Not the Wild Wild West

July 20^th 2012 – Aurora, Colorado shootings

August 5^th 2012 – Wisconsin Sikh Temple Shooting

August 24^th 2012 – Empire State Building Shooting.

That’s three major shooting incidents – major enough to get on the news anyway – in just over a month and I’m sure there were more that I didn’t get to hear about. From this the topic of this week’s blog post should be fairly obvious. Gun Control.

 But don’t worry. This isn’t some overblow “Liberals are coming to take mah guns” cry for a complete end to gun ownership in the US. If people want to go and shoot drinks cans in the back garden that’s their thing. What this is about is finding some way for people to be able to do that, while protecting innocent people.

The first thing that has to happen is that there has to be a dialogue. Whenever there is a gun tragedy in the United States one of the first things you’ll hear is people calling for a debate on gun control. The second thing you’ll hear is that people agree with that, but that now is not the time, now is a time to grieve. I can understand that. The problem is that this is used as an excuse to bury the debate. The “proper” time for a debate never seems to materialise.

This may be something to do with the fact that gun ownership is part of the American consciousness. It’s wrapped tight around the collective notion of what being American means. I’m not just talking about the second amendment, I’m talking about movies and TV shows, which don’t seem complete without a gun and seeing Policemen walking down the street armed. There’s a frontier mentality still prevalent in the US, a belief that they are still trying to tame the West. They don’t seem to understand that that time has passed. The rest of the world has realised it. The US hasn’t.

I understand why some Americans think they need guns in order to protect themselves from and if need be overthrow a dictatorial government. I understand, but I don’t agree. In the first place, if the Army is on the side of the government, there’s not much civilians can do against the might of the 101^st Air Assault brigade, not to mention the winged power of the United States Air Force.  The best they could do would be to force a guerrilla war scenario. See Syria. But secondly this doesn’t mean that gun ownership can’t be licenced.

I went to Beaulieu Motor Museum on Thursday and one of the things it makes clear is that in the early days of driving and cars, there were no driving licences. People simply bought cars and away they went. Driving licences were bought in when the number of car related deaths went up. This didn’t mean that all the cars were taken away; it simply meant they were regulated and people had to pass a test to prove that they were competent and wouldn’t be danger to themselves or others before they were allowed to drive one.  The same could be done with guns. You could be required to sit tests to prove that not only can you handle and care for a gun properly, but that you were mentally sound enough to possess one.

It has been reported that the perpetrator of the Colorado massacre met with mental health professionals before the shooting. Yet he was still allowed to buy four different guns. Under tighter regulations this would have been prevented.

As I have said above, if Americans want to own guns then that’s fine. But they need to wake up to the need for regulations, before we have to add yet another tragedy to the ever increasing list.