...a childish obsession with gunplay among grown men.

Even in Norway, a peaceful nation of sane people with good laws, a lone maniac can figure out a way to arm himself and kill innocent children. But in the United States, it is embarassingly easy to do that, and a massive, soulless industry exists to exploit that lack of laws, and the insanity and paranoia of its citizens, hiding under a grotesque interpretation of laws written in another time for other purposes.

No gun law can make gun crime impossible, but not having reasonable and effective gun laws makes it common, and inevitable. Sure, people can kill with knives and even their fists, I've heard that ridiculous argument too often already from too many idiots. They can also kill with hand grenades and field artillery, should they be legal too? But you can't mow down strangers in theaters and schools and shopping malls by the dozens, several times a year without the NRA and their phony patriotic supporters providing maniacs and gangsters with the tools of the trade and the philosophical justification to indulge in it.

I own firearms, and I know how to use them. I also know enough about guns, from my military training, that sporting or defensive use does not require military assault weapons, in fact, they are unsuitable for those purposes. I have two pistols, and a small-bore bolt-action rifle, the latter for hunting wild turkey in Pennsylvania, the former for killing any stranger that might batter his way into my home.

One of the pistols was my father's. I keep it dismantled in cosmoline in a box in my closet. That is legitimate. A hundred round magazine on a semi-auto assault rifle is not. We have a gun problem in the US because very powerful guns are very easy to get here. It's that simple. There are guns and gun murders in Canada and Britain and a hundred other countries too, but its only in places like Iraq and Mexico and the US where they are a problem and a national disgrace.

I do not believe guns should be banned, I believe you should be able to keep appropriate self-defense weapons in your home without restriction, but unless you are specifically licensed to use and transport them for sport or on the range, their possession outside the house should be strictly forbidden and punishable by law, and trade in them by unauthorized persons strictly punished. Your right to employ deadly force ends at the door of your home. You have no right to have one in a public place where I might be, and I have every right to prevent you from doing so. Once people realize they can go to jail for mere possession of a weapon outside the house, and where some weapons will send you to jail instantly, regardless of where you hide them, this nonsense will stop.

Most of you are decent, reasonable people, surely you don't need me to tell you this.