If UK catters say the gun situation looks bonkers it's because in a country where guns are very, very tightly restricted the whole thing does look bonkers.

This isn't just a UK perspective. There are lots of other countries with relatively loose legal controls on gun ownership where people don't make guns into objects of religious veneration in the way Americans do, and where nobody would ever think of telling anyone else they had an obligation to own one or to think about them all the time. The US is not unique in its gun legislation, but it is unique in its gun culture.

It doesn't make any sense to try to fight that culture by legislation. Nutters like olddude will kill anyone they perceive as trying to take their toys away. What does make sense is to spread the perception that gun culture is a sick aberration, and that owning a gun and obsessing about them means there's something wrong with you. So I welcome incidents like that twisted Uzi instructor getting his Darwin Award. Trying to pass a law against things like that happening is utopian stupidity and a complete waste of time; the more such events occur, the less credibility the gun culture will have. So we want MORE of them.

It needs to be seen as a decluttering issue. Americans need to start realizing they've got dangerous lumps of metal junk in their cupboards that they'd be better off without.