It’s depressing, how often these ‘incidents’ involving high-powered weapons seem to occur in the United States, where there are almost as many guns as people. Everyone cried about Sandy Hook but there have easily been four or five more that I’ve read references to in the paper.

I couldn’t believe it when I read that federal health agencies cannot comment on the public health consequences of guns; haven’t been able to do so for well over 20 years.

I wrote on this in January 2011 and frankly, don’t see there’s much to add … Except that, at least according to this piece in the  New England Journal of Medicine such fatalities are actually in the minority; the majority of gun deaths occur quietly among family members and people one knows.

Hey, I get that. You get mad, you want to hit someone – if you have a gun, it’s damn easy to pick it up and shoot. But if all you have on hand is a stick or even a knife, well, you can do some damage but the death toll usually doesn’t rise to the double digits.

Just last week some fellow went postal in a downtown apartment building in Vancouver. I know the place, I used to live a block from there. Reports are mixed but there appears to have been a knife and a hammer involved. Several people were hurt but only one remains in critical condition in hospital. The rest were kept overnight and let go. They’re fine. Which they would not have been had the perpetrator carried an M16.

Guns don’t kill people, people do? Ah, no. People with guns kill people. People with sticks and stones, not so much.