Here is my families monthly budget. Only one of us works (so no child care), kids ages 9 and 2, mortgage paid off, 10 year old car witth no car payments. This is only expenses, I don't list how much we put in savings, but it is well over 20%.

Saying Germany has no speed limit on highways is misleading. I drove all the way across Germany on an Autobahn back in 1997, and it was impossible to really go fast because trucks have a speed limit of 50mph (80 km/h) and there were lots of trucks.

Clearly you've never watched any of the Mythbusters episodes where they repeat the same crash at various speeds.

"nothing stands in the way of a future HEL weapon system with a 100kW output."

When Australia outlawed semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines they outlawed possession of them, and had a buyback program where there was a period for people to turn them in for cash. That makes it viable to outlaw possession of them.

"When analyzing the factors that led to the high wounded v. fatality rate at Sandy Hook, we shouldn't overlook the very sad, morbid fact that children are easier to kill than adults"

"I think that a handgun, in the hands of someone who has practiced with it (even if it's only going to the range for a few hours a month (like less than five hours a month) would be as devastating in a Sandy Hook scenario as the the shooter was here."

Good point. Let's really get on top of it and address it by both improving mental health services and reducing the availability of highly effective tools for quickly killing a lot of people.

I think an assault weapons buy back could be surprisingly effective. I am sure there are a lot of spouses out there who are not going to tolerate an illegal firearm in the house.

I agree with your analysis, with the qualification that I don't think many supporters of a ban on these type of weapons think it would prevent all future mass shootings. I know I don't think it would be a cure. At this point all I want is to break the recent trend towards mass shooters being outfitted like special…

Of course you are right. There would probably be more resistance in the US to a buy back than in Australia. But it still doesn't seem impossible to me.

As I mentioned in another comment, these shooters seem to try and one-up each other, so now that an elementary school has been done I wouldn't be surprised if an even worse one comes along in the next few years.

I believe police in schools would deter regular criminals from committing crimes on school property. However, I am not sure they would deter someone bent on killing a lot of people and then committing suicide.

We seem to be averaging fatalities in the dozens each year from shooting rampages, and the trend seems to be towards bigger and bigger numbers. While this would only put a dent in overall gun related homicides, it would put a dent, and a dent on the order of a few dozen lives each year seems worthwhile to me,…

It's what they did in Australia in the 90s.

Also, the Pearl MS shooting was not "thwarted" by the assistant principal. After the shooter had killed two people and wounded 11 others he left the school and was driving away when he lost control of the car. At that point the assistant principal approached the stopped car and detained him using his .45

You do know that we know that nobody died in that mass stabbing in China, so it is a perfect example of the benefits of gun control? Are you just counting on people not being able to do basic reasoning?

Since when is the fact that you can't fix everything a reason to fix nothing?

Of course nothing will completely eliminate gun homicides. But I am pretty confident that the right set of law would significantly reduce the fatalities in these regularly recurring shooting rampages that have become fact of life in America (look at the graph). And to me that is worth doing.

Me too. When iOS 6 came out I made the decision to wait to upgrade until a Google Maps app became available (and crossed my fingers it would). I installed the app the day it came out, did some checks to make sure it was usable, and then upgraded to iOS 6.