A commentator on my post about the Pulse murders says that murderers can also use knives or rocks - so why do I think banning guns is a good idea?
Well, it's like this. A knife is quite an inefficient and unreliable way of killing one or two people. It's rubbish for a mass murder. People can wrest a knife out of your hand, they can kick you in the shins. If you want to know how effective a knife is as a weapon for terrorising more than one or two people, consider the case of James Rashford, who attempted to hold up Lloyds Bank in Taunton with a machete. Failing to reckon with the bravery of the Taunton public, he was jumped on by the other customers and ended up with a 30 months sentence. If he had had an assault rifle, the story would have been different. I reckon he'd have got his money.
Or consider the suggestion that we should ban stones because people in more regressive regimes execute people with them. Well, stones are even less efficient than knives. If James Rashford of Taunton had walked into Lloyds with a stone, the cashier would have told him not to be so silly.
In England, you are actually forbidden to carry lock knives, flick knives and assorted other forms of cutlery in public. We don't even like that much danger in our lives. After the Hungerford massacre, we banned all handguns. I didn't agree with it - still don't. We have responsible gun clubs, with very secure safes. We could have kept the sport without endangering the public. However. We banned all handguns. And there has been only one gun massacre since.
Due to the gun laws and the public perception that guns are "protection" in the States, you're in danger of being shot by your own toddler. Whereas I'm completely safe from this. Mostly because I have no toddler. But also because, even if I had accidentally produced a proto-toddler three years ago and forgotten about it, that toddler would still not be armed - no matter how angry he or she would be that I had forgotten about the whole event. In England, toddlers are not dangerous.
If you're going to commit a terrorist atrocity, in a gay nightclub, you will be more effective with an assault rifle, which shoots nearly a round every second, than with a bag of stones. King David himself, you may remember, could only cope with one Philistine at a time when using stones, however effectively the individual stones were. Drive-by stonings are annoying but rarely fatal.
If you want to stop mass-shootings, whether a "terrorist" 2nd generation Afghan in a night club or inadequate white boys in a school, your best bet is to limit the number of guns. There's a reason why there are no mass murders committed with rocks.
Guns are a serious issue in the USA. And there is huge Gun Lobby, which wields enormous lobbying power to keep Gun ownership as the right of every US Citizen. Today isn't the wild west, with the gun slingers,it's a country of dangerous individuals, many perhaps no on the public view, who have the potential to wreak death and destruction at the drop of a hat. There is something sick at the heart of a society that allows this to happen.
ReplyDeleteVery sad to read that a French police commander was stabbed to death in front of his house outside Paris, together with his partner. The work of another "narcissist". In Europe we are facing a problem that is much bigger than one of simply gun control.
ReplyDeleteI dare say if you were to scour the annals of inhumanity long enough, you would find an example of mass murder with rocks. It would only require an enclosed space and a plentiful supply of rocks and throwers. Many Neanderthal groups must have ended up at the wrong end of rocks thrown by Homo Sapiens.
ReplyDeleteTo be serious for a moment, I am writing a long piece about the Swedish misfit who killed three people in a school last year, armed with a sword; and as I read the detailed police account of his actions, I realise that had he had an assault rifle, he could instead have killed 60 or 120 without any difficulty at all.
ReplyDeleteIt's a cult thing, a fetish, like sacred bulls in India or royalty in Britain. Except that they don't regularly kill people.
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