SIR – After the horrific Cumbria shootings, the first noise we may hear is that cracking sound of politicians’ knees as they jerk in auto-response. We have heard this before, from earlier massacres to dangerous dogs, and it never works.

No amount of frantic fiddling with our firearms laws can prevent a deranged person from killing others. The guns were not the cause of the killings: the user was.

If he had not had guns, Derrick Bird still had possession of a motor vehicle which, driven determinedly, could have killed even more. So do we ban cars just in case?

These events are mercifully rare and, although that will be no comfort to those bereaved or injured, we have to accept there are some facets of life which we just cannot eliminate completely, and the very occasional propensity for a troubled individual to ‘lose it’ spontaneously is one of those.

I have no interest in guns, nor do I wish to own one, but this case does not justify any panic action against those who do and who conduct their legal ownership and use with care and responsibility.

Graham Hoyle, Kirkbourne Grove, Baildon