I have read many photography websites where a major subject for discussions are the restrictions being placed on what you can and cannot photograph, where you can and cannot bring a GPS, etc, etc. and the attitudes of security guards and law enforcement with regard to photography.

Now maybe I am reading too much into your short statement but do I detect a slight kick against this? I would agree that there does seem to be a bias to policing everyone else except your criminal element at home. Are you saying that this is done to scare the ordinary Joe soap into allowing further reductions in his freedoms by Federal Guv/Bushadmin?

It does seem to me that your government could remove the problem so that you wouldn't feel the need to keep a gun at home. As you point out, maybe it doesn't want to, for other reasons.

Interesting slant on the discussion

Interesting statement. The Govt is all about putting fear in to it's citizens to gain control. They could control the criminal element in the US but choose NOT to. So until then… I'm keeping my gun to protect my family and property.

I am American, and I agree on so many points. I have long held (and it's quite an unpopular stance) that our domestic and foreign policies have sucked wind since the New Deal. Guns are not a god given right, and they aren't any part of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

While I have been anti gun most of my life, events have occurred in my recent family history that have honestly led me to say "this wouldn't have happened if I had a gun". I'm glad that I can exercise the right to do so, but I think there should be some restrictions. No assault rifles, machine guns, rpg's, etc.

And you are right, we are the crybabies of the world. In the last fifty years, we have positioned ourselves to be the world's policeman, yet we are incredibly selective about what we police. I.E. we must have some sort of financial interest in our policing efforts. Sad, but true. If you don't have oil, or money, or aren't a Muslim that can help elect or relect a president, we aren't interested.

Woodrow Wilson (I think) had an excellent policy – it was called isolationism. Too bad in this day of an every shrinking global community it doesn't work. We will always be who we are until the Chinese finally get smart and start charging us more for their exported consumer goods. Since a good bit of our jobs are now exported, eventually no one will be able to buy anything, and our economy will slowly tank.

And then, my friend, you may say "I told you so".

But yet, she's not adult enough to give up her weapons. She's like the child who never gets beyond omnipotence believing the world centres on her. You'll occasionally see kids at this stage in the checkout queue, throwing a spectacular tantrum while the parents silently fume. But unlike all other kids, America has never grown up, remaining needy, sulky and cloying, wanting only her way and throwing tantrums when she can't get it.

My heart aches for the relatives of these poor souls, but my head rages at all these bastards who play with words and glorify in their anal control fantasy of caveats and regulations ( 200 Million weapons to control aka Control freak nirvana ) . Fuck them Bock, and the jig they dance around your blog with reasons for this and reasons for that They are our world's modern spoilt child, and are worse then any of their jingoistic empire predecessors, who wanted to be better then everyone else. It's their game, their constitution and their guns. So I say fuck them and fuck their guns, they don't want to be helped.

I stand accused of being anti-American. I could plead provocation but that would pander.

I'm just angry.

Interesting blog Bock, keep bocking!

Actually, knives are 7 times less likely to be used than guns in killings

Tim Wise wrote an excellent piece on Alternet some years ago called School Shootings and White Denial.

Could this young man, who came from South Korea to Washington DC when he was still a child, be the victim of 'Caucasianisation angst'?, a new psychological just made up by me 10 seconds ago without any research – or was he just a self-hating nut who managed to get a gun and fulfil his blood-thirsty fantasies in a university campus, rather than the killing fields of Iraq?

On the micro-level the U.S. experiences this tragedy and I for one, just to refute Brianf's disappointment mixed in with moral superiority about heartless bloggers, have expressed my cyber-sympathy to the families. On the macro-level the Afghan Human Rights Commission reported their findings on a massacre at Mhmand Dara where civilians were killed by U.S. Special Forces Marines. This atrocity has been admitted to by U.S. commander, Maj. Gen. Frank H. Kearney, the head of the Special Operations Command Central who ordered the investigation on the civilian killings in Afghanistan.

Join the dots!