The sound of freedom

A couple of years ago in a little town in rural New England, they decided to build a new gun range. They already had one, but it was busy and shooters sometimes had to wait for several minutes before a stall became free. Well within the hearing of most of the population, some objected to the noise pollution the new range would generate. The objectors didn’t get very far, and as far as I know the gun range is still there and still operating. A news crew went there to gather opinion, and one man they interviewed said this:
“Every time I hear a gunshot I think, ‘freedom’”.
            OK. So on Sunday, in Las Vegas, when the sound of gunfire echoed across its hotels and casinos, and had that gentleman been present, I wonder, would that have been his first thought? Or would he perhaps have been thinking: “I’ve got to get outa here. Some nut’s tryin to kill me!”?
            The 2nd Amendment to the US constitution, which as we all know, because it keeps getting rammed down everyone’s throats, guarantees all Americans the right to bear arms. And as we also know, this was introduced during the revolutionary war to assist in the fight against the hated British. That of course was over 200 years ago, but the amendment is still in place, now serving a rather different purpose.
            But this right is limited. Stinger missile systems, which enable an individual to take down an aircraft in flight, are not on sale to the American public. Neither are rocket powered grenades (RPGs) by which a man can blow up a whole building with a simple pull on a trigger. I do not believe it is possible for a private citizen to own a tank, load it up with shells and drive to work in it. However, it is possible for a private citizen to own an automatic rifle, another weapon of war, which can fire up to thirty rounds a second, making it possible to kill a large number of human beings in a very short space of time. That, after all, is what it is designed to do. Why would a private citizen wish to own such a weapon? To hunt wild animals?
“Hey honey, I bagged me a deer with my specially modified AR15 today. OK, there wasn’t much left of it by the time I’d finished, but it sure was fun blowing it away!”
             Automatic weapons, like handguns, really have only one purpose: to kill human beings. Yet all across America, these items are openly on sale, often without any checks at all on who might be wishing to buy them. When I visited North Carolina not long ago, I couldn’t resist wandering into a gun store and examining a “Dirty Harry” style .44 magnum handgun- “the most powerful handgun in the world” (I don’t know if that’s still true, but it’s certainly up there). As I weighed the awesome piece of hardware in my hands, the store owner explained: “You don’t wing someone with this baby. You either miss ‘em altogether or blow a piece out of ‘em the size of a grapefruit”. Although the store owner knew I was a foreign visitor, I was told that if I handed over $350 I could take it away with me, there and then, and as many bullets as I wanted to go with it.
            I respectfully put it to you, my American friends: that’s wrong.