Guns - are they worth it?

President Obama made a heart felt plea yesterday to the American people about another slaughter in the US. Will anything change? I fear not - we have been here many times before. In a very depressing article in The Observer yesterday Henry Porter went through the damning and frightening statistics on deaths from firearms. Its hardly credibly, but a staggering 32,000 deaths last year from guns, and since 9/11 an estimated unbelievable 364,000. How is this possible? After deaths in the UK at Hungerford in 1987 and Dunblane in 1996 the law was drastically changed, which made the owning guns more difficult. However in the US there are so many vested interests, from the National Rifle Association (NRA) to Republican and Tea Party activists that insist its not - guns that kill people its people that kill people. This arid debate has gone back and forth for as long as I can remember - from the murder of President Kennedy in 1963 to now. Even rational intelligent voters cannot agree on the solution to this endemic problem. Perhaps there isn't one?