I’ll start with the punch-line. American pro-gun lobbyists are infantile in the extreme. They are like a whole lot of little children playing with dangerous toys who, after being told that they should probably put them down before someone loses an eye, are stuck at “No! I don’t want to.” And how many eyes have been lost? Every time there is a massacre in the United States all they seem to have as a response are “thoughts and prayers”… “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”…and so on an so forth, warping the intentions of the Second Amendment (which was written two hundred and fifty years ago) to suite their needs. However, it seems to me that people who don’t have easy access to guns don’t generally go out and shoot up a bunch of other people.

I’m not a hunter but I can understand people having regulated and registered hunting rifles and shotguns at home that they then use responsibly at their leisure. I can understand the need for recourse to a firearm, should you need one, if your business manages large amounts of cash or high-end valuables such as gems or jewellery thereby making you vulnerable to robbery and assault. I can understand the need to have a revolver in your home if you live in an isolated community where you might have to fend off dangerous wild animals or if a police response to an emergency would be dangerously delayed, impractical or effectively non-existent. These, I think, are reasonable scenarios for having to have access to a firearm.

What I cannot comprehend are these “brats” strutting about in military gear and brandishing weapons scientifically designed for war fighting whose calibres in many cases will go through a brick wall at over a mile, banging on about their constitutional right to bare arms. They split hairs about what constitutes an assault rifle this or a sporting rifle that; a lot of silly little kids playing with fire. They deserve a sharp smack on the chops and being sent to their rooms to think about it all.

Until recently the United States liked to hold itself up as the beacon of civilisation. A lot of us are wondering about that at the moment. There is no place in Civil Society for weapons specifically designed to kill other human beings. Rein in your kids.