Ten Minutes

Hello dear readers!

So, first of all apologies for last week's missing post. This was almost entirely due to a sudden and only half expected bout of extreme MS related Tiredness, one that saw me take to my bed on Monday night and get twelve hours deep and apparently much needed sleep. Putting going to bed to, um, bed for a moment here is last weeks offering, updated and posted a mere seven days late. Enjoy.

I think it is a very human thing to put oneself at the centre of life. To concentrate on those things that are closest to us, that have the most effect on our own personal stories.

And then something like the tragic events of two weeks ago happens. Something outside of our own little worlds, something far removed from most of us, but something that underlines just how tiny one person’s problems can be.

I am of course talking about the Las Vegas shootings

It was the night of October the first, a Sunday, that a 64 year old Nevada native with no criminal record started to fire from his 32nd floor hotel room into the crowds gathered for a music concert. He fired quickly and indiscriminately. In 10 minutes he had killed 58 people and injured 489, before turning a gun on himself.

Just writing those numbers really brings home the scale of the whole thing. This isn’t to say that all life isn’t precious or that one murder victim isn’t one too many but the sheer amount of lives that were irrevocably changed in that ten minute period is truly staggering.

Of course, pretty much as soon as the smoke had cleared the usual debate started. The cut and thrust of the danger of firearms against the defence of the US's 2nd amendment rights of the individual being pretty much front and centre of a huge amount of Facebook posts and comments in a way that seemed, to this blogger at least, wholly reminiscent of the kind of debates held after each of these mass shootings.

That last sentence probably brings it home for me. We shouldn’t be pluralising an act like that Sunday’s. One is enough for something to get done about it, several is far too many. 

So, what is the answer? Well, call me a liberal, pinko, commie if you will, but I say less guns would be a good start. Yes, guns don’t kill people, people kill people as the firearm fans like to say. Guns do make it incredibly easy though, and no, it won’t on it’s own stop mass killings all on it's own. You can, after all, build a bomb in your kitchen and use it to kill huge numbers. That doesn’t mean that you should open up the options available to the attacker by offering a choice of deadly weapon though.

Then there is the self defence argument. The ability to defend your life and liberty, and that of those around you, is obviously so much better if you have the best weapons available to do so... isn't it? 

Well, actually, no. The fact is, simply owning a gun actually multiplies your chance of being shot approximately four and a half times. It’s also notable on the defence argument that in the last 33 years no mass shooting or terrorist attack has been stopped by an armed civilian. Not one. The chance of defending yourself against the government, a huge part of the reasoning behind the second amendment, is practically nil. You can have the biggest, manliest gun there is, with the biggest calibre bullets, and the best rate of fire. Won’t do much when a tank rolls up your street or a missile is launched from hundreds of miles away. Sorry.

Now I know that any solution to this problem that relies on limiting access to deadly firearms, or even just the type of guns that people can own, will not go down well. America is too addicted to guns to give them up without using the force they believe the guns will protect them from. So what else?

If guns are still to be available, how about they are less easy to purchase? How about proper and exhaustive psychological profiling both before ownership is granted and at a set timescale thereafter? What about videos to make clear just what damage and loss can be caused by guns (similar to the ones used at speeding courses in the UK) and proper training being a requirement of ownership? What about an increased tax on them, to make ownership still available to all but perhaps lower it down peoples hierarchy of needs and wants.

All of that seems reasonable to me, but them I am, as previously mentioned, a pinko-commie-leftie who hails from the lands over the sea. Maybe I miss some of the finer points in the arguments. What I do know is that, contrary to what I’m sure some are thinking, it is my problem. 

It’s everyone’s problem, that's the truth of it. The victims in Las Vegas may have all been Americans (I’m not sure) but first and foremost they were people. They were fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, and whatever other relation you care to mention. They were loved, respected, relied upon. They meant something to someone, and now they are gone.

I might not be able to affect US policy from my seat here in West Yorkshire but I can post these few words and hope, just hope, that someone, somewhere will read them and will at least think about the issue in a different way. I might be writing into the void, I don’t know, but I can hope.

Until next time...