Armed & Dangerous - An Entire Country
Committed to an afternoon of mindless football watching, I was instead jolted back into reality by the horror story from just below the border.
A man walks into a coffee shop and shoots and kills four police officers.
You can find the story and late-minute updates on all your news sources on the web.
Here is the morning version from the New York Times.
I'm not sure why, but I have found this news so disturbing.
If you followed CNN at all throughout the day, yesterday was an almost typical madhouse in the USA in terms of killings, shootings and mayhem.
Family shootings, random shootings, gang shoot-outs and so on.
But the idea of some mad fool walking into a cafe and executing four police officers is particularly frightening and offensive.
Much of America is obsessed with the "right" to carry guns.
And most of America is armed.
Twice over.
Almost anyone can stroll into any gun shop and arm up.
Anyone can go online and buy automatic repeating deadly assault weapons. There are hundreds of websites selling killing machines at bargain prices.
I just Googled "AK-47" and this is what I got:
(Results 1 - 10 of about 1,780,000 for ak-47 for sale. (0.23 seconds)
The Winchester Varmint - albeit not an Uzi or better - is on sale for $499 with telescope.
Now, please, do not write in and use that tired old mistaken piece of shit that passes for folk wisdom - "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."
Puleeeezze.
It is the ubiquitous AVAILABLITY of guns that allows people to kill people, using, oddly enough, GUNS.
Did you hear me say outlaw all private guns?
No, you didn't.
But certainly a sane society can figure out how not to sell war machines at the corner grocery.
The picture of that colossal idiot and dreadful actor, Charlton Heston, holding his rifle over his head and yelling at his NRA convention, "Not over my dead body," continues to haunt me.
What might Mr. Heston have to offer the families of these four slain police officers?
Oh, I get it.
They died so that we can have the right to run around shopping malls with guns and kill officers who are defending our right to run around shopping malls and kill officers...
My visits to the USA have become less and less frequent over the years.
I pray they can find a way to become a more civil society.
But I doubt it.
Not when there is so much money and there are so many votes involved in the making and selling of killing machinery.
3 comments:
Sad fact is David, the American public abetted by the gun-lobby, nationalistic politicians, and most media firmly believe that carrying a gun is a god given right.
I don't see in Genesis that God created guns, but to the average American, the right to bear arms is right up next there to the bible.
As long as the US public put up with this crap, horrific murders will only increase.
In Canada Automatic weapons are prohibited; handguns are restricted, yet with the great gun shop to the south, such laws are useless here.
I know an acquaintance who has acquired an UZI (this is for real) in the USA (second hand through a church newsletter of all things) for family protection.
I do not visit him any more.
Our American neighbours will not change as they are locked in false history with guns and are doomed to have this horror repeated and repeated and repeated.
Evil Eye
David, for the most part I agree with your thoughts on the US and guns. However, shootings and killing happen in in Vancouver and Canada too. I've always believed and made the point that the US has 300,000,000 plus million people, Canada has 32 million. If you do the math, it only stands to reason that with the comparison in population, it makes sense that murders would be much, much higher in the US than in Canada - with or without guns and gun laws.
David, I feel the same as you do about this. Today, I was driving to Bellingham and there was a sign on the side of the road that read something like (I don't remember exactly), "Get your guns and ammo here, before the other guy does." And there was a guy dressed up and waving to people to come into the store. It's such a mindset apart from anything we have in Canada. It scared me to bits. The border coming home to Canada was doubly secure, with American border security set up in two cars before the Aldergrove Border. Perhaps looking for the killer? It's just heartbreaking. And devastating.
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