Gunslingers!

There is one American characteristic that baffles the British probably more than  any other. The obsession with firearms is inexplicable; many British would regard it as infantile, a cowboy fantasy, the belief that if you are packing a gun somehow you become Superman when the figures show that you are more likely to become dead.

 

There reckoned to be 300 million firearms in the US, one each for almost the whole population (nobody is really sure because there must be a large number of  ‘illegal’ guns). American heroes appear to consist heavily of gunslingers real and fictional; Wyatt Earp, Butch Cassidy, Dirty Harry, Jesse James; the list goes on.

The gun lobby insists that the Second Amendment sanctifies gun-ownership without let or hindrance. This reads:                                    

"A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

It is not necessary to be a lawyer to understand that the meaning is plain. The right to bear arms relates only to membership of a militia. The rationale is simple to see. The US was just emerging from a Civil War, the War of Independence. It had no standing army so defence was the remit of militias, part-time soldiers who presumably had to supply their own weapons. And law and order was scarcely extant in large parts of America, so it was a ‘given’ that every able bodied man ought to own a gun.

 

But this was the 18^th Century, and it is surely naïve to think that the Founding Fathers would have would have drafted such a measure in the 21st Century.

 

According to District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court held that the Constitution protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defence within the home.

 

This judgment is at odds with the wording of the Second Amendment and is surely perverse.

 

The gun lobby clings to the notion that guns keep you safe. Its propaganda is often virulent. On one day there were no less than 17 posts on Facebook

Last year, there were 353 mass killings and  62 school shootings. There were 12.223 deaths from firearms; this would have been less than 2,000 if the rate had been similar to thee UK, which had 29 firearms-related fatalities

 

But before the British get too self-righteous about ‘gun law’, they might wish to reflect on the stark contrast.

 

Since Tony Blair’s kneejerk reaction to the Dunblane school killings, it has become almost impossible for an ordinary citizen to acquire any sort of firearm, especially a handgun (when the prohibition was brought in, the Essex police confiscated the starting cannon at the  Yacht Club at Burnham-on-Crouch as the barrel length was less than the permitted minimum).

 

There was a time when a boy’s most prized possession was his air-rifle. Not anymore. These need a licence and a minimum age limit of 18. Cross-bows are caught. The humble catapult needs no licence but it is probably categorised by the Bill as an offensive weapon.

 

 

There’s not much left that is not an object of suspicion for the police. Pepper spray? Forget about it. And be careful what you carry in your car. My old builder was cautioned by the police for ‘going equipped with house-breaking implements’. It was his tool-kit.

 

The upshot is that the only people carrying guns are the police and the villains, neither of whom is to be trusted with them.