I hate guns. I wish they didn't exist. But they do. In the wake of the Connecticut shootings this mass knee-jerk call to impose strict firearm laws is an understandable reaction. Unfortunately it isn't the right one.

America's problem isn't its gun culture; America's problem is the mass psychosis which feeds its gun culture and fuels not just the normalisation of gun violence, but exalts it as the sine qua non of the strength and self assertion that informs the nation's identity.

Barack Obama finds himself in his second term of office, with no possibility of a third. If he wants to be remembered for anything more than being the first black man in the White House, this could be his Abraham Lincoln moment.

What America has to ask itself is this, as basic as it is: What do we value more? The right to own a deadly bit of metal, or the right of our children to live beyond their seventh birthday? This debate has come too late for the innocent victims of Newtown, Connecticut; but to honour their memories, the debate must happen so that it is not too late for others. I