Arizona shooting should be a wake-up call!

It seems the polarisation in American politics is going to change. Let's hope for the better. Having lived a time in the US, I know that debate is raw in tooth and claw for many. The problem is that the real problems facing Americans, like the British and others, are never really addressed. Ron Paul has done his best. He's tried telling an eye-blinking Bernanke that printing money is no use. What happens? The computers are still spewing out dollars in some kind of Mary Poppins meets Willie Wonka fantasy. If ever the dollar ceased being a reserve currency.....well, I suppose that's why conspiracy theories are better than reality. Reality hurts.

Guns, guns and more guns. A woman in Tucson thinks that the whole USA should have towns with armed citizenry. It doesn't seem to stop. Jared Loughner was by all accounts a depressed loner who, for everyone who came into contact with him, thought odd at best. Most gave him a wide berth if he hadn't chosen to avoid them himself. Yet this paranoid loner was still capable of walking into a gun shop and purchasing a semi-automatic weapon. The gun shop owner just looked him up on a list and found he wasn't a proscribed person. One has to wonder what sort of character you need to be in order not to get a gun in the USA. If those who are now saying how much they thought was odd about him had been able to say he shouldn't have a gun, we would all be better off. But they weren't called to give character assessments. I'm all in favour of people have the freedom to own guns. But not all and sundry bar a few known hoodlums.

I never wanted a gun or felt the need for a gun in America. I was near a shooting in Atlanta. We've all known of some crazed outburst of gunfire. Is it all necessary? The Constitution is paraded as an excuse for Tea Party types to bristle with bazookas. It was never meant to be an such thing. I doubt the Founding Fathers had any notion that "the right to bear arms" was a right for deluded souls to fire off at them. Benjamin Franklin would be horrified if he thought unstable types could brandish firearms willy-nilly, let alone use them in dastardly circumstances. No, "the right to bear arms" is all about the local citizenry guarding themselves from outside ambush. That, and that alone, is what they meant by the right to bear arms. 240 odd years ago the United States was in need of citizens looking after themselves. In 2010, it should be another matter entirely. The police, the sheriffs, FBI, et al. Can they not cope?

Loughner bought his weapon either to fondle in his bedroom or to create uncivil mayhem. Only a lunatic legislator could gainsay that! I hope attitudes change. If this doesn't do it, well...!! Can anyone say that another loner like Loughner isn't buying such a weapon right now in some gun shop? These guns aren't for hunting. They are not for defence. So what the hell are they for?

The man in custody is being charged with upteen charges. Vengeance will take centre stage and he will no doubt be executed if found guilty. As it was his desire, apparently, to shoot himself, such an outcome may be just be to his liking. If nothing changes then another execution will be just another spectacle to assuage those who like such spectacles. It won't stop people going into gun shops with intent to commit murder, it won't change those who know "loners" and "weirdos" in their lives but say diddly-squat to anyone until the shots ring out. Life and death will just carry on.

Unless, of course, some people on Capitol Hill think differently!

Kentucky fried breakfasts - DEADLY STUFF!

The American nation is yet again reeling over the deaths of people in a crazed shooting. As anyone with half a brain can hold a gun permit it is highly likely that these shootings will continue. Maybe the Tea Party types can reconcile this latest episode with the fact that it was trailer trash arguing the toss over how eggs are cooked for breakfast? Of course, any such suggestion would be outrageous. But it does seem absolutely barmy that guns can be so readily available with consequences like this.

The right to bear arms is the most misunderstood right that Americans have. They seem to think it is a right to take the law into their own hands as and when it suits them. If your eggs aren't hot for your breakfast, well, heck, shoot the cook. In this case the cook was a wife and mother too. The innocent suffering for the guilty? Who knows, but if this character didn't have guns then this outrage would not have happened like it did.

County Sheriff Ray Clemons, investigating the murders, said he had known Stanley Neace, the perpetrator, for some years and he did not have a bad record. "He was a little hot sometimes, but we never had any major problems. Nothing like this." Which just about says it all. Guns and petty squabbles don't mix. If anyone is to have a gun it is only the sheriff. I don't hold my breath that much will change but at least the sheriff has had a wake-up call.

Six souls are moving on but is American public opinion?

Ex-soldier faces jail for handing in gun

You couldn't make it up, could you? In fact, why would anyone do so? The world can be crazy, but this story just shows how bad our legislators have become in making good law. The Surrey Mirror reports that a former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for "doing his duty". Judge Christopher Critchlow said, "This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge. The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant." So with that we all now know madness is at large.

The judge goes along with it, the police go along with it, the prosecutors go along with it. All defending madness. Just let them think what would happen if a child under ten (the age of criminal responsibility!) got hold of the weapon and started brandishing it around, letting the thing go off and blasting someone's face away! Would these jobsworths think the law was such a fine thing then?

We need this changing and we need it changing now. The Surrey Mirror says on their site "Comments on this story have been disabled for legal reasons". Well, stuff those legal reasons! They are only smokescreens for the inept, the befuddled and the bewildered.

This is a monstrous outrage. Very shameful indeed.

Tennessee gun totin' and shootin' from the lip!

In Carry On Cowboy Joan Sims wanders down the stairs of her saloon and saunters over to the bar. She informs the sheriff that "I don't allow no shootin' at my place" whereupon sheriff Sid James says, "Lady, I would't dream of shootin' at your place!".

No such restrictive warnings in the State of Tennessee. Amidst all the pycho shootings and gun waving that goes on in the USA, you'd think commonsense would say that guns in the hands of the uninitiated is not a good idea. Swivelled-eyed marksmen like Dick Cheney will, however, be encouraged to venture out with pistols at dawn. Tennessee is changing its gun laws this week. It is relaxing them!

Soon, Tennessee's bars and restaurants will no longer be off-limits for registered weapons. So any sassy saloon owner can say to the patrons "I DO allow shootin' at my place!". This is all because the 250,000 registered gun owners in Tennessee want to have the extra freedom to exchange bullets whilst drinking. Boy, what a barking mad world it is.

Americans keep on about the right to bear arms as if this is a personal right to run around with sub-machine guns blasting anyone they assume to be a criminal. It's a kind of judge-and-jury package wrapped up in a gun. Of course, the right to bear arms means no such thing. It comes from the right of the local citizenry to hold arms so as to defend the local community against marauders and armed intruders in situations where the army or local police were not available. The founding fathers would have been horrified by the actions of lawmakers in Tennessee. However, any proper understanding of the notion of arms-bearing to benefit the local community has been wiped aside. On June 26 last year the Supreme Court of the United States held that Americans have an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense in the case District of Columbia v. Heller. In my opinion, a retrograde step. So we now have legalised shooters, some no doubt of the Dick Cheney trigger-happy kind, able to take a decision to kill.

In Britain, the right to bear arms was general until the idea of a police force came about. The only person left in the kingdom with the vaguest hint of a private army is the Duke of Atholl and even his Atholl Highlanders are reduced to parading with just pipes and drums. The UK has an unarmed police force for general policing. The United States does not. Even with the arsenals that the local police chiefs have at their disposal, it is still seen as a right to have a gun.

All that said, I shall not be put off visiting Tennessee. It is a lovely state, well worth everything that the people have to offer. It's just that I may have to duck rapidly in any bar that has the misfortune to have a gunfight in it whilst I'm sipping my Jack Daniels!