Okay. Let's untangle this a little bit. Of course Rosenbaum shouldn't have been there - I never said he should be. The left has to be careful of making martyrs out of nihilists.

The adult way of doing this is ensuring that there are less people like Rosenbaum on the streets causing chaos in the first place. You can either increase the police presence, something that tends to lead to people getting shot, because you've given citizens the right to hold automatic weaponry. Or you can look at the root cause.

I would suspect in Rosenbaum's case, his anti-authority stance may have been mitigated by early years social work intervention, better mental health facilities and accessible therapeutic intervention at the point of need. That doesn't seem to happen in the US - so you have two choices. Arm up (including the children) or rethink your economic model. That, I'd argue, is the responsible thing to do.

I'd go for that form of collective responsibility, bu then t I"m a Brit and I've got the benefits of democratic socialism and live in a place where guns aren't routinely owned by adults let alone teenagers. It's working for us.