Thursday 3 June 2010

Guns


My thoughts are with the people of West Cumbria following yesterday’s atrocities. They have also had to cope with the recent coach crash and the floods.
The police are now trying to work out why Derrick Bird did it. He shot his brother and a solicitor, together with innocent members of the public who were randomly mown down. Perhaps Bird had been stewing over a festering grudge and flipped.

Derrick Bird’s rampage highlights once again the evils of gun ownership. In 1987 Michael Ryan killed 16 people in Hungerford. In 1996 Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher in Dunblane. Both of them were loners who had been harbouring a lot of pent up hatred against humanity.

In my opinion guns should be banned.

It seems impossible to predict who is ‘safe’ to own guns. Anyone can become mentally ill, paranoid or angry. Psychopaths are notorious for turning on the charm and fooling the authorities. Children have accidently shot themselves when parents have left loaded guns lying around.

So, the safest course of action would be to ban public gun ownership. It might help to reduce the probability of tragedies like Derrick Bird's rampage.

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