This is true. There was a time when one of the biggest differences between England and America was the extreme difficulty to obtain firearms on your side of the pond. Is this still the case? Hard for me to tell, but watching Torchwood and some other UK shows & movies it seems to be getting easier.
Of course the reason guns are easily available in the USA stems from the American Revolution, but in Arizona it is more recent - the citizens of the Wild Wild West™ needed to defend themselves against horse thieves and bandits as there were not enough trained lawpersons to go 'round.
But as British Intelligence has been telling air travelers for several years now, a person can make a small but powerful home-made bomb from household chemicals, and do a lot more damage than a handful of bullets can do.
I am devastated by the loss of a promising 9-year-old girl, but I do not think anything short of a police state confiscation of all privately-held weapons would have made a difference, and probably not even that, given how easy it is to hide a weapon. Free mental health care might have helped.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-01-10 03:28 am (UTC)Of course the reason guns are easily available in the USA stems from the American Revolution, but in Arizona it is more recent - the citizens of the Wild Wild West™ needed to defend themselves against horse thieves and bandits as there were not enough trained lawpersons to go 'round.
But as British Intelligence has been telling air travelers for several years now, a person can make a small but powerful home-made bomb from household chemicals, and do a lot more damage than a handful of bullets can do.
I am devastated by the loss of a promising 9-year-old girl, but I do not think anything short of a police state confiscation of all privately-held weapons would have made a difference, and probably not even that, given how easy it is to hide a weapon. Free mental health care might have helped.