For weeks our newspapers and TV sets have been filled with the Balkan crisis, it took another disaster to remove it from the number one slot on Wednesday morning.

It must stem from living on a small island, which in modern times has had strict gun control laws, that accounts for our bemusement. These events seem to occur with ever more vicious frequency in America, yet still the lobby supporting your constitutional rights to bear arms holds sway.

That is not to say that these things would never happen with gun control.

They do.

However, the reaction to the "Dumblane" school massacre in Britain was a further tightening of our laws so that even highly regulated sporting clubs feared for their livelihood. Olympic participation in certain categories of the *sport* were deemed to be under threat.

Support for these arguments were negligible.

Most people in Britain have never seen a modern gun outside the cinema or television.

It is a tourist curiosity on our part to see law enforcement officers carry weapons when we cross the ocean to visit your great vistas or meccas of entertainment. Such sights are merely an extension of the media induced fantasy that we believe is America.