your last moronic quip, do not know, do not care.

Ok, if your sister (or brother, if you have one) carried out a mass killing that was reviled throughout the country would you want those weapons used to be returned to you, as a member of her family?

But what makes gun-ownership any different from any other human activity where ‘people are dying’?

Guns are unnecessary of course (well, mostly), and the number of deaths in the United States is staggering, but is the attitude to them any different from our own attitude to lots of things that cause unnecessary deaths of innocent people?

I understand what you are saying, but am not totally sure what you are referring to.
Is it nicotine? Driving? Alcohol abuse? Obesity?
These things are, mostly, self inflicted (we all drive cars, just about, and the tale of Roy Castle does prove that it is not just the smoker who is killing himself, but you know what I mean) whereas the gun (although in many cases will be utilised to self inflict after sharing their ‘pleasure’ around) is a one trick pony – you might get enjoyment from a cigarette, from driving your car, having a drink, from eating, but from a gun? The next of kin, the survivors, they will smoke and drive and drink and eat, and some might even want or retain their own guns, but most appear to demand some sort of gun control; no gun control equals the status quo.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/us/minnesota-foiled-school-massacre-john-ladue/

So, do tell us – so long as it is not a gun in every classroom which we already heard about, of course – what is your solution? How would you stop the disenchanted from making bombs, picking up their guns and planning a massacre?

Just a thought, but do the family of mass-killing gunman ever want the weaponry back?

Good for you.
If you really care do something about it.
Quit your job, move to America, become a citizen and work to change things.
There, that solves it.

Do that instead of being a bunch of blokes in another country who just p!ss and moan (and insult a nation most know nothing about other than what they’re told by others) about stuff they have no bearing on.
Look at it another way…how would you feel about some Yank (or Pole or Syrian) moaning about UK internal politics?

The thing I always find funny is the way that rather than face the problem, or try something different, the consensus is always to maintain the status quo.
People are dying. Innocent people, who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether the gun is legal or not doesn’t matter, since most of them will have started off as legal up to the point they were used in a shooting; the problem is that there is no interest in facing up to the problem because someone might suggest taking away their toys or making it more difficult to justify their ownership.

Incidentally, America is the nation that the whole world knows all about because of the information that America puts out about itself – you could try telling Hollywood to tone down on the ‘excitement’ and emphasis the boring and mundane reality, but that isn’t going to happen either.

As this threads title says, only in America…

Shoot any bad guys, grandfather tells girl, five – leaving her in desert with gun
Man ‘went for drinks and a cheeseburger’ after leaving child alone holding loaded and cocked .45 caliber pistol, say Arizona police

An Arizona grandfather has been arrested and accused of leaving his five-year-old granddaughter alone in the desert with a loaded and cocked .45-calibre handgun and the instruction to “shoot any bad guys”.

Paul Armand Rater, 53, was booked into the Fourth Avenue Jail in downtown Phoenix on suspicion of two counts of felony child abuse and one count of felony child endangerment stemming from the incident on Sunday night.

Deputies said he and the child left their home in Buckeye, about 30 miles (48km) west of Phoenix, in a pickup truck early on Sunday afternoon and that the girl was reported missing four hours later.

She was eventually located in the desert by her mother and an off-duty firefighter. The child was holding the powerful pistol.

“She was given the gun and told to shoot any bahttp://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/03/shoot-any-bad-guys-grand… guys,” said Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. “I don’t know how a five-year-old can tell a good guy from a bad guy but that’s what she said she was told.“

Rater was later located at a store where he told deputies the vehicle had broken down and that he had left the girl under a tree in the desert because she was complaining she could not walk any more, court records show.

He admitted leaving the girl with his gun “while he went for a few drinks and a cheeseburger”, the sheriff’s office said.

The child was returned to her mother and state child welfare authorities were alerted, the sheriff’s office said.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/03/shoot-any-bad-guys-grandfather-tells-girl-five-leaving-her-in-desert-with-gun

Innit marvellous. Man with pickup takes granddaughter for a ride, breaks down and leaves her behind with a gun and the detail to “shoot any bad guys” so that he can walk several miles to have a drink (or two) and a burger.
And he had a gun. And a pickup. And a granddaughter he forgot about.

Good grief.

No: from memory the only other recent ex-miltary UK warbirds which fell into this category were the Victor, VC-10, Nimrod, Buccaneer, Harrier, Jaguar and Lightning (apologies if I missed a few).

Me nitpicking now… I may have missed a few copies of Flypast but I can’t believe I missed out on displays of these warbirds over the last summer! And I was sad about not seeing the Vulcan fly again…

Incidentally, the recently demobbed VC10s were originally civvies anyway, and the Nimrod was just a modified Comet (you know what I mean…); would they still be classed as ‘complex’?

Or in heavy rain or in snow and/or ice or on motorways or winding country lanes or etc etc…..none of which I guess is covered by the Driving Test.

Bit difficult unless the test involves waiting for each set of weather conditions to occur.
When I was learning there was a six month wait for a test – my instructor took me for one lesson and advised me to apply to take my test; one really bad winter later (when the instructor decided to show me hill starts on snowy slopes and how to recover from a slide and spin in a frozen car park!) and I was taking my exam on a lovely, foggy, spring day…
Passed though.

There is at least 1 person who can help me ?
Can you just take 1 minute to answer at my request, it’s very imp.

Thanks

This is probably not the best forum to ask for an answer to that kind of question from.