As Seen on Facebook . . .

[Cyberman]

I never said guns are designed for killing people and nothing else. That's a distinction that you imposed on my words. Ballistic weaponry of the type under discussion is designed purely to propel a projectile at high velocity with the intention of causing injury and death. Whether the target of the weapon is human or not is immaterial; the weapon has no other purpose. A person wielding such a weapon, be it in a defensive or offensive situation, has to be anticipating that it is going to be fired at some point.

Like I said, in any other instance involving illegally dangerous driving or similar, we have measures in place to remove the offender's access to the vehicle. It's not going to ensure that they never re-offend, however they cannot then plead innocence of their actions and the penalties are going to escalate.

In a perfect world, I would love to see untimely deaths due to deliberate or negligent actions consigned to our violent history. Sadly we have to work with what we have. Throwing around red herrings and saying "but that guy's just as bad" does not constitute a defence of your own actions (using the generalised "you" for reasons of rhetoric), nor does it obviate the responsibility of cleaning up that part of the world that we can.