As long as the public is told about stories where guns save lives, but don't tell you that for each such story there are 40 stories telling the exact opposite, you are sticking your head in the sand.

Walter, part of the problem in the U.S. is that there are existing laws on the books that aren't being enforced.

On the 40 stories that tell the exact opposite - I'm going to give you a hard statistic.....by far and away, the #1 cause of gun deaths in the home is suicide. There are many sociologists and psychologists who will say that risk of both homicide and suicide both go up when a person owns a gun in the home, but the actual numbers show that the absolute biggest risk is suicide.

But that gets back to the problem that many (not all) who are left of center in the U.S. don't want to talk about - the aspect of mental health. A common denominator in nearly all these mass shootings - the shooter is nuts. There's no point in making it tougher to buy guns unless gun dealers have no trouble getting files on the mentally ill. I have no problem with background checks and no problem with waiting lists - but until the day becomes when the mental health issue is properly handled (as opposed to the way the Affordable Health Care Act attempts to pervert the process by documenting that mere ownership of a gun is a possible indicator of a mental health issue) , the debate is pretty much a waste of time.