After nine African-Americans were gunned down by a racist as they attended a bible study class in Charleston, South Carolina, Charles Cotton, a board member of the NRA, explained who was really to blame for this horrific act of domestic terrorism. One of the murder victims, State Senator Clementa Pinckney, had voted against conceal carry guns. Said Cotton, “Eight of his church members might be alive if he had expressly allowed church members to carry handguns in church. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue”.
For heartless cruelty and stupidity this must take a First Prize. To put it bluntly, anyone advocating a shoot-out in a church has to be as seriously deranged as the racist shooter. What sort of a person is it that regards guns as more important than the lives of flesh-and-blood human beings? Those who don’t live in America can now better understand how difficult it is to introduce grown-up common sense about guns to some Americans.
I think I agree with Bernie Sanders on this one: although America generally needs tighter gun control, I would not advocate a UK-style complete ban on guns. Not only would that violate the second amendment, it would trample on the culture and traditions of rural Americans- about 99% of whom use guns responsibly. The gap between urban and rural America on this issue needs to be bridged, because right now, the NRA and Democratic city mayors are literally talking to different audiences. Rural states like Sanders’ Vermont and neighbouring New Hampshire enjoy some of the lowest crime rates in America. Meanwhile, cities with (relatively) strict gun control such as New Orleans, Washington DC, Chicago and Detroit- have some of the worst murder rates in the developed world. Also, European cities with gun control like Paris, Athens or Madrid- are not exactly crime free zones either.
There are plenty of reasons why gun violence is worse in the cities, compared with, say, Vermont and New Hampshire, the obvious one being an underclass which is basically uneducated, poor and hope-less. This group is in the cities because jobs disappeared in the countryside, and are now disappearing in the cities, too.
Try to imagine the feeling of walking down the street, or going to church, not knowing who has a loaded gun on him/ her. Although the gun violence is localised in the cities ( the south-east in the case of Washington, poor people), it is now legal to carry a gun anywhere. So we are back in the era of O.K Corrall And, no, I don’t subscribe to the propanganda pf thefirearms industry to the effect that this reduces gun violence; it increases accidental death. As someone who has avoided death by gunshot by an estimated 2 mms. I can be forgiven for wamting all guns kept to the properly trained military.