In killing others before dying on his own terms, Lanza, like so many rampage killers before him, lived out a perverse male fantasy of total control. When Australia saw that horrific fantasy lived out in Port Arthur in 1996, it took strong steps to ensure that such a tragedy could never be repeated. For all our expressions of grief in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings, Americans – particularly white men – remain stubbornly enchanted by the freedoms that they imagine the gun represents.

Americans need to get over their stupid obsession with guns! It's takes a REAL man to be able to say no to the idiotic gun culture that is ruining the USA.

Schwyzer blew out the pilot lights on the stove in his apartment and turned up the gas while his ex-girlfriend was passed out. When neighbors smelled the gas, they intervened.

Caring feminist Hugo Schwyzer – billed as “author, speaker and Professor of History and Gender Studies at Pasadena City College” – offers Fairfax readers an anti-male line on the Connecticut shootings:This column appears at Fairfax’s Daily Life, "a proudly female biased website". One reader responds:By that definition, Hugo certainly is a REAL man. He doesn’t use a gun even when he’s attempting to kill a woman You can read Hugo’s own account of this 1998 incident – “I pulled the oven away from the wall, leaving the gas line intact, positioning it so that the gas was blowing directly at the passed-out young woman” – here . He’s deleted it at his site. (Via Quadrant