Because it is in the constitution

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It’s hard to write a post when you don’t really know much about a subject.  When you can’t structure the post to have a clear discussion, or at the very least a conclusion.   But these latest killings in the US have made me feel more than ever that gun control in the US needs to radically change.  And fast.

But how?

The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States Constitution protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms and was adopted on December 15, 1791, as part of the first ten amendments contained in the Bill of Rights

I can’t help but feel that is a bit too vague for society in 2015 though.   The right to keep them yes, but in a glove box?  In a handbag on a table in a restaurant?  It’s terrifying quite frankly.    The idea that you can be out for dinner in a restaurant, shopping in a supermarket, just doing your job on live TV and somebody with a grudge can open fire is just wrong.  Surely.  That isn’t what that amendment was written for was it?

In the US it appears to me that anybody can buy a gun.    Statistics suggest there are 270 million handguns in the US

270  million guns

In houses

That is just a terrifying statistic.  I can’t actually even get my head around that number.    If you add in the 900,000 that police officers carry then it just gets mind blowing.

Yet it is defended as it is in the Constitution.

Every day in the US people are killed with guns.  We see all too often that there has been a shooting and several people murdered by a “crazed gunman”.   In homes, in the street, in schools, in churches, in cinemas,  on TV.     In the aftermath we then learn that this person was known for their violent outbursts or that people had “known he would eventually do something heinous” yet it never occurred to anyone to stop them having access to guns

Because it is in the constitution.

There are laws in place supposedly about background checks being necessary before you can buy a gun from a licensed seller.   But there is nothing to stop somebody who passes those checks then selling them onto their mates.  Mates who have not had, and passed, a background check.   Mates who could be criminals.  Mates who could not be of sound mind.  Who may have an ulterior motive for wanting to own that gun.

But who defend it because it is in the constitution

Two people yesterday were murdered doing their jobs.    They went to work yesterday morning and had no reason to believe they wouldn’t  be home in the evening.  Yet somebody known to them, who we are told years before had been fired and had held a grudge against his former colleagues, walked up to them with a gun and shot them dead.   There is nothing to suggest that anybody knew before yesterday that he would do this but surely if he had not been able to have guns in the first place this may never have happened.

Yesterday  an ex tenant of one of the letting agents I work with phoned me up to complain about a check out report.   And the fact she was being charged for cleaning.  When I say she was angry she was really angry.  I asked her to stop shouting at me as I attempted to help her.  She then called me a fuckwit and told me to piss off.   I laughed that there I was trying to help somebody yet they felt it appropriate to rage at me and then swear at me before hanging up on me.   Her issue still unresolved.   I could also decide I would not be resolving it if she called me again.

Does she now hold a grudge against me?  Will she Google my name, find my blog, find my address and then come to my house with a gun and shoot me?

No.  Because I live in the UK

And never have I been more grateful for that.

I live in a country where I can feel safe when I open the front door, go out shopping, go to the cinema.   I don’t have to worry if the person next to me is about to open fire and murder us all.    I send my children off to school safe in the knowledge that there won’t be a shooting in their school today.   Yes I know we have had incidents in the UK but they are, thankfully, rare.  Incredibly rare.

Hell not even our police officers carry guns as a matter of routine.

And nor should the ordinary Joe on the streets in the US.

As I said, I have no conclusion to this post but I do know that a conclusion to a shift at work should not include being murdered by an ex colleague carrying a grudge and a gun.