Brenda from Bristol comments on the latest mass shooting in the USA...


Not another one...

You have to wonder why we bother reporting on mass shootings in the USA, it's not like they will ever do anything about it. In fact they cannot do anything about it. The genie is well and truly out of the proverbial bottle. It becomes a top story, in the UK at least, only when a certain number of people are killed or if there are some highly emotive subjects involved such as a school shooting. It would be faintly ridiculous, in the UK, to report every 'mass shooting' in the USA because that would result in a news story every single night! And that's only because 'mass shooting' has a definition and that definition is four or more victims! Given that there are on average more than one 'mass shooting' per day then we would all soon get a little bored of the regular news report. If anything it might as well be a daily segment just like the weather for about ten seconds just to note, another nn deaths from gun crime in the USA in the past 24hrs!

And then there are all those other shootings that are not mass shootings, so three, two or one victim, and you end up with 12,000+ deaths per year from shooting including of course police action and suicide. That's a lot of dead people. Poor old Cole would go quite literally insane, and that's just those shot people.

For a teensy weensy bit of perspective, there are 40,000 deaths pa in the USA from traffic accidents. So logically if you call for guns to be banned for 12,000 deaths then... you see where that argument goes and I won't bother with it because then I'd just sound like some dick from the NRA!

While I'm at it, there were 38,000+ dead US servicemen during Korea and 58,000+ from the two decades of US involvement in Vietnam. And think of the public reaction to those events. Presidents brought down, huge marches, civil disorder, civilian deaths...

It's not like I don't care, I do. But there is nothing I can do about it and nothing the average american will be able to about it...ever! It is not even Paradoxically, and I suspect there is a lot of paradox involved in the whole US gun laws debate, after a 'notable' event the number of guns sold increases as people want to protect themselves so want to own a gun to do so. As the argument hoes, if the bad guys have guns then the good guys should be armed to defend themselves. And yet the evidence points to this very rarely being the case with figures showing the number of occasions when a member of the public successfully defends themselves, righteously to use an odd phrase, compared to the number of accidental deaths and/or suicides due to overall gun ownership does not really bear out the notion of being safer because you own a gun. Yet I have some sympathy for the notion and if I lived in the US there is a good chance I would own a gun but probably out of irrational fear rather than any good reason.

And just think. Imagine you live in a state where you are licenced to for 'concealed carry' of a firearm and you happen to be in a mall when an active shooter situation takes place. About the worst thing you could possibly do in that situation is head towards the sound of gunfire with a weapon drawn. Just think about that from the point of view of officers attending the situation. They hear gunfire, they see people running away, they see dead and wounded, they see blood and right in front of them is some citizen with a gun in their hand. For all their training, there is a 50/50 chance you're about to die for trying to be a hero. Which is one reason why very few people actually do so, they can find themselves in a really difficult place between two sets of armed people very high on adrenaline!

As for reform of the laws. Just try it. As I said, genie not only got out the bottle but it smashed the bottle and shot the person that let it out, in the head, between the eyes, stone cold! I think it would be a brave president that actually even tried to do anything about it. Even if congress senate judiciary all said. hell yeah. let's get some of these guns of the streets, lets make it harder to get a licence, lets stop these travelling gun fares... I predict a riot... I also predict a rise in gun purchase and a rise in militia groups not least white supremacist groups and other right wing nutjobs setting up camp in weirdest wildest Arkansas!

So, it will not happen in the USA, ever. And if it will not happen, ever, then why bother having it as a headline on the daily news, a minor sub-story is fine, but not much more... far more important we watch to see if that bloke BoJo has still got his finger in the dam to keep the water back or whether he has stuck it back up his ass where it best suits him.


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