Gun control lobbyists tell us guns are the problem - that easy access to guns is what makes US shooting statistics far worse than those for Canada, Europe, Japan and many other parts of the world. But these are the same people who will strip funding from the National Defence budget and slash the military we've always counted on to make the world safe for peace. They live in a fool's paradise where everything will just be alright if only we beat our swords into ploughshares. What price would we pay if their message were to catch on?

There are some who say, if it isn't guns people use to kill, it will be knives or bombs or baseball bats or bricks or piano wire. Voluntary disarmament and gun control will hardly be effective to pacify people intent on breaking laws, since they already operate outside the bounds of control. Disarming America will only make peaceful citizens more vulnerable to their attacks.

And how do you keep weapons out of the hands of kids? They are in the netherworld outside the regular law because of their age. Once we catch them with weapons, we can be severe in dealing with them. But what if the first time they're caught is also the first time they kill? Isn't it too late to act then?

Guns are ubiquitous. In cities, people keep loaded sidearms nearby as protection. In the isolated country, people do the same with sidearms and rifles. Rural folk use rifles for hunting. Many use weapons to practise and hone their skills for hunting, self-defence and the military. And most people use their weapons wisely. How many of the 200,000,000 guns in America are used in murders or other crimes?

Whatever we argue, it comes down to the same thing: disarmament now is both impractical and dangerous. The ones you most want disarmed are the very ones you'll miss - and how much more dangerous will America be if only the criminals are armed? And keeping guns out of the hands of kids may be just as impractical.

We can tighten things up here and there. But essentially we will be left with a situation where, for the most part, the number of guns in America will remain constant and access to guns will remain largely unchanged. The status quo is here to stay, and we'd better just get used to it.

If a kid in another country has a sudden violent break with reality and takes his violence out on another, chances are fewer that his weapon of choice will be a gun. If his weapon is less deadly, there is less chance that his outburst will result in murder and international headlines. In America, the kid reaches for the nearest weapon, and before you know it, he's holding a gun - just like they do on TV. His outburst may well result in murder and international headlines.

Kids have been doing violence to one another for as long as there have been kids. They have used words and weapons of various kinds - and for the most part, they all live to put it behind them. But when a society keeps guns around the house, the balance changes. Instead of the outburst being an event that can be experienced and survived and forgotten, it becomes an event of finality.

What person does not remember the argument that ended in a scuffle where you threw a punch or two... or more? Maybe it happened so long ago that you have no memory of what the argument was about, but you suspect it had to do with one of the many trivialities that kids encounter on lazy summer afternoons. You remember the rage taking over, and you know something kicked in almost as quickly and told you to stop what you were at before you did some serious damage. So you stopped. And perhaps the other kid ran home crying. And in a few days, it was forgotten and no one bore any major scars from the event.

Rage in kids is common. Tantrums are considered childish behaviour precisely because they are so common in children. Young people feel that same fire in their teenage years - and so do adults. But the power to count to ten and avoid violence is a power that often does not gain the upper hand until young people get older.

So, what if you put in the hands of that child a weapon with powerful destructive powers? In the instant it takes the child to rein in his violent behaviour, a person can fall dead of a bullet wound at the child's hand.

And might it not be argued that the society that has deliberately chosen to keep guns accessible has compromised children's future by tolerating the acceptable level of collateral damage and friendly fire that goes with keeping guns accessible? Does not society have to absorb the blame when children use guns to kill?

This is a subtle argument. It is not an argument that society is WRONG to keep guns accessible. After all, it is society that determines what is right and wrong - and society has made owning guns a right. Rather, the argument is that society has at the same time made it LESS WRONG than would otherwise be the case for a vulnerable, less-self-controlled young person to use that gun in an act of violence.

If society condones smoking, it must bear a large part of the blame if children smoke. If society decriminalizes marijuana, it must bear a large part of the blame if children use it - because children are especially vulnerable due to their young age and level of maturity.

And if society bears "blame", what does that mean? Do we put society in prison? Of course not. If society chooses not to change the circumstances which make it blameful, then it simply absorbs the guilt on behalf of those individuals who would otherwise be blameful if society did not make such circumstances likely.

In other words, when kids kill with guns in America, those kids are less to blame for their actions than they would be in a country and society which does not preserve a right to have guns accessible.

This is a hard message to absorb, but perhaps it's time America absorbed it. Repeat it to yourself again: if America chooses to preserve the right to bear arms and keep weapons accessible, then when its minors use those weapons in unlawful acts, those minors are not entirely to blame - and perhaps they are not to blame at all. Their actions are simply a risk that society, by its actions, deems an acceptable risk.

Sure, we make adjustments to public policy and legislation in a desperate effort to wash the blood off our hands, but we effectively maintain the right to bear arms and, with it, the risk that children will abuse them.

The line-drawing comes when you try to determine how childhood merges into adulthood, and to what extent a minor of a given age and given characteristics is responsible for his own actions as an adult would be, having committed the same act. It's clear that many older teens retain certain maturity deficiencies that extend from childhood. The capacity to control rage is one of those deficiencies.

Let's say in a particular case we are talking about a series of crimes that began with one sudden, momentary, impulsive act with a gun against a single individual. Once the deed is done and the rage has passed and the consequences become clear, everything may have changed forever.

If that is what we are talking about in a given instance - a single act of momentary rage against the first victim committed without thoughtful intent but with a weapon of deadly force - and if that is what ripped forever the fabric of a remorseful young man's life and brought on the insanity that followed, then could it not be argued that society is almost wholly responsible for that first solitary act and bears much of the blame for what ensued?

Is not the blood and the blame on the hands of America, not the child?