At Ade's Gun Shop in Orange, Calif., business is booming. Emily Atkinson shows her favorite model pistol, a Springfield Armory XD compact.

Once again the United States faces the special horror of a mass killing — this time in Newtown, Connecticut.

And, as I said in an earlier column discussing gun control, "The commentary repeats the last mass shooting and will provide a template for the next."

There is a portion of the population that simply wishes to eliminate private ownership of all weapons of individual destruction. They would probably seek to eliminate bread knives if they could, demanding that all loaves come pre-sliced.

In contrast, the majority of the population supports individual gun ownership; it is not only popular but constitutionally protected — and these constitutional protections recently have been reinforced, striking down restrictive local ordinances that made legal ownership de facto impossible to exercise. And "concealed carry" provisions have gained substantial traction throughout much of the country.

Indeed, short of the confiscation of all privately-owned weapons, it is not possible to eliminate

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sits with his delegation before addressing the UN General Assembly in 2012

The question is posed whether the world can live with Iranian nuclear weapons?

The obvious answer: Of course it can. Just consider:

• The world lived when the United States was the sole nuclear power;
• The world survived when the Soviets and Chinese obtained nuclear capability and various Doomsayers' "clocks" predicted imminent Armageddon.

Even more specifically, the French survived when faced with British nuclear weapons.  And the Germans have endured the nuclear "threat" from France and England.

Indians have accepted Pakistani nuclear capability; and the Pakistanis continue to live under threat of Indian nuclear weapons. Nor have Israelis demonstrated significant concern over Islamabad's "Islamic" bomb.

And some challenges are even more directly threatening. The South Koreans and Japanese have lived with North Korean nuclear weapons that, should they be delivered on Seoul and/or Tokyo, would be catastrophic. Likewise for Beijing's nukes. For their part, Pyongyang's weird leaders

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin draws a red line on a graphic of a bomb at the UN headquarters in New York.

A recent opinion survey by Ipsos Reid indicates that nine out of ten Canadians and Americans agree that the "world cannot tolerate an Iran with nuclear arms capability." Small regional variations among the thousand persons polled online in each country exist, but it is hard to think of another international issue on which opinion among both populations would be so nearly unanimous.

How Tehran might be prevented from developing nuclear arms was not asked, but the consensus would presumably disappear if nationals in both countries were asked if pre-emptive bombing strikes should be launched by the U.S. and/or Israel to destroy or weaken Iran's uranium enrichment capacity.

Understandably, Israelis consider a nuclear-armed Iran to be a major existential threat, noting its leaders' denials of the Holocaust, calls for their country's destruction, development of missiles capable of striking areas throughout Israel and its support for terrorism against their country. Their

President Barack Obama meets with Speaker of the U.S. House John Boehner in Washington, D.C.

No economic issue is more important today for both Americans and Canadians than America's impending fiscal cliff. If there's no agreement between Obama and Congress by Jan. 1, a series of mandatory tax hikes and spending cuts will kick in, likely increasing unemployment by a percentage point, meaning approximately two million jobs lost and shrinking the U.S. economy by hundreds of billions of dollars.

The consequences would spread northward quickly: Less American demand for our goods, job losses in many export sectors, and lower revenues for both Ottawa and provincial capitals. Reaching a reasonable spending deal in Washington is thus crucial for both national economies and other trading partners as well.

If a responsible administration-Congress package can be finalized in time, economic growth is in fact poised to accelerate, increasing jobs and tax revenues, thus making it easier to shrink the American deficit while preserving essential spending. This would gather momentum as

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

It is easy to predict the future.

It is considerably harder to predict it correctly.

Bear in mind the quote attributed to former British PM Harold Macmillan regarding what will blow governments off course: "Events, dear boy, events." Or "black swan" happenings of the who-knew-that-was coming nature. The most obvious was al Qaeda's 9/11 attack.

Essentially, every second term president is a lame duck from election day forward. And there is no second act for Obama: He is now an old face with "hope and change" long evaporated. Nor can one expect him to be chastened by victory — he is surrounded by rub-their-noses-in-it partisans and epitomizes an existential arrogance.

The Fiscal Cliff. Doomsayers delight in complex, virtually inexplicable issues with great labels (ie: Global Warming).  If immediate action is not taken, unspeakable horrors will eventuate. Hence, the "fiscal cliff."

This essentially technical problem has two components:  (a) increasing the debt limit the US government can

U.S. President Barack Obama attends a campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio.

From all indications, most Canadians would vote to re-elect Barack Obama as U.S. president if we could, just as we would have done in 2008. One opinion survey four years ago indicated that as many as 92 per cent of us favoured Obama-Biden over McCain-Palin. The pre-election endorsements of Obama by Colin Powell, Michael Bloomberg and The Economist magazine, all of whom might have been expected to endorse Romney, will make the comfortable choice even easier for many Canadians.

There are many qualities we like in Obama, including his intelligence, compassion, surmounting of early upbringing obstacles, and his family. Both his books, Audacity of Hope and Dreams from my Father, are compelling. In short, many Canadians continue to have confidence in the president and to extend him the benefit of various doubts since he moved to the White House.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney, despite having a family cottage in Canada and thus more direct exposure to our country as a youth, is

U.S. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney arrives at a campaign rally in Sanford, Florida.

Willard Mitt Romney will be elected the 45th president of the United States on Tuesday night.

And it will be good for Canada.

Historically, it has been difficult to defeat an elected incumbent able to employ the presidency's "bully pulpit" to command public attention, control the domestic agenda and act in international relations as no challenger can match. However, recently this "given" has been less compelling as both Jimmy Carter (1980) and George H.W. Bush (1992) were defeated when seeking second terms. For each, "the economy, stupid" (or the stupid economy) proved defining. Carter was cursed by double disaster: economic malaise and protracted incarceration of U.S. diplomats in Tehran, combined with the botched rescue attempt.

Essentially, however, political lore ordains that governments are not defeated; they defeat themselves. President Barack Obama epitomizes that adage.

Obama faced problems defining one-term presidents. He has lamented the Great Recession — forgetting it

Canadians overwhelmingly support high levels of immigration.During the current election campaigns for the White House, Congress and state governments, it has become clear that many Americans think their immigration system is broken and they are shrieking for major repairs.

The campaign websites of Obama and Romney express sincere support for both immigration and reform of the system, but Romney probably has a point in stressing that the president has done little to tackle problems effectively during almost four years. Obama's defense of his record on the issue rings somewhat hollow.

A majority of Americans across the country now appears to want fewer new immigrants in the present economic climate. As it is, only a small number of states — including Ohio and Florida — will decide who wins in the electoral college, Obama and Romney understandably are both trying not to lose swing state voters on this and other potential vote-changing issues.

A study issued by the Congressional research service early this year agreed with the need for change in