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Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service with me, Tim Harford.

This week the strange mathematical art of juggling.

So this is 4.40.

But first, the massacre of 20 children and six women at a school in the United States

has reopened the debate on gun ownership in the US. Here's President Barack

Obama speaking at a vigil in Newtown, Connecticut a few days after the killings.

Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage that the

politics are too hard.

The debate hasn't just been taking place in the US, but all around the world and across

social media.

A popular message that's been posted and reposted has been this.

Last year, handguns killed, 48 in Japan, 8 in Great Britain, 34 in Switzerland, 52 in Canada, 21 in Sweden, 10,728 in the United States, gun control now.

It does look plausible, after all the US is a big country and we know there are a lot of murders there.

...