Tranatlantic Craziness

I hear from a (British) FB buddy of mine that "apparently, the wise lawgivers of Texas are legislating to allow the carrying of guns on campus. Students, professors, tourists, the lot!" As Troll works with Texans and I therefore am treated to endless tales of their outlook on life, this doesn't entirely surprise me, and I may in fact be tempted to open a book on when the first campus massacre is going to take place in the Lone Star State following this latest bit of gun-craziness...

Whenever I try to discuss the subject of guns with American friends you can see their eyes glazing over as they believe they're about to get another lecture from another gun-hating Brit. This isn't entirely fair - I'm broadly in favour of guns if they're used as a means to getting cute fluffy animals or helpless little birdies one step closer to my Aga and therefore my stomach. Being farmers, most of my family had/have guns for precisely this purpose (and of course the odd bout of rat-shooting if the dogs/cats haven't kept up with the growth of the rodent population). What my family DON'T have lying around are automatic weapons, and to be frank I don't really see why ANYBODY needs to keep these items in the normal domestic setting: if you want to use the things, go to a range or gun club which can store them safely. And presumably have procedures in place to prevent your random nutter going on a spree...

The Americans obviously don't agree: for some peculiar reason even the most intelligent of my Yankee pals thinks it's perfectly reasonable to allow people to have any type of gun they fancy lying around the place; even if the said weapon is capable of replicating a scene from Vietnam in one little touch of the trigger. I used to argue the point with them, but time and experience has taught me I'm wasting my breath; these days I merely let them get on with it and indulge in a volley of 'I told you so' emails whenever the latest maniac goes on a rampage with his M1911.

It is true to say we aren't entirely rampage-free in the UK - look at the situation in Cumbria last year when Derrick Bird killed 12 and injured 11 with his shotguns. My response to that would be that the carnage would have been so much greater if he'd had the sort of access to automatic weapons which is 'enjoyed' as a matter of course in the States. In addition I'd draw attention to the fact that whenever incidents of this nature do occur in the UK they are so rare they are remembered for many years afterwards - Dunblane (which resulted in much tighter controls on handguns being put in place) was in 1996 and is still often mentioned whenever discussions on gun law occur. Hungerford in 1987 - coming up to 25 years ago - is still very much in the public mind. Can Americans honestly say the same, when there are so many more gun-related tragedies happening in the US?

It's a mystery to me. Why do otherwise intelligent, thinking, people have such a blind spot on this issue? Because blind spot it is... an earlier post from an American friend of mind on FB in connection with the shooting of the Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in January 2011 read thus:
"A friend posted this: "A fitting tribute to Dr. King: 'Last week we saw a white Catholic male Republican judge murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year-old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean American combat surgeon, and this all was eulogized by our African American President."
I refrained from comment - uncharacteristically - but my actual thoughts were 'This is all very nice and lovely, but does it not occur to you people that the incident probably wouldn't have happened at all if you had effective gun controls and couldn't buy your ammunition from Walmart along with your weekly groceries?'. Not ONE person made anything like that connection in the comments following my friend's posting, rather it was all a load of congratulatory back-slapping on what a jolly-lovely-integrated-harmonious place America is.

I've quoted the film The American President before in this blog, but it bravely (and almost uniquely in my knowledge of film) makes the point that US citizens do not 'connect gun crime with the possession of guns'. And judging by the events in Texas they aren't going to any time soon... anybody care to take a punt on my book regarding the timing of the next Texan campus massacre??