People are fucking insane.  I just wish we could get along.  How hard is it to live and let live? The idea of having to kill someone because they have different ideas than you is something I will never be able to understand. 

I think part of the problem may well be that there's too many of us.

If we thinned out the population a bit then there'd less people around who'd want to do any killing. Also people would be more spread out. It's hard to kill anyone when you're 5 miles away from them. Unless you own mortars.

Seriously though, it's a hideous thing to take the life of another person, and responding by wanting to maim, torture and kill those responsible is equally reprehensible. Foregoing a debate on the death penalty or capital punishment, you can't just take a life for a life. S'a vicious circle innit?

Yup. I used to be in favor of the death penalty, but we've made so many mistakes, ie, killing innocent people and finding out after the fact, that I can't support it anymore.

The bottom line is that to be in favour of it, you've got to say it's ok to take a human life. Don't think I could ever sign up to something like that.

There are times when I think I could, and could actually probably do it. But I know I'd regret it.  There are just people we'd be better off without.  Someone who is nothing but evil and does nothing but harm others has no other purpose. Granted, they could change, but probably wouldn't. Those are the people I don't have a problem being killed.

It does matter if you have guns or not.

Yes, if someone wants to kill someone they will probably manage it with or without guns being easily available but I still think someone has a better chance of surviving a knife attack than a gun attack.

One of the two people involved in the incident apparently had a gun. So obviously if you want to get hold of one over here it is possible, as has been mentioned many times before.

I just won't ever think legal gun ownership like in the US is ever going to be a good idea. The thought that people like those would have easier access to firearms is frightening to me. More crazy people with better access to guns is never a good state of affairs.

Whilst gun ownership might act as a deterrent I honestly believe it also results in people living in constant fear.

Then you look at the aspect of kids accidentally shooting each other. There's definitely been a number of stories like that in the news lately. What's all that about?

That's all about gun owners who don't take responsibility and keep their gun locked or someplace a child can't get it.

I don't live in constant fear. I like to pretend that the mere site of me puts other people in fear. It makes me feel powerful.

And there's plenty of people who are totally irresponsible so not letting them near guns legally is a good thing.

If not being able to own guns legally means the irresponsible parents can't buy them and it also means it's more difficult for the crazy people to buy them I'm more than happy to be totally unarmed.

I honestly believe that if we could legally own guns over here then last night someone else would have been killed in the aftermath with the likes of the EDL making their presence known.

Well there's another side to that.  If you don't allow people to legally own guns you are only addressing the people who follow the law.  Now you have an unarmed population who can't protect themselves from the people who do have guns. The people who have no intention to follow the laws. Removing every gun from the planet is impossible.  And now we are able to print them on a 3D printer, it's going to get real ugly.

It would be much uglier if everyone had guns.

It may be a view which you can't grasp but I am more than happy to be part of the unarmed population.

No, you're right I can't, because I've been around them since birth.  So it's just something we have.  If you're taught right from an early age there isn't anything to be afraid of and you know to respect it.

I kinda wish nobody knew anything about guns but it's too late for that.

>>And now we are able to print them on a 3D printer, it's going to get real ugly.

:'D you don't actually believe that shit, do you?

Believe what? That you can print a gun? If that's what you're asking me then the answer is yes. And if you don't then you should visit your favorite search engine.

As you say, if someone wants to kill someone, a great many things can be used as weapons. But guns are only weapons, they have no other purpose. Except for a very few which are designed for and only really useful for target shooting, they're designed for the sole purpose of hurting/killing other creatures. And in the vast majority of cases they're designed with humans in mind.

What does it say about your (people in such a country, not you specifically) attitude to life and your fellow humans that you feel the need to carry a weapon around? That you place that much of a premium on your safety, regardless of the cost to that of others.

It seems to me a very self-centred/selfish thing to do and bespeaks an uncivilised society, really.

It's not really, for me at least, about the guns. It's about the culture that allowing people to walk around armed fosters. An attitude to violence and human life that I just don't agree with and couldn't live with. And this is borne out by statistics since while your rate of homicides with firearms is obviously higher than ours (3.21 per 100k as opposed to 0.07 on our end) your non-firearm homicide rate is higher too (1.54 compared to 0.99).

You realise that it's a very shit gun? And that the printer required to print a working gun would cost tens of thousands of pounds? At this point, you may as well just buy a gun.

And while sure this stuff is going to eventually get better and cheaper to the point where most homes will have a 3D printer, you still won't be able to print ammo*. And we don't sell ammo here, so no problem.

(*until we get to like Diamond Age nano-printers, like)

I'm well aware of the shitty little plastic tube with a nail in the end. It's hardly a gun, though. 

So you don't think that will improve?

>>(*until we get to like Diamond Age nano-printers, like)

I had a lovely chat with one of the top bio-engineers from NASA a few weeks back. She was telling me about the replicators they're working on for the Mars mission (which she reckons will be GO GO GO as soon as the Chinese start making any realy progress in space (by which time the USA will have no money left anyway :'D )).

Anyway, they sound really cool. She's designing bacteria things that can a) self replicate and b) turn the Martian soil into bricks which are then assembled into buildings by robots. She's also working on a bio replicator that can build pretty much any organic organism (bacteria, vacine, food etc.) from a selection of raw ingredients and some instructions - crucially instructions that can be uploaded from Earth, so if the astronauts on mars suddenly get ill and need a vacine we can send it to them :D

Seemingly NASA's Mars plan is to have a base built and ready by the time the astronauts get there. I kept thinking she must be bullshitting me, but she seemed totally serious (and extremely knowledgeable)  about the whole thing.

Not until we can print materials with the same precision and strength of current manufacturing methods - and that is likely a /loong/ way off. And when that happens a 3D printed gun will be the least of our worries.