Naomi...Have you got your Mary-Mary hat back on ?
You are missing the point here. In America you can walk into one of your friendly neighbourhood Gun Shop, and buy all sorts of guns, including assault rifles, with the bare minimum in fuss and bother. You can go shopping to Walmart, and out a gun n your shopping cart, along with all your other normal shopping items. In some States, you can even walk around with your gun of choice concealed about your person.
In the vast majority of massacres. like the one at Sandy Hook, the weapons used to murder people were held completely legally, ie they weren't bought in some shady deal done in a back alley.
That is the difference between us and the USA. In America, there is no need to buy guns illegally, as they are freely available. In Britain guns are not freely available, at all, and if someone wanted to by an assault weapon and descend on his local Junior School, or Cinema, and commit mass murder, he would have to buy the weapons needed from a criminal.
Unlike America, we have had an almost complete lack of massacres of innocent people, including children, the last being Dunblane, and the main reason is that guns are NOT freely available, and long may that situation continue.We have mad people as well, as every society has, but they haven't got guns.
Is that not common sense ?
What happened yesterday in Virginia was that a mentally unhinged person decided to murder 2 of his colleagues in cold blood.
As I have said many times before.....a mad American and access to guns...a deadly combination.