As Big Mick advises, it's pretty clear there is no way of waving a magic wand, and getting rid of guns in the States. Or getting rid of the love affair many Americans clearly have with them. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, that's an impossibilist agenda, and as such it just gets in the way of getting people organised to bring about the things that could be done,and that could help.

As the drug situation demonstrates, in a society where addiction is involved, and enough people want to do something badly enough, just making it illegal and trying to impose prohibition is liable to just make things worse.

The better way is surely to cvoncentrate on trying to adjust things so that the damage is reduced. And at the same time work on changing attitudes, so that the behaviour involved is recognised as undesirable by more and more people, and the rationalisations start to fade away. And you hope that over time the culture will change.

My impression is that when it comes to tobacco, that kind of approach may be working. I'd say that would be the way to approach gun possession and gun control.