Moan, moan, moan----get it off your chest or have a chat

[maggiepie]

Helen - Do you deliver?
johnw

Might be a bit tepid by the time it gets there, John 
Are you enjoying the fiddlehead season?

[Maggi Young]

Lesley, you should hang your head in shame for a pun like that. What is it they call puns? "The lowest form of humor" I think is the right term.

I believe the saying I am familiar with is that "sarcasm is the lowest form of wit" ....... but I don't think this area is one of exact science!!

[Lesley Cox]

Well Anthony, the alternatives for pest animals, include some pretty filthy poisons which endanger native birds, farm dogs and others. It is not the gun which is the problem, it's the person who uses it, and his/her attitude.

Tell that to sixteen families in Dunblane.

And many other places around rthe world Anthony, including right here in Dunedin at Aramoana. Your comment is understood but I still contend it was the men who held the guns that were the cause of all these tragedies.

[Anthony Darby]

If there were no guns, Lesley.....? On Friday night I caught a snippet in and Edinburgh evening newspaper. "Toddler, aged 2, shot dead by his three year old sister after she found a gun under her parents' bed." Needless to say, it was in California.

[Paul T]

Unfortunately, with human nature as it is.... if there were no guns then we'd just go back to throwing rocks, slingshots etc.  There's always going to be some sort of weapon for those who want to use it. 

[Anthony Darby]

Sorry, Paul, but that statement is inane.

[Paul T]

But it still supports Lesley's comment..... that it isn't the weapon that is the problem, it is the person wielding it.  THAT was the point I was trying to make.  You take the guns away, they'll find something else.  I too hate guns, but I don't believe a blanket removal of all guns will solve anything.

[Martin Baxendale]

I'm with Anthony on this one. Gun atrocities like those perpetrated in schools by disaffected pupils and ex-pupils using parents' guns, or by gun nuts who decide they want to try out their weapons on "real" targets, would be much harder to carry out using stones, clubs, knifes or even machettes. With just about any weapon other than a gun (or a hand-grenade) teachers and other bystanders have a
MUCH

[Martin Baxendale]

Sorry. Hit the wrong button and posted half a message there. I was going to continue... teachers and other bystanders would have a MUCH better chance of fighting off an attacker, protecting children and saving lives (with far less risk of being killed themselves) if facing any weapon other than a gun.

[arisaema]

Isn't it easier to fight off a gunman than to fight off a bomb, a fire, poisons, toxic gas..? I certainly don't oppose strict gun control laws, but Leslie and Paul have a valid point - there's more than just guns than can (and have been used to) kill people.

[Martin Baxendale]

But the people (including children) who have carried out attacks in schools have almost always used either guns or knives (or axes) rather than explosive devices, fire setting or poison gas. They've wanted to attack indivuals one after another and see their victims killed (and have their victims see them). Bombs and poison gas are more the weapons of terrorists, which is a different scenario altogether. Anthony was talking about the use of easily-obtainable guns in attacks on schoolchildren and students, something that seems to be on the increase, both in Europe and in America. 

[Anthony Darby]

Thomas Hamilton had enough amunition to wipe out the entire school of 500+ when he entered Dunblane Primary School in March 1996. His information was wrong, and he arrived half an hour after the entire school had been at assembly, leaving the P1 class, a PE teacher, the class teacher and a teaching assistant.

[Ragged Robin]

It certainly focuses the mind when it's close to home - having had a lucky escape from another man with a mental problem + access to a firearm, Michael Ryan of the Hungerford massacre, I am all for banning of firearms but don't think it's the only solution.

Twenty minutes after filling up with petrol with our 2 children he arrived at the same petrol station and fired four shots at the owner's wife (who we knew) leaving her for dead.  She sold videos of different types of challenges which were popular at the time and claims that he was affected by these and was on a mission to accomplish the task of daring to kill. She knew Michael Ryan, as a local customer, but on that day he was unresponsive to her and in another world dressed in his combat gear.  He was mad about firearms as is well known and practiced at the police rifle range in Devizes - how come no one questioned his obsessive firearm behavior here? 

With more and more cutbacks in the National Health Service leaving people with mental health issues unmonitored in our communities there is nowhere for them to receive the help they so badly need.

A madman/woman can be an unknown threat 'out of the blue' but we should not make it easy for them to equip themselves with deadly weapons which can kill so many in one hit.

[Paddy Tobin]

I had my own little grumble today but it is not significant. Like Anthony, the events in Dunblane made a huge impact though I must admit it was an impact felt from many hundreds of miles away. It was the fact that the events at Dunblane happened in what we would all have seen as a safe environment, a school, the place we would all leave our children with an easy mind that was so upsetting. It changed safety practices in my own school where, to then, we had a literally open-door policy - the front door was always open and parents and locals were free to come and go at will. We never had a problem but after "Dunblane" we (parents and teachers) changed our minds on that.

The availibility of guns will inevitably mean they will come to be in the hands of those who should never have them and their removal is something with which I would agree.

Paddy

[David Nicholson]

A very difficult issue. I have never owned a gun, but know people who do and they store them responsibly and use them responsibly for sport. One of them represents England in shooting competitions. Should they be denied the sport the excel at? Emasculating the male population at birth would virtually wipe out rape as a crime but it wouldn't be practical, would it.