I wonder if he (and you) had any such enlightening "commentary" about last June's slaughter of eight children (with an additional 21 wounded) in Osaka, Japan, last year by a knife-wielding maniac?

Or the shooting of six school children and two staff members in Yemen in 1997?

Or Thomas Hamilton's four-handgun, 17-person (including 16 five- to six-year-olds) school shooting in Dunblane, Scotland just a few years ago in 1996 by deranged 19-year-old Robert Steinhäuser?

Or last year's school shooting and killing spree in Erfurt, Germany, by a disgruntled students that left 17 dead?

Or the shooting and killing of eight last March in Nanterre, France by another lunatic?

Or maybe the murder of 14 in Zug, Switzerland last September with the help of an assault rifle an a grenade?

Of this May's shooting murder of seven during a bank robbery in Hungary?

Or the school shooting in Germany from this February in Freising, just outside Munich, that left three dead?

Was rousing, heartfelt commentary offered for these incidents?

And for every argument AGAINST the right for a person (anywhere in the world) to arm themselves for their own personal protection, there's a story like this:

Pregnant South African Woman Kills Would-Be Rapist

Or would you rather she be raped and killed?

I can also guarantee you this:

If you ever find yourself in the position where you're unarmed and being robbed, attacked, raped, etc. - at some point during your ordeal you will wish you had a gun.

Not at all. But if a country is going to legally encourage an activity and enshrine it in their constitution, then I feel totally free to satirise the results.

Wrote it about five/sixyears ago. It's still getting played.

Death was certainly a common aspect though, whatever the country. Say, driving through Paris at night:

"Stupid Frenchman, you're driving on the wrong side of the road, here, give *me* the wheel."

Their firearms or the army's firearms?

I have been robbed, and I have been beat up by people I don't know. I didn't wish for a gun. In the first case I wished for the other guy not to have a gun (well, not to use it), and in the second case I was busy hoping that my right eye wasn't falling out of my head. And thinking "oowww!"

Actually, I support the rights to gun ownership in a pretty broad sense, while at the same time I die a little bit inside for every time they're used to hurt innocent people, including a couple of dear friends and a family member. It's a weird, conflicted road. But I'm also adult enough to know that there's room for satirical commentary on just about everything, including the things I hold dear. As the world doesn't exist to support my every belief at all times and in the most exacting degree of comfort, I'm not offended by the mere existence of opinions with which I don't agree. Nor am I surprised by the fact that the U.S. as the world's Head Boy might be the target of a bit more snarkiness than other countries.

A lot of people might want to keep in mind a similar sense of proportion when getting worked up about someone's goofy message forum.

Less of a social commentary when it's not children killing children. But the US outnumbers all these combined. The Dunblane incident doubled amounts of deaths by gun that year in the whole of the UK and led to a total ban on handguns, even for sporting purposes. The individual in question was a member of a sporting handgun club and had smuggled the guns out.

You might also want to keep in mind that it's possible and even desirable to take things in stride without sounding like an arrogant dickhead, like I do.

If I lived in the kind of country that would let me have a gun, I could guarantee that my assailant would have a gun. Now, would I rather we both had guns, or neither had guns?