http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/04/wendys.shooting.ap/index.html

There has been another mass shooting in America (see link above). A man went into a Wendy’s restaurant and shot 20 bullets which killed 1 and injured 4, before killing himself. There is a recording on that link of one of the calls to emergency services, in which you can hear a man saying:

"I can't move my arm. He blew my arm off, my arm is half blown off. I'm losing lots of blood ... Please help me. I'm going to lose consciousness. ... I'm losing lots of blood”

As with all of these incidents, it’s very sad for the victims and their families, no-one can understand why the shooter did it, and it gives new life to the never-ending debate on gun control. I shall now try and present both sides of the gun control debate (as relates to this sort of incident)  briefly but fairly.

The anti-gun-control argument says that if everyone in that restaurant was carrying a gun, the gunman wouldn’t have been able to take so many shots, because someone would have pulled out their own gun and shot him first. The result would have been lives saved. If you take guns away from law-abiding citizens, the only people who get left with guns are the criminals, they say. Banning alcohol didn’t work during prohibition, banning drugs doesn’t work now, and so banning guns wouldn’t work either.

The pro-gun-control argument says that if guns are illegal, it’s far harder for a deranged person to get old of one, and so the result is lives saved. Also, if everyone is armed, the prospect for shootings is much higher. The last thing you need when someone produces a gun in a crowded restaurant is for 30 or 40 law abiding citizens to pull out their own guns and shoot someone else who has a gun. The result is carnage, so they say. Bullets start to fly, panic ensues and 30 guns get pulled out. Can we really expect all of those people with guns to correctly identify and then shoot the original shooter when the room is full of smoke, bangs and screams? The original gunman always has the upper hand - it's the one with the gun already in it.

But the UK gun ban instituted after the Dunblane massacre appears to work rather well, notwithstanding Prince Philip’s assertion that those 15 children and their teacher “Could just as easily have been killed with a cricket bat”. We get about 100 gun deaths a year in the UK. This is so low that it doesn’t even register on the table here:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_gun_vio_hom_hom_wit_fir-crime-gun-violence-homicides-firearms

USA: 39.5 per 100,000 population. UK: about 0.16. The gun death rate is thus over 200 times higher in America than in the UK. Obviously there are other factors at play, but this difference is so staggering that the UK gun ban can't simply be dismissed. So why does this happen so much in America? This subject was covered in Michael Moore’s documentary “Bowling for Columbine”. It’s probably because of a combination of factors including: a culture of gun ownership going back to the Wild West with gun-wielders seen as strong and heroic, a fiercely individualistic and self-reliant outlook, and distrust of the authorities ability to protect them.

So, will anything ever be done about this? There are approx. 12,000 gun killings and 18,.000 gun suicides every year in the USA. As an outsider it looks to me as if the majority of people accept this carnage as acceptable “collateral damage” for their “right to bear arms”. I can’t help but wonder if the continual drip of murders both in real life and in films has completely desensitized people to the point that they simply don’t care any more. I hope that isn’t the case, but it’s hard to ignore that interpretation.

The picture above is unrelated to killings, you will be glad to know. It’s our pet sheep Betty and Twinkie, aged about 2 days.  Those particular lambs will NEVER be lead to the slaughter. This is Helen's picture, not mine.

Cherers, Tom.