Kevin, I understand there's a culture-difference between the US and the UK, but what frustrates me - and drives my occasional perhaps OTT outbursts - is the way the US guys simply refuse point blank to accept, or even consider, that there is a clearly and undeniably demonstrable link between the availability of guns, gun-ownership regulation, and relative ratios of shooting deaths and injuries.

How difficult can it be to understand simple facts like:-

1) If you don't have a gun, you can't shoot someone else.

2) In a (comparatively) gun-free society like the UK, guys who come into your home to steal your TV don't come armed with guns, because (a) they know that the homeowner won't confront them with a gun, (b) our police are not routinely armed so they will not confront the burglar with a gun, and (c) the 'Aggravated' laws mean that, if they are caught with an offensive weapon whilst committing a crime, and they are prosecuted, there will be an automatic doubling of the sentence they receive for the original crime.

3) Because there are so few guns in circulation here, we are not conducting our lives in fear of being shot, we don't have the paranoia that someone is waiting around every corner to attack us and, very likely, shoot us. The minimal number of shootings we experience (averaging around 70 per year for the entire country) are mostly suicides or gangs/criminals shooting each other.

Why, when facts which you and I know are perfectly true are presented to them,do they try to introduce stuff about shootings in small Central African or Far Eastern countries which bear no relationship to the First-World countries such as the US, UK, Germany, Australia, etc.?

In 71 years on this planet, I've never seen a gun except in the hands of police armed-response officers, members of the armed forces, farmers, shooting-club members, or 'sport'-shooters. I've never been threatened by anyone with a gun (or any other weapon, for that matter), and I don't know anyone who has.

My wife has a theory that the vast majority of Americans are as mad as hatters. I'm beginning to think she may have a point.