Here's your new joiner's gift

In Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, there's a bank in Virginia (Virginia has the most liberal gun laws in the US) that provides new customers with a rifle to say thanks for joining.

It is easier and quicker to buy a gun in the United States than to obtain a library card - my card for a public library took two weeks to arrive and I had to show proof of address etc, one can purchase a gun in three days, provided one has no criminal record.

In Switzerland where every male over the age of eighteen has a gun, the number of gun fatalities is infinitesimal compared to the US.

The 2nd amendment of the US constitution decrees that US citizens have the right to bear arms, well they bear then and then some!! Charlton Heston, president of the NRA from 1998-2003, while accepting a presentation rifle in 2000, brandished it aloft and said, "From my cold dead hands" , a reference to him being willing to defend his right to bear arms even if it costs him his life. The NRA wields enormous political clout and has used that clout to consistently stymie attempts by the Congress and the Senate to reform gun laws.

An American commentator on the BBC pointed to the singularly American regard for authority.

In Columbine, 12 people died, at Virginia Tech, 33* people died. Are they waiting for a 50+ death toll before they have the cojones to do something?

*this could rise