How about our sane gun control laws and our politicians who—while a bit rubbish—aren't being paid hundreds of millions of $ by BigCorp™ to go against the people?
http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/gun-deaths
Go on, click on that next button and read some of those names. I dare you. I double dare you!
Why insist that this 'sociological problem' of mass killing be allowed to express itself using as powerful and efficient a means as possible? Are you really suggesting that if the guns went away, that all these thousands of people would all still be killed by machettes or axes or something instead? If other means of killing are just as efficient, why protect your home with a gun? Why not use a machette or an axe?
And while we're on this subject, what's with the ban on federally funded research into a problem that's leading to so many deaths? How is that anything other than red handed evidence of the gun lobby making it perfectly clear they're not interested in evidence, or rational debate, or honest discourse, or how many people die on a daily basis so that they can hold on to their favourite toys. Why not just say that the death toll in blood is to an acceptable price they are willing in full conscience to pay so that they can keep hold of their guns?
All I see is a pretence at debate. A paper thin fig leaf of argument. Hungerford in 1987, therefore British gun laws have no effect on rates of gun violence. No gun shops in Chicago, therefore banning gun sales nationally can have no effect rates of gun ownership or violence. Maybe it's a sociological problem - oh, well that's all right then. Lets just wash our hands of the whole problem and think about something else. Until the next horrific mass shooting. Meanwhile the body count nationally is quietly rising day, by day, by day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_school_massacre
You don't even need a gun,
(there are exceptions, the Cumbria massacre in 2010 springs to mind)
If you really want to get into a discussion about the frequency of gun massacres in the UK and USA over the last 20 years, adjusted for population, go ahead. Make my day. I'll reply to that post.
And yes there are other ways to kill people. That in no way provides justification for giving them even more.
[EDIT: changed 25 years to 18 years for fairness]
Compare to the nationwide sweep of "shall issue" concealed carry laws, a few states where it was allowed (and Vermont where it was never licensed yet alone outlawed), then Florida in 1987 to Iowa and Wisconsin in 2011. Now 42 states plus or minus have that, along with explicit rights to effective self-defense (latter effectively true in most of the anti-gun states as well), about 2/3rds of the population.
Yeah, I'll agree its somewhat weird, look at very well armed Switzerland where concealed carry is I gather rare. But there are lots of reasons, historical, sociological, etc. why we're this way (or so I think).