James: excellent piece. it’s a constant source of amazement to people outside of the US how much sway the NRA type lobby has. It’s pretty obvious to the rest of us that freely available use of a ‘means’ will allow people to act on their fantasies and without which they would mostly remain fantasies. Let’s hope that sense, little by little (well argued articles like this help), starts to prevail over time and that there will at some point be politicians that will have the balls to do something about it. I enjoy Exponent btw!