[secant0give]

I understand fully your point of view Wayne, and in a sence we are saying the same thing.
If you look at the Martin Bryant Tradigity that guy was obviously out of his tree to start with, I mean it was obvious to a lot of people he was off the rails before he went beserk and shot a bunch of innocent people. There were others that wern't as obvious, like the guy in Strathfield Wayde Frankem I think his name was. There was another bloke in Melbourne as well, not long before him.

The legislation here is different to the USA and I don't think under our current system either of those nut jobs would have been able to do what they did.

But make no mistake there are plenty of illeagaly possesed wepons out there, in this country, a lot were left over from the buy backs, those that were never handed in. The criminal element has heaps of hand guns too, mostly these have been smuggled in to the country because they sell for big dollers on the black market. All these gang land style drive bys are not done with guns stolen from Law abiding firearms owners. A few guns have been stolen from gun dealers in bold robberies but it's the minority.

There is allways the chance that some crazy will still get a gun and start shooting randomly at people you can't take that possibility away with legislation but it can be slightly reduced and it has been in Australia with the Howard legislation.

The legislation in NSW requires that all firearms be kept under lock and key. A cupboard is not good enough, They must be kept, when not being used or cleaned, in a safe with an approved lock and it must be bolted to the floor and walls from inside. The safe must be inside a building with lockable doors and windows and every single such safe in NSW has been inspected and checked for compliance more than once.

The legislation is a big book A4 size and hundreds of pages. Mighter than the sword perhaps, perhaps not??

I can see some legislation, like what we have, being put in place in the US and it will save a few of these very sad trageties from occuring, with out restricting the law abiding firearms owner too much. I guess there will be a lot of hollering from the stalls and pews but in the end it won't make much of a difference or be as bad as they think or as good as the other side of the debate thinks.

One of the factors which contributed to the Masacers we had here in Australia was the sudden aivalibility of lots of SKS and SKK Semi Auto rifles at very cheap prices. Many many thousands of them came into the country some 26,000 I think, they were about $200 for a good one and about $130 for a roughish one.

Now for some reason back then, our government let these in legaly, It wouldn't happen now of course but the fact remains that less than a quater of them have been handed in!! The gate is shut now but the horse has well and truly bolted !! What there is in the USA as far as guns go, is mind boggeling I don't know what they could ever hope to do about the guns that are already there. It's not like guns go bad or decay with time either. There are guns from 100 years ago that are perfict they will last 1000 years easily. Also ammunition that is of reasonable quality and well stored will last well over 100 years perhaps 500 years and still work perfictly. That will be dificult to counter.

The fire arms industry is doing very well in the US at the moment because every one is stocking up 'cause they know something is going to happen, Guns and ammo are selling very well right now. The trouble is you just can't beat human nature.