ONE dead, not 15.
That's the difference -between Australia and the United States of America. That's why we have laws banning semi-automatic assault weapons, and why, since the Port Arthur massacre, we haven't had a single lone--gunman style mass shooting.
The United States of America has more than one mass-shooting incident every day. The shooting on Friday of a police employee outside the NSW Police headquarters at Parramatta was a horrifying abomination - even more so because the shooter was just 15 years of age. 
Imagine if that young man had had a rapid-fire military-style weapon at his disposal?
We'd be dealing not with one terrible death, but with more than a dozen. Australian gun activists can't handle this truth.
The Sporting Shooters -Association of Australia explo-ded into fury when we reported, back in   July, that the government was planning to ban the Adler A110 lever-action shotgun, which had been pre--ordered by thousands of Aust-ralian gun enthusiasts, eager to get around the laws -restricting automatic weapons.
They accused us, in our editorial, of calling all responsible weapon owners "gun freaks".
Perish the thought. The only freaks are the ones who think it's OK to have an assault weapon in a suburban home.
No doubt the ones who -actually do shooting as a sport, or who enjoy taking down the odd duck, would agree with us. You don't need to be able to fire repeatedly and rapidly.
Speaking of unfortunate American influences, it was good to see Border Force turning away someone who's an actual threat to the Australian way of life.
I mean Troy Newman, the American anti-abortionist who wanted to come and "save the babies" in a series of nasty little public events.
I believe in free speech. -Really, I do.
But under Australian law, as the High Court ruled late last week, the right to freedom of speech applies to Australian citizens, not to every creep who applies for an entry visa - so if we can keep them out, let's stop hand-wringing and just do it.
Troy could have come here on a holiday and sat around in cafes barking out his sad little opinions, and been duly -ignored, which would have been best for everybody.
But he applied for a visa to conduct a speaking tour, and naturally that meant his -intended speeches - and his published opinions - came under scrutiny.
Like the fact he was one of the co-founders of the Centre for Medical Progress, which spent the American summer producing hidden-camera videos in which they sought to -entrap Planned Parenthood executives into admitting they enjoyed murdering foetuses.
The videos achieved nothing of the kind, but they spread the murk a bit, which is all Troy Newman and his mates really desire.
Or the time he co-authored a book that called for women who had abortions to be convicted of murder.
"The United States government has abrogated its responsibility to properly deal with the blood-guilty. This responsibility rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge blood-guilt from the land and people," the book stated. And it goes on, of course, to -invoke God: "The only standard that is effective against innocent bloodshed, excluding the lawful execution of the murderers, which is commanded by God in scripture".
I'm really sick of bigots and bullies claiming Christianity in their name. Jesus Christ would have embraced the women who have abortions, in the knowledge they are suffering, in their own private ways, more than anyone else can imagine or understand.
I've never terminated a pregnancy, but I know plenty of people who have, and I don't think any of them made the decision lightly.
Today, as older women, they might make a different decision. But that's the call they made at the time, and they have to live with it.
It's really none of anyone else's business.
The Right can't have it both ways. Either women are selfish bludgers who persist in madly reproducing so they can stay on the dole, or they are selfish feminist harpies who undergo abortions because they despise children and want to spend their bra-less lives worshipping at the altar of Germaine Greer and cultivating their nostril hair.
Both those opinions strike me as facile and simplistic.
Neither is accurate to -describe any woman I know, be she a single mum, a welfare beneficiary or someone who's been through a termination.
I think it's fair enough for Australia, just like the Sydney Swans, to have a no-dickheads policy in place at the border.
We don't need woman-bashers Floyd   Mayweather Jr and Chris Brown. We didn't need Holocaust denier David Irving. We certainly didn't need radical Islamist preacher Sheik Bilal Philips.
By the way, guess who banned the Sheik from entering Australia back in 2007? John Howard.Guess he didn't like dickheads either.