FRIEND VICTOR ON GUNS, GANGSTERS & GOMMORAH

The Colorado massacre, in one of those bleak coincidences, occurred during the same week as the anniversary of the murder of 77 people in Norway. It occurred a week after the shooting of 22 people in Toronto.

These examples, and others, show that crazy, evil people bent on murder, will find the means to do it. Ask the parents of the Jewish kids who died in Belarus last week.

The gun availability in America is of course ludicrous but it has willing, non-american participants. The gun of choice for ghetto gangstas in America is the Glock, a product of Austria. It has been celebrated in the songs of numerous rappers. Lee Oswald used an Italian assault rifle. France was the major supplier of Iraq's nuclear program. Europeans preach peace and sell death.

These events usually result in a having the same bromides trotted out such as the root cause being poverty. Norway has the world's richest economy on a per capita basis. It still produces mass murderers. The shoot out in Toronto did, admittedly, occur at a street party in a government housing project. But organizers of the party bought $1500 worth of cognac to distribute on the sidewalk. Poor in Toronto is upper middle class in Somalia.

What is most worrisome about America is that the lines of hatred are deeply an indelibly drawn. Vast segments in both the Democrat and Republican camps loathe the other side. It is not a friendly policy difference for these folks as it was in the 1950's. It is hatred. It is like Northern Ireland circa 1970. It will not get better. Add to that the class hatreds, racial hatreds, religious hatreds, generational hatreds. It is a pile of tinder awaiting a careless match.

By all means restrict the guns. The hoards of haters will find other ways. Obama recently bragged about hacking Iran's defence computers using Israeli technology. He didn't say much when the New York Times revealed that China had hacked Pentagon computers. On almost a monthly basis, some hacker brings down operating systems in millions of computers.

How long will it be before some embittered computer hacker will over-ride hospital computer systems, changing drug doses to poison and shutting down breathing apparatus? How long before traffic control systems are locked in red lights by mendacious hackers just for the fun of it? Far-fetched. I hope so.I know better.

You cannot have a country that is a cocktail of hatred and technology without the unspeakable happening.