The Lessons of Arizona

One sickening message that comes out of the recent gun murders in Arizona is that if governments by-pass their responsibility and allow anyone to get a semi automatic handgun, then many of the purchasers of those handguns will use them for the purpose for which they were designed – to kill people.

Americans are good at killing each other with guns. US politicians are good at making it easy for them to do so. The American gun industry is good at not expressing criticism of this process.

The ability to express yourself by quickly shooting people you think you don’t like is somewhat of a flaw in the American culture. And it seems as though the American gun lobby turns a blind eye to the shocking consequences of this culture. Even a recent US president (George W Bush) felt that there was no need to say more about the 2007 murder of over 30 people at the Virginia Technical University, than ‘They were in the wrong place at the wrong time’.

That’s the trouble about the armed citizenry philosophy of the US: it comes to pass that there so many innocent people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And the story has no end: just tragedy after tragedy. The sheer unfairness of this life and death game is a sickening pockmark on the entire American culture.

But readers, worse is to come; for the real lesson of Arizona to us is to be strongly aware that there are established shooter groups here who want Australia to have American gun laws.

Of course, such groups have a tight relationship with international gun manufacturers, so you would not expect otherwise.

Whatever criticism one may have of ex-prime minister John Howard, when over 30 people were murdered at Port Arthur in 1996 he did not just say, ‘They were in the wrong place at the wrong time’. For such reasons, Australians can be proud of their leaders and Americans can be ashamed of theirs.