Guns scare the fuck out of me. I see the point of them, to an extent. I love game, and hunting is the best way to get it in the US. But I didn't grow up around them. I had a friend in England who had an air rifle, and we would shoot targets on a rock in his back garden, but that was the extent of my exposure to guns until moving to Louisiana at 15.

While there, a friend of my brother's waved his mother's .45 (I think it was) around in our faces to show off one day. It wasn't until later that the incident really worried me, because that's when I found out that statistically, that's how most of the kids killed by guns die.

And the idea of becoming a statistic sickens me. I have goals, and plans, and stories to write and experiences to. . .experience, and I don't want some little twat to take that all away from me.

I'm not saying that guns need to be banned. That's not going to solve anything. But in the light of the recent horrific events in Colorado, I feel like both sides of the argument are missing the point. On the one side, you've got the people who are pro gun, who are saying that if someone had been armed in the threatre, then the loss of life wouldn't have been as high. The trouble with that argument is that Colorado has some pretty liberal (in the sense of lax, not in the sense of what conservatives think liberals want) gun laws. There was nothing to prevent any one of the people watching the movie from taking a gun with them, and unless you're going to make it compulsory to carry a gun, there's no way to make sure an innocent bystander will be armed.

On the other side, you've got people complaining about the root causes of gun violence in this country being poverty and income inequality, which is why the US has a higher level of gun violence than any other western society. Now, I agree with this to an extent, but if you think about the mass murders in this country, they don't have anything to do with that. Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and now Aurora, none of the gunmen have been from impoverished backgrounds.

The problem is, no one is willing to have an open conversation about guns in this country. If you are pro gun, understand me when I say I DO NOT want to take away your right to bear arms. I just want there to be some system in place to keep a bit better track of who has what. And if you're anti gun, understand that you'll never get rid of guns in this country, and you shouldn't have to if people are willing to be responsible and sensible about owning the damned things.

K, rant over. But one last statement. Part of civilization is being able to have a civil conversation about things that affect all of us. Let's start trying that again.