Asking Americans to give up guns is like asking the English to give up football. It ain't going to happen any time soon. It is ingrained in the American Psyche, a part of their culture that has gone down the generations right back from when the Second Amendment was implemented back in 1791. I need it for protection, they cry, it is my constitutional right they argue. If you come to my house with a gun then I will get out my bigger gun and shoot you dead!
They even argue that had the teachers in that tragic school in Connecticut been armed then the gunman could have been stopped earlier. A valid if simplistic argument but an argument all the same. An even better argument would be that if the kids were armed too then maybe no lives would have been lost at all. If everyone has a gun then nobody would shoot anyone else is their basic belief.
So lets look at that argument more closely. If you have a society with very few guns and only the guns in circulation are held illegally is there likely to be more shootings than in a society where everyone has a gun? Couldn't a society where everyone one has a gun for their own protection be described as a lawless society? Even in the wild west guns had to be handed in as people entered the town limits.
How can a civilised country, the self proclaimed greatest nation on earth justify any citizen walking into a shop and buying an automatic shooting rifle? That selfish, deluded murderer, allegedly walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School armed with 3 pistols and a rifle last Friday. Unbelievably, the first time he committed a crime was when he pulled the trigger and started killing people.
Over 16 million applications to buy a gun have been received in America this year and over 156 million have been applied for since 1998. Reports suggest that AK-47s are flying off the shelves of weapons retailers since the tragic shooting last week. There is a 'no turning back' view point raging in America.
President Obama, the great persuader, the super cool communicator, now has his greatest challenge. To convince America that is has to change the very fabric it has been brought up on. That giving citizens the right to bare arms doesn't give them a right to own an arsenal that Rambo would be proud of. We wish him luck but certainly won't be holding our breath.
We end with one last question:
Does the right to bare arms really mean that the man in the street has a right to own this?
Daniel Clayton
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