rascal wrote:If you think they are touchy about politics, i dare you to suggest to them they should hand in their guns..

Haven't done so directly but on MT.net in the past have suggested that gun availability IS the problem with regard to US mass shootings.
BIG MISTAKE!
I got "rained on" by almost every US forumite about how WRONG/STUPID/NAIVE I was, they NEEDED their guns for self protection and to protect themselves against their OWN government (they seem to think that they can hold off their own military - seriously?).
Common sense and world statistics (US vs everywhere else, including South Africa where gun ownership is almost mandatory for home protection but mass shootings rarely occur) can't convince them of anything other than "The solution is MORE guns!".
Politics and Guns should NEVER be discussed with US folk - in the former case they tend to be extremely right or left wing with little regard for "the common good" and in the latter case "paranoid psychos"!
One of former US President Barrack Obama's biggest laments was that he could do NOTHING about the proliferation of guns in the US.
Naively he thought he could actually do something about it as the president ut realised that was NOT the case.