A poker game organised by students of the University of Oregon have given the winners guns, only two months after the massacre in nearby Umpqua Community College.

A day before heading to Burning Man I realised that my bike rack was not going to fit the RV. I was in Los Angeles. I walked into a Walmart store to buy a replacement. I couldn’t find one. I did have the option to purchase an array of firearms.

As a resident of the UK, I was dumbstruck. Walmart had a firearm section. It was next to the biking section. It was not that far from the children’s toy section. What was unreal to me, was normal for those around me.

When you have a child, everything changes. Suddenly, you are not thinking of your safety. You think about the safety of your child. You close your eyes and see them falling out of trees, getting beaten to death and stabbed through the heart. I have never once closed my eyes and seen him shot to death by a young man in combats striding through the halls of his school with chilling intimacy.