MrGareth’s Missives

Listening to the hours and hours and reams and reams of media coverage about the Batman shootings is just infuriating.  I've written about this before, but it never ceases to amaze me how America just doesn't seem to get it.  Hardly anyone seems to ask "isn't there something that can be done about this?" Instead they just wollow in the intenstines of the latest psycho's decent into carnage.

An analogy occurred to me where it feels like one of those cliched scenes where a serial victim of domestic violence throws herself on the sympathies of her friends and family, but over time their sympathies reduce and reduce as the obvious answer to her situation continues to inexplicaby allude her.  "Why don't you just leave him?" they ask in disbelief.  "I can't", she answers, "I just can't".

How many people need to die before someone asks the questions, "why don't we just make guns illegal?"

Jamie Holmes seems nothing more than a confused and lonely kid whose dreams were shattered - something that happens to almost everyone at some stage in their lives.  But instead of the usual break-down and at the very worst a case of limited domestic violence that leads to some degree of commital; this kid is able to - over the course of just two months - accumulate the most frightening arsenal of the sort a small resistance army would envy.  Four guns including an assualt rifle and a shot gun and 6,000 - SIX THOUSAND - rounds of amunition were sold to him by what seems like the same retailer with no questions asked.  Apparently this kid even got a briefing on how to use these weapons.  Somewhere along the line he was also able to boobytrap his appartment with a scary array of chemical devices and - get this - mortar rounds!

Then he was able to go out and kill 12 innocent, film lovers including a six year old child, and wound scores of others while shattering the cinema-going inocence of the world.

Who are these people that insist on the right to bare arms?  Why is this arbitary right more important than the peace and harmony of millions of ordinary people?  Why do polititians appease this ridiculously dangerous biggotry?  

Furthermore, why does the right to bare arms for some trump the right of many more to "the right to the pursuit of happiness" which is apparently the very bedrock of the constitution.  Wasn't the former an ammendment to the latter?

I just don't understand.  I really don't.  It's like the frustrated friends and family asking over and over, "why don't you just leave him?"

But even if America continues to indulge this stupid minority, at least bring in some controls for crying out loud.  Bring in psychological profiles of assualt-rifle-buyers.  Require parental escort until the age of 25.  Flag the rapid accumulation of weopons to the police for investigation.  Take some bloody responsibilty because I am so fed up with sitting through these miserable stories of the tragic innocent victims of these easily avoidable horror-scenes.

President Obama - if you win in November, will you try?  Please try.  This stuff has got to become a thing of the past.

The recent and tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford put me in mind of the Eddie Izzard sketch, "The Gun Thing".  Not that there is anything funny about this dreadful and gruesome crime, but more because of how completely farcical the debate about gun control has become in the US.  We seem to have moved beyond abject denial and into something so much more surreal.

"...guns don't kill people, people do,"says Izzard, quoting the oft-used National Rifle Association strapline.  "But I think the gun helps".

The US is currently completely absorbed by a discussion over the apparently "toxic" nature of political debate in the US, and how it is responsible for these terrible events. 

Are they fcuking kidding? (please excuse my French.)

Has the seemingly endless array of mass shootings in the US not taught Americans anything?  Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood.  How often have random and indiscriminate acts of murder that deprive the innocent of their right to lifeuntil someone, somewhere, realises that "hey, maybe it's the guns that kill people!"

How did Australia react to the senseless mass shooting of innocent tourists at Port Arthur?  Regulated gun ownership.

How did Britain react to the heart-wrenching massacre of innocent children in a school in Dunblane?   Regulated gun ownership.

Am I missing something?  It's not the "toxic"nature of political debate that enabled Jared Loughner to shoot Ms Gifford through the brain, maim others and kill six.  If that were the case he would have shouted, ranted and maybe even spat or thrown an egg.  It was the gun in his hand - that he no doubt found easy to acquire despite obvious mental health issues - that enabled him to cause such chaos, injury and death. 

The rational reaction of any sane individual or community to any disaster is to examine the facts and determine a cause of action that will prevent such a tragedy happening again.  Americans, like junkies in denial of the fact that the drugs are ruining their lives, have come up with perhaps the most ridiculous furfie yet. 

Sadly not even the fact that in this event it is an actual Federal Lawmaker that has been injured will change anything.  The slaying of their own President in 1963 didn't seem to make any serious difference.  How many lives are worth the preservation of an Amendment - an Amendment mind you - to the "sacred" constitution?  The families of these poor victims must be beside themselves with fury, because I'm bloody angry and it has got nothing to do with me!