I know I have been quiet recently. Frankly Scarlet, I just haven’t been in a bloggy mood. I’m not bothered. I can’t be arsed. I got me the I don’t know what I wanna talk about and when I do get a flash of blogerspiration it sounds like insipid drivel in my tiny sad little brain blues.
Over the Easter bank holiday in between soaking in glorious sun and going to various pubs, I watched 28 Days Later again.
There are two things that resonate for me with that film now that I have lived in London. The obvious bit is the scenes in Westminster where there is absolutely no one about when the place should be teaming with morning rush hour pedestrians.
The 2nd part is a bit more subtle. . . the social rage that is growling in the belly of every Londoner just asking for an excuse to explode out. For example, yesterday a woman on the tube took a seat that I was about to sit in. It sounds stupid, but I could have happily broken her nose. Today a guy was holding on to a rail above him and the angle was such that I had to tuck my chin to my head to prevent his arm from hitting my head. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a choice either, there was room enough for him to put his arm somewhere else.
Of course, I didn’t say anything. I think that New Yorkers might have the right idea. A New Yorker never would have tucked their chin in sending death rays out of the corner of their eyes. A New Yorker would have said, “Hey, dipshit! As much as I am enjoying getting a whiff of your body odour, I would rather you don’t rest your armpit on my head, capiche?â€
If there are regular people like me, people who have a reasonable grasp on reality having Walter Mitty moments imagining disembowelling the wankstains that push on the train before people can get off, what fantasies are the toasted flakes out there cultivating? Especially the ones with guns?
I grew up around guns. It’s been a while, but I know how to use one. However, I think the ‘right to bear arms’ is beyond archaic.
After what happened at Virginia Tech, my favourite quote of all comes from a gentleman named John Markell who said regarding the shooting this week, “Students are thrown out if they are found to carry guns on campus and professors are dismissed if they carry them. If you had responsible folk on that site carrying firearms, this would never have got so out of control”.
So. . . if everyone had a gun. . . we would be. . . safer!!????
In America more than 30,000 people die a year from guns. Each year. 30,000. If 30,000 people a year died from picking their nose, you can be sure there would be anti nose picking legislation.
Well. Maybe. Okay, probably not. Given that 400,000 people die in America from smoking. . . I have a feeling that if 30,000 people a year died from picking their nose, there would be a nose picking lobby.
Fat white trash families with mullets would be interviewed on FOX “newsâ€, “These liberals are taking away my rights to pick my nose. As an American, I got the right! People died so I could pick my nose. Gaaawd WANTS me to pick my nose. Next thing you know they’ll be telling me I can’t eat it too.â€
Hell, I don’t know. I know you can’t legislate all the monsters out of the closet. Every school has the weirdo that you look at thinking that he might snap and climb a clock tower one day. Sometimes you wonder if it will be you. (Bitch better not think of taking my seat next time.) But I don’t think America’s current gun laws are what the Founding Fathers would have wanted. I don’t think 30,000 deaths and professors and students dieing in a classroom is freedom.
That’s not my land.
April 18th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
hey, good to see you back - i was just gonna send an email to see how you were.
as for gun control:
I HATE guns. HATE. Would love to see them wiped off the face of the earth. Guns are the machinery of death.
Sadly, though I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to rid the US of guns. The horses have left the barn on that one already.
And we can try to help people with mental illness, we can try to improve security in public places, we can try to make people more aware of warning signs. And we’ve tried doing all these kinds of things, and addressing these elements since mass shootings began occurring.
But the one thing we’ve not yet gotten serious on is gun control. More guns has NOT solved the problem. And this kind of incident just makes it crystal clear that we can no longer continue to keep doing nothing.
There are other ways to kill people of course, but none so cheap, available and effective as guns. We must do *something* about the incredible availability of these lethal weapons.
The one thing I think we CAN do is have federally mandated gun control laws. No more of each state being able to do as it pleases, so that in some places you can buy an assault rifle the same day and some places you have a 30 day background check for an antique pistol. It’s this kind of crapshoot which undermines the laws which are in place.
Minimum I’d like to see is universal background criminal checks (if they can do this at the airports, surely they can do it for guns), universal 30 day waiting period, universal mental health certification from a Dr., universal mandatory gun safety classes, mandatory trigger locks in homes with children, REINSTITUTE THE BAN on all assualt rifles and automatic/convertable semi-automatic weapons, and a *federal tax* on guns which funds anti-violence programmes.
If I can’t wipe guns off the face of the earth, that’s the minimum I’d want to do - if I ruled the world.
I’ll shut up now.