Guns America

"Our lives are no less valuable at political events than they are while we are shopping, jogging or watching television at home. Yet I'm being told that while I can defend myself at home or at the grocery store, if I cross a line and go to a political event and someone gets violent, I can't defend myself by carrying a gun. That makes no sense. We have the right to defend ourselves anywhere our lives could be threatened."

This is what intelligent men and women up against in America. This time our citizen idiot Philip Van Cleaves, President of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, who is on the Op-Ed page of the USA Today. Does Philip look around and see the wild, wild, west? In a civilised society, we defer our protection to the police who do a pretty good job if you look at crime and murder rates per population but here is the data from the FBI (1999 information) - total homicides per 100,000 in 1999 were 5.7 of which 3.72 were handgun, or 11,130 (the percentage of murders committed by firearms 68%). Given that crime rates continue to drop in all major US cities, the numbers look better today. America has its mean streets and if Americans want to bunker up in their homes with a pistol or semi-automatic, God bless (38% of US households have a firearm BTW while over 223 million in circulation as at 1993 says the ATF). Where I have a Big Problem is public places. Nobody should have the right to bring a home weapon to the shopping mall, our schools or sporting venues and civic centers. These points well policed and crowds offer further protection (unless it's West Ham football). What kind of a moron would spend his good life fighting for the right to bring a concealed weapon to a town hall meeting? Our country still suffers the assassinations of JFK and Bobby, Martin Luther King and John Lenon; nearly Reagon. The only dead certainty is that each fell from a bullet.

Photo from Racism Review.