>I can think of two incidences minimum when the the rest of the world begged and waited for the ever violent, gun toting U.S. to come to their aid (with either funds, supplies (guns), or military) so they wouldn't have to learn to speak German or Japanese. Even today, the rest of the world depends on us to secure their way of life. Eveyone loves us when they need something and hate us when they don't get what they want. So let's not bite the hands that saved certain countries from domination on more than one occasion.

I think you're really reaching with this whole line of argument - I don't think a well armed citizenry has much bearing on how well a country can defend its interests - that's creating a myth out of militias. I think every country represented in this thread has had a common tragic experience - you had your Columbine, the UK had the tragedy at Dunblane, we had one here at the Ecole Polytechnique. In some cases, these events spurred people to try to do something about it - here and the UK, it led to measures to register and control the use of guns. I agree with this, and I think it is prevention before the fact - it tries to make it more difficult for this type of event to happen in the first place. Whether it leads to another problem down the line or proves ineffective, we'll have to wait and see. However, I'm much happier with the idea that we've tried to do something to prevent these things before the fact. I think that relying on capital punishment to provide deterence after the crime is already done is way too little, too late.