re: #276 Sol Berdinowitz

Funny, ‘cause that’s a very European thing: there are lots of US video games that are banned here, they see it as the “slippery slope” to real gun violence.

Expect tons smoke-and-mirrors deflection tactics in the coming week, they are just hoping that we will move on to the next celebrity scandal and forget about this tragedy…

The other thing is that European countries may regulate guns fairly heavily but it’s still quite possible to own them. I was reading the other day, at a gun site, a thread by a German national about the Colt revolver he’d just bought. Another time, I read how it’s legal to own full-auto weapons in Belgium with registration. The Belgian’s can actually own bigger guns than _we_ can in one of those delightful moments of irony.

I do believe England and Australia both over reacted and I do not wish to see that here. But there are plenty of other European examples - Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, and so on - that show that there is a place where regulation does not have to be too onerous to allow for sporting, hunting & even self-defense firearms.

The other thing to remember, however, is that even with fairly harsh gun control, you can still have high gun and other violent crime. See Brazil and elsewhere.