Edith and I have been in the US since Sunday and in between watching Mary Poppins, The Nutcracker, The Radio City Music Hall Rockettes and - tomorrow - Aida we follow the current discussion pretty closely.
Few random observations:
- When was the last time that someone needed to fire 100 shots and more a minute to fend off a thief/robber in his house? Are thiefs and robbers assaulting in brigade strength the norm in the US? And why is it that whenever something like this happens none of the many overarmed NRA vigilantes is around to stop the computer game-induced mass killing with a good shot of his/hers?
- "If the government has them, the Second Amendment sure gives me the right to have them too." Interesting concept, especially if applied to aircraft carriers, chemical weapons, tanks, drones and nuclear bombs. No harm will be done if these are in the hands of law-abiding citizens (and these have children free of Asperger's Syndrome). And anyway: The nuclear bombs didn't kill the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, people did. Or computer games if the NRA is to be believed by its measured, coherent and empathetic press statement of today. Such intellectual might present there, gun-lobbying and IQ must be interrelated somehow. Computer games killed the children in Sandy Hook, what a lucid observation. Try doing it by hand or with a computer mouse though rather than a military weapon. Some work.
- After a similar incident with an assault gun in Scotland in the nineties, British Parliament there (all parties, Scots and English alike) was quick to ban such weapons in the UK. The UK has approx 35 gun deaths a year, the US around 11.000, now the former colony does encompass a larger area with more people - you do the ratio math - and might also be populated by better marksmen and -women, but if you Americans are so uncontrollably aggressive and good shots too boot shouldn't you all be disarmed for safety reasons and British rule reinstated? Less people died of guns on a bad day at the height of the Northern Ireland conflict than die in the US on a good day in peaceful times.
- Why is it more difficult to buy and keep a poisonous rattlesnake in the US than to buy an assault gun? Killing thirty school children with rattlesnake venom would certainly take some logistic effort especially during December in the North. Those animals do like it warm to be quick on the draw.
- Why do you require a driver's license, but no gun-user one? Why do cars need to be registered and insured, but guns need not?
- I hope Bloomberg and Biden bring some sense to this. Keep your handguns, sporting and hunting rifles if you must, but semi-automatics and assault guns ("cosmetics only"-assault guns as one NRA official called them) are a perversion of the Second Amendment. That didn't say anything about cannons at the time either.
