Terror and guns

Here's a thing, I'm a big fan of Bruce Schneier's Security blog, he's a bit of an expert in the security and security technology field, and every so often current affairs overlap his expertise.

So he posts about the Mumbai terrorist / nutjob attacks last week, about how security precautions against movie plot threats are pretty useless against low-tech attacks and how the terrorists / nutjobs had a lower than expected kill ratio, on average 18 kills each.

But one of the things he asks is that how come this sort of terrorist attack does happen more often in America where guns are more freely available?

There's a response in the comments here

"Why not in the U.S., where it's easy to get hold of weapons?"
Another answer is contained in the question : because law abidding citizen can get hold of a gun and protect themselves.

Its a warm and reassuring line of reasoning, but its not so true. Cos in the UK we have very few nutjob / terrorists with guns attacks, in about the same levels as America, but guns aren't so freely available.

In the UK we had Dunblane and Hungerford and in the US there's Columbine Virginia Tech and many more.

Hmm, actually, maybe Uncle Bruce is wrong, there are many more of these attacks in the US, its just they're not classed as terrorism. Like the Mumbai attack, just happened once. But things like Columbine and Virginia Tech happen all the time.