As ever. Bill D refuses to examine his documents: if he had, he'd have realised the figures quoted are examined in those texts and show the comparatives are chalk and cheese.

When it comes to knife crimes, the sale and carriage of combat knives are legally limited in the UK to those with folding non-locking blades of under 3", with the result that these days most knife crime involves kitchen knives. Even the carriage of these is questionable, they always come zip-tied into sheathes for this very reason.

So suggesting that the UK simply sublimates the urge to violence into knife crime is equally wrong, and worse, a red-herring, as it's based on two wrongs making a right. Whether the UK has a knife problem or not has nothing at all to do with the US gun problem, and the refusal of the gun lobby to take responsibility for its actions. We are pointing the finger here, and saying that the next time you have a massacre, the supporters of the gun lobby here will be every whit as much responsible for it as the shooter. All it takes for evil to win is for good people to do nothing, which is exactly what has happened in the past, and which must stop now. We said so then, and we're saying so now, with the difference that in the past, we didn't personalise the responsibility for the risk. Now we are.

A similar lie was perpetrated a while back in reply to my comment that ammunition and explosives are not covered by the Second Amendment, claiming it is "natural" that the Amendment extends that far. I have nowever discovered ammunition growing on trees, so how can it be "natural"? The Amendment is "to bear arms", to carry weapons, not to shoot them: you can carry them as a club, and be issued with ammunition as your National authorities see fit.

Responsibility for a wrong is not something which is shareable between those responsible for it, it is something each and everyone who could have done something to stop it shares full responsibility for. In the UK, a charge of murder can be levied in its entire weight against every one who was part of the crew who killed someone, it is not "twenty years divided by twenty perps", it's twenty years each, or whatever the judge sees fit.

No, the Gun Lobby has definitively lost the case, and it might be a wise thing dfor the Principal of every school to write to the President of the NRA holding him contingently liable should any of the children in the school be injured. This ducking the blame must stop, can stop, and eventually will stop. The only question is how many innocents must die in the mean time.