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So Oscar Pistorius is not guilty of murder, and could be free from jail in as little as 10 months.

He is, however, guilty of being a gun-crazed whacko who slept with a firearm by his bed, has all the stability of some plutonium on a rollercoaster and didn't give a toss who was cowering harmlessly on the other side of his toilet door.

And he will simply never be free of the fact he fired four bullets into Reeva Steenkamp.

Oscar Pistorius is, officially and in the eyes of the law of two different countries, no different to Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who in 1999 shot and killed a burglar.

Both men were first accused of murder then convicted of manslaughter. Both had legal firearms. Both say they shot at an intruder.

Martin served three years in prison and is said to live with a price on his head, put there by relatives of the man he killed.

Pistorius has been sentenced to five years, likely served on what's effectively a hospital ward. He'll probably be out in around two years, and we'll be subjected to his his self-pity and the inevitable autobiography.

(Image: Mark West / Barcroft)

But while Martin enjoyed widespread public support Pistorius reactions are evenly split between sympathy for a man living in a dangerous area and scorn for a someone who apparently thinks the death of his girlfriend was worse for him than anyone else.

Tears, snot, mental assessments, vomiting in court. Put a sock in it, you fool, and treat Reeva's death with the dignity it deserves.

During the trial it became clear that Pistorius is a man about as unhinged as as the barn door at Dorothy's house after the tornado blew through.

He took his gun with him to weddings, to restaurants, in his car.

He slept with a gun beside his bed although most other people, even in a nation as dangerous as South Africa can be, did not.

He took it out and waved it around, he fired it in public, he asked others to take the blame for him.

He wanted more than the one gun that would surely be all you need to protect yourself - he ordered a pump-action shotgun, and a semi-automatic rifle, and cancelled the order only after Reeva died.

(Image: Getty)

Who needs a pump-action AND a semi-automatic? You're either planning a killing spree, or your paranoia has reached the level of a padded cell and some tranquilisers.

The simple truth is that Pistorius was a nut with a gun. One of them was always bound to go off.

He's a danger to himself and others, and it's not much of a leap to imagine him living alone and shooting at shadows just like Tony Martin, nor building up his paranoia until he goes on a spree like Anders Breivik.

There will always be people who think Pistorius was defending Reeva quite reasonably. And there will always be those who think she'd barricaded herself in the loo during a row and he fired his gun in a temper.

It doesn't really matter which one is true.

If Pistorius is right, then if that gun been a golf club or cricket bat Reeva would be alive.

If they were having a row and he killed her with a golf club, he wouldn't have been able to avoid a conviction for murder.

Both are a better situation than the one we've got - the one where Reeva's dead, and no-one knows the truth.

(Image: Getty)

South Africa is a place with a strong gun culture - as strong as America's. Guns have been seen as necessary tools ever since the first white settlers appeared.

Today it's a place where burglars will like as not shoot you before asking where the valuables are, which is why so many have sympathy for Oscar although he didn't call the police and when he had the "intruder" harmlessly contained decided to pump "him" full of lead.

But if you hold to that line of reasoning, then every homeowner should have a gun. Every burglar and police officer gets a gun. Before long you're giving them to teachers, dentists, bouncers, librarians and bus drivers.

In the wake of every school shooting in the US, there are calls to arm teachers in the crazed belief that more guns means fewer gun deaths.

And when everyone has a gun, what happens next? People start getting pump-action shotguns. Semi-automatics. Sniper rifles.

(Image: Barcroft)

All of humanity gets in an arms race and before you know it your neighbour has an atomic weapon they threaten to let off if you don't sort out the Leylandii.

In Britain we've been lucky, and guns are seen as a necessary evil for a few people - farmers, soldiers, some but not all of our police officers. But it's changing.

In 2011, 13 childeren under the age of 10 were granted shotgun licences. In 2010 there were 1.8million legally-owned guns in the UK. Between 2011 and 2012 there were 11,227 crimes committed with guns.

In Hungerford, Dunblane and Cumbria the killers were licensed gun-owners - people who had been checked and certified by the police.

Seeing as it costs the police £196 to do all the checks (which obviously there aren't enough of) you'd think the cost would put people off.

But no, because the cost of a gun licence has been frozen at £50 since 2001. The difference comes out of the police budget.

So that's horrible weapons being given to deranged psychopaths who aren't checked properly by police forces which have to pay for it out of the money that's supposed to be stopping crime.

No wonder some say the coppers all need guns.

(Image: PA)

There is one truth that has come out of the Oscar Pistorius trial, and it is the same truth we learned at Dunblane and at Columbine.

Giving a nutter a gun is a bad idea.

Unfortunately we're not very good at stopping ourselves doing it. Lots of people make a lot of money from guns, and they're very rarely bought by people who are perfectly sane and just want to live in peace and quiet.

Humanity is never, ever, going to run out of nutters. Guns, however, are a choice and it's about time we decided against them.

They are the landmines of our generation. We've let them get out into the world, and they lurk there, waiting to do nothing but kill.

Most of us simply don't need them. Farmers, yes, veterinarians in extremis, and hand them out for what some call sport if you must.

But in our homes? No.

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There are two over-riding truths about humanity. The first is that we kill and hurt one another for no good reason, unlike most other animals on the planet.

And the second is that we have the self-awareness to see our failings and overcome them.

We should ban all guns outside a few places of work right now. We should improve the checks, make the pricing fair, hold amnesties. If we as a species are to keep our sanity, we have to do it worldwide.

People will take convincing and it will take decades, just like with landmines. But it can be done, if we choose it. There is no good reason not to.

We are in an arms race to our own destruction. Surely it's time to race the other way?