'Why is it so easy to get hold of a gun in the US?'

Its a constitution thing related to us Brits I believe. Perhaps they could leave that in the constitution [right to bear arms], but make the ammo a bugger to obtain.

Here a different link as his department has already deleted his other website, only two days later!

http://www.sbes.vt.edu/Faculty/VT/granata.htm

I wonder if they also have already set up an advertisement for a replacement professor?

I think the problem is more deep routed than just the avaliabilty of guns. It must have something to do with the American way of life. After all nations such as switerland allow guns, yet has the lowest amount of violent crime. Britain has similar levels of violent crime to the states, but very few are gun related. So the gun just provides a means to an end, but are not the cause of the problem. They do however tend to hit the headlines and as can be seen can cause a lot more damage. But it seems some social issue that is present in USA and UK, but perhaps absent from Swiss must be responsible for the high level of crime. Hmm, maybe I could do a PhD on that!

Not that thats much confomfort for the relatives of those killed. They all have my heartfelt condolences!

Richmond and Otto, I recommend you both see 'Bowling for Columbine' this weekend for answers to your gun questions.

I didn't have a gun question, Piglet.

I also think it is not possible to always make gun laws or society or computer/killer games or anything responsible. Some people are just crazy and nothing can be done to prevent this from happening.

I have seen it, and dont see how that answers my question (not that I was really posing a question). It wasnt the guns that made them go on a killing spree. It was something more deep routed. It was the television they watched, the things they got up to, prob they were shuned by a competitive soceity where popularity means everything because they were different. Who knows. My point is that they were prob just a likely to go out on a stabbing spree if they couldnt get hold of guns or something (which if they were really determined to do so, gun laws are unlikey to prevent it). Guns are only the means to the end, and there are plenty of other means.

Though it is true, some people are just crazy. However, im pretty sure that society is often responsible for either channeling that crazyness, making it worse or bringing it out in the first place. After all why do the Swiss not have the same probs as in the US?

It's true that society does play a role but at the same time it is a common trend nowadays to blame something instead of accepting that there is something called "individual responsibility". In this particular case some guy decided to kill 31 people, including himself. It happened in the US, but just a few years ago a similar incident happened in Germany, a society with very strict gun laws and a completely different society than in the US. Still it happened. In my opinion, every case requires a case-specific investigation, at least at first detached from the geographical or national context of the incident.

Still, I agree that these incidents appear to happen more often in the US than elsewhere. Or do they really? Or is it just what we believe to be true. I'm quite sure that in Iraq more incidents happened in the last 3 years but they are definitely related to political and society-related factors. It's all very complicated and complex anyway.

Hmm, but does the individual truely exist? If there is no soceity then is there still an individual? After all our lives are only given meaning and reason in the context of society as a whole. Nearly everything we do is a socially constructed or to help furthur contribute to society. Without soceity and other people we would be nothing. So in a way I think that soceity shapes who we are and so is to some degree responsible for what we become (not that that would stand up in court ;-p). After all, to fight crime we usually say that getting the root of crime is more important that just punishing people. While those people are as individuals responsible for there actions, soceity is most likey at the heart of the problem. Of course some people due to other issues (such as mental instability) are more likely to be affected and driven to or obseesed by such extreme actions than others, making it hard to really fix such a problem.

Of course it may not be the whole of society, but the small pocket in which the indivdual lived that was the problem.

just because switzerland was mentioned a couple of times:
i am swiss and i can assure you that there are that kind of incidents in switzerland, too. perhaps not on that scale but bad enough. most shootings are done with military weapons. we have compulsory military service and every member of the military stores his (rarely her) gun at home. the most common use these guns find are to kill a spouse.
only after a national ski hero was killed by her husband with his military gun recently, are laws beginning to change. just last week a guy shot four people in a hotel in switzerland, for no apparent reason. now they are deciding that at least people are not to store ammunition together with the military guns.

im sure it does happen. The question is a) is it more or less compared to nations which have tight/leient laws and b) if the guns were not present would the crime still have been commited but by different means. I will need to look into this a bit more, as I dont currently have the stats on gun crime to gun laws. However, I would guess in the case of killing spouses it would have occured just with a knife or something else. Its only because a gun is near and easy (and also perhaps the obvious choice) that people will use that over say a kitchen knife. I highly doubt the level of violent crime would dramaticly increase if guns were allowed in the UK, just the means in which violent crime was committed would change.

A note on killing sprees (which are very rare gun crimes), I saw a program about a kid in the UK (with tight laws) who got an AK47 somehow and went around a town killing people (including the unarmed first response poilce and the ambalence crew who turned up to help the first victims. He wandered around killing people before being cornered and killed by armed police (who finally arrived about 4-6 hours in). So this doesnt really seem a problem with gun laws. Though if all guns were destroyed maybe he would have found it harder.

Here is a BBC article on it http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1566715.stm

Sorry, Richmond and Otto - got the wrong person, it was Golfpro who ask the banal gun question. I apologise.

I thought the 'right to bear arms' thing was originally to give the people the right to challenge the government should it ever get too big for its boots. I thought that was the irony in Americans now using the 'right to bear arms' as an excuse to arm themselves to defend themselves, ...that defence was not the original purpose of the law at all. Am I wrong - correct me if I am.

the thing with knives is, they are less easily lethal. you might still have lots of violence, but there would be more survivors. and it would be hard to go on a killing spree with knives.

i guess, no matter what the legal regulations are, if someone REALLY wants to get a gun and go killing people, that person will be able to. you won't prevent this kind of planned thing with stricter laws. but if someone just gets angry and loses it, if there is a gun handy, he/she can kill lots of people in a short time. if no guns are handy, it won't be ok, but the damage will be more limited.