News is still breaking about a 52 year old man who went on a shooting rampage today in the County of Cumbria in North West England which occurred over a four hour period in several small villages scattered over a distance of twenty miles around the county.

So far, it is known that 12 people, plus the gunman, are now dead with an additional 25 people seriously injured by gunshot wounds.

It is believed that possibly two weapons were used, one witness describes a scoped rifle and another, a shotgun. Most of the fatalities were apparently shot in the head in close range.

It is not at present known if the gunman (a taxi driver) was in lawful posession of these weapons. Sadly every 10 to 15 years an incident such as this happens.

Already the anti-gun brigade are flooding certain websites with demands for all firearms to be banned. They never seem to learn that banning something doesn't work, ever.

In 1997 after a similar massacre of children at Dunblane in Scotland, the then new Prime Minister Tony Blair introduced a law that banned the ownership of all handguns except muzzle loaders and cap and ball revolvers. He then stood up in the English Parliament and said he had 'stopped armed crime' Since then, armed crime has gone up 400%. The crooks didn't bother to hand their illegally held handguns in.

I've no doubt there will be more calls for the total abolition of firearms ownership. We have to fight it, but sadly, very few people will listen.

The gunman eventually took his own life in an isolated woodland area.

Harry

No government can legislate against insane individuals, that approach never works....without firearms, they will merely choose another weapon.....

Guns sure do make massacre a lot easier though; imagine having hack your way through 25 innocent people with a sugar cane knife...Geo

Geo.

If they used a knife they would not only be insane, but also stupid................there are 'many' other very efficient weapons that could be used......

Right, Doug. Nobody around here is more pro-gun than I am, but some of our 'knee-jerk' responses to the problem of 'gun abuse' don't hold up...Geo

If one of the "12" had been legally armed I'm sure the kill number would've been less.

George if any of the first murder victims had both the right to carry a concealed handgun and carried a concealed handgun there is a good chance the outcome would be a much smaller body count.

And this sociopath didn't use a sugar cane knife but I don't see a lot of difference:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/world/asia/13china.html?hp

BEIJING — A man with a kitchen cleaver rampaged through a kindergarten in rural northern China on Wednesday, and state media said he hacked to death seven children and two adults before returning home and killing himself.

The attack, the deadliest of five assaults on Chinese schoolchildren in the last two months, immediately prompted some writers and scholars to call for government officials to examine the pressures in society that may have led to the mass killings and to stop what they called government efforts to limit more extensive coverage of the violence.


I am 55 and in reasonably good shape. But if I had been cloned and my clone was now 25 I have no doubt he could beat my unarmed self to death if he so desired.

And what about all these stories of armed citizens defending themselves from both thugs with firearms and thugs otherwise armed. Please read a dozen or so of the stories here:

http://www.thearmedcitizen.com/

No knee jerk reaction here, just facts.

Best,

Mike

Heck, Mike I read "The Armed Citizen" every month in both American Hunter and the American Rifleman. I believe in the 2nd Amendment more than you, probably. And I ain't advocating gun control. I have a concealed carry permit, use it, and nobody better come at me with a meat cleaver.

But it just does not wash to say if the nut cases didn't have such easy access to guns, they'd just use meat cleavers or sugar cane knives. Or poison, or explosives, or...Oh wait a minute! Poisons and explosives are pretty heavily regulated and strict records are kept, aren't they? Better not bring them into the argument.

If we as sensible gun enthusiasts don't pitch in and try to help come to some sane way to prevent 'gun abuse', our fellow voters are going to wind up tossing out the 2nd Amendment right "along with the bath water". I've posted before that I can't reconcile myself to the NRA 'not one inch' approach to the gun abuse problem, because like it or not, there is a problem and something's gonna be done about it. JMHO...Geo

George:

The Chinese sociapath used a meat cleaver to kill 9 people.

Two American sociopaths used fertilizer and diesel to kill 168 people, including 19 children in daycare. Oh, but explosives are regulated aren't they.

Plumbers, the gas company, code enforcement officials and gas appliance manufacturers go to great lengths to prevent natural gas explosions but even after all their efforts we have inadverdent natural gas explosions every so often. Accidental explosions with many conscientious people trying to make sure we don't.

Eighteen or so Saudi sociopaths used boxcutters to kill 2600 people.

Our species is the most cunning killer on the planet.

If that guy had started shooting in a crowd in the average Texas city there is a good chance that one of the law abiding armed citizens would be there to stop him before he shot that many people.

Please read the "Armed Citizen" articles again.

Guns make us safer.

We have more gun restriction laws, dope laws, and illegal alien laws than they can enforce now. How is passing more uneforced laws going to help us?

England has much more restrictive gun laws than we do. Yet it still happened. So we just keep giving an inch and giving an inch and one day we don't have any guns left. The NRA is right.

I have always heard that in politics you should join the side you are on.

Best,

Mike

Why can't it be a media abuse problem. Aren't more Americans murdered by illegal aliens or killed in auto wrecks. Seems it's more a pr problem than body count problem.

Exceptions aside, I'd bet few of these psycho's are crazy enough to do their mayhem the hard way. The cowards tend to pick the easy impersonal tool, then disconnect their own brains as reality creeps in.

There're already plenty of laws that address the 'gun abuse problem'. Hopefully, the lawful gun owner doesn't have legislate morality against themselves to the satisfaction of antigun ideologues.