"They were terrorist nutters, not the soldiers you suggested they needed to be. They managed to keep the fact that they owned the stuff secret, which you have just claimed was not possible."

Take a look in more detail at those "terrorist nutters" - Senior Doctors of Medicine and highly qualified Physicists - making their batches of Sarin would not be difficult. Aum, the "Terrorist Organisation they belonged to established a Chemical Brigade as part of their Ministry of Science and Technology - I think that you could assume that apart from the grandiose labels they were taking what they were doing seriously enough.

"Of course they practiced - and we still didn't know about them until after the attack!

Really? I would have thought that their earlier attempt would have attracted some attention wouldn't you? The Tokyo Subway attack took place on the 20th March 1995.

"Aum Shinrikyo first began their attacks on 27 June 1994 in Matsumoto, when the cult released a cloud of sarin in a residential area which injured 500 people and killed seven. The Japanese police had already discovered at Aum's main compound a sophisticated chemical weapons laboratory that was capable of producing thousands of kilograms a year of the poison. Later investigation showed that Aum not only created the sarin used in the subway attacks, but had committed previous chemical and biological weapons attacks, including a previous attack with sarin that had killed eight and injured 144."

From the following, if you propose to make illegal the selling of individual components then you punish the world for potential misuse by a tiny minority - utterly idiotic view point.

"Are you really so thick that you can't see this totally undermines your latest defence of chemical weapons?

You are making it up as you go along - you have no knowledge whatever of the technique of using Sarin; up to now you have described its main component as harmless at toothpaste unless you dropped a bag of it on your foot, that they didn't issue licences for it, that it was legal for them to sell it (then again, on the other thraed, that it was harmless as toothpaste again, despite the fact that you were fully aware of it's uses) that the information you had bene given was "out-of-date".....

Fortunately for the population of Tokyo the terrorists lack of expertise in being able to weaponise their nerve agent helped limit the damage done. Sodium fluoride has many uses, the vast bulk of them entirely peaceful and beneficial - under your recommendations nothing would ever be sold on the premise that you couldn't or wouldn't be able to guarantee what it would, or could, be ultimately used for.

"You now appear to be suggesting that a bunch of terrorist nutters needed to possess the same skills as a trained army in order to use it"

Well yes that is about the truth of it as demonstrated by the results obtained. A bunch of terrorist nutters in the course of three attacks in densely populated areas succeed in killing 28 people with sarin while the Syrian Army loyal to President Bashar Al-Assad allegedly succeeded in killing 1429 people in one attack alone. Forces loyal to and under the command of Saddam Hussein succeeded in killing thousands - you tell me which of these deploys the agent more effectively, terrorist nutters or armed forces personnel specifically trained in using the weaponised version of any chemical or biological warfare agent?