When Will The United States Realise That Guns Kill People?
On the wall of my office, there used to be a picture of my wife presenting a racing trophy to a racehorse trainer.
Both are now dead.
- My wife died from a squamous cell carcinoma of the heart.
- The trainer died because of an argument and a gun was available and used to settle it.
We fight cancer with common sense and all the tools that science has given us.
Isn’t it about time, that common sense is applied to the problem of guns in the United States and other countries where they are responsible for a high murder rate?
America Is A Sick Country
There is no other title for a post about this story on the BBC entitled Gun that killed Trayvon Martin ‘makes $250,000 for Zimmerman’.
In my view anybody who wants to own a gun other than for genuine sporting purposes, needs his head examined.
Until the United States has a sensible gun policy and abolishes the death penalty, I shall not be visiting.
I’ve Just Heard The Most Crass Solution To Mass Shootings In The United States
After the shootings in Oregon yesterday, as reported on the BBC, the BBC has just had a pastor from the area on the phone.
You’d think as a religious leader, he would have advocated something fairly sane, but he said that the answer to these school shootings, is to allow the other students to carry guns, so they could shoot an attacker.
With people like that in the States, I doubt they’ll ever solve their problem of mass shootings, until everybody has been shot dead.
A Lady In The Wrong Job
I know she was elected, but this report on the BBC, surely says that she shouldn’t have stood for the post if things she would have to do were against her religious beliefs.
There must be other jobs, where religious or other beliefs mean you should not be appointed.
Suppose a doctor believed that homoeopathy had the cure for everything, they would not make the World’s best GP, unless all the patients, they saw were fellow believers.
Are We Doing Enough To Combat The Real Terrorism Problem?
Over the years, I’ve met people in all walks of life that deal with terrorism and crime in general. So I like to think I have a good insight into it.
The United States will claim it hasn’t had any terrorist attacks since 9/11, but isn’t the dreadful attack on the congregation of the church in Charleston headlined in this BBC article as Charleston church shooting: Nine die in South Carolina ‘hate crime’, nothing more than a similar attack to the one on the innocent sunbathers in Tunisia.
The links between the two crimes are the twisted motivations of the perpetrators and the easy availability of guns, that can fire large numbers of bullets.
One of the reasons, we have not had a deadly gun attack in this country, since the Dunblane and Hungerford massacres, is that it is just too difficult to get a deadly weapon like a Kalashnikov in this country. I don’t think we’ve even had an incident in recent years involving such a gun, where perhaps gangs of drug dealers are settling an argument.
But are we doing enough to keep these deadly weapons out of the UK?
As an engineer with extensive knowledge of modern manufacturing techniques, I believe that it is now possible to create a workable machine gun, that was mainly created on one of the new industrial 3-D printers, with perhaps a few small metal parts smuggled through border controls. I should also say that I know of a manufacturer, who posts and receives specialist stainless steel parts through the post from all over the world.
After all, this report on the BBC describes how nutters in Texas have created a gun that fires using a 3-D printer.
I believe it won’t be long before someone creates a set of plastic parts, which when put around the working parts of an assault rifle create a gun that can be fired by any suicidal terrorist.
There is no defence against such a weapon getting onto the streets through this method.
I’m pretty sure that someone is working on doing it. Probably in the United States, where it seems that owning an assault rifle is something that many want to do. But then adding sense to the gun laws of the United States, is as difficult as making a serious alcoholic or heavy smoker see sense.
Are Americans Too Stupid To Be Allowed Firearms?
This story on the BBC web site is entitled US boy, three, shoots both parents in New Mexico, which says it all.
Luckily, it appears his parents will live.
The story is the most read on the BBC web site.
Tales From Artemis Times
When I was writing Artemis, I got to meet some very interesting people.
I remember being in Denver at an Artemis Users Conference at the time of the Falklands War. I was talking over drinks with three Americans; a New York banker, the project manager on the US Harrier and the another from Long Beach Naval Shipyard.
The banker with all the naivete of no experience, said that all the Navy needed in the South Atlantic was a big flat-top and some F14s and they’d be able to blow the Argies away.
Then the Harrier guy said that they were getting the weather reports and it was so bad down there, that the only aircraft you could recover to the carrier was a Harrier. The guy from Long Beach compared everything to the Arctic convoys and said it was doubtful which was worst.
The banker didn’t say anything more on the subject.
Another incident was meeting a recently retired US Army or Marine officer. I’m not sure where this was, but it was somewhere in the States. It might even have been at the same conference. On finding I was English, he said that he’d got a lot of respect for the British Army and told this tale.
The Pentagon had wanted to find out how we handled the situation in Northern Ireland from a soldier’s point-of-view and he had been asked to go to the province to observe the British Army at work. So he turned up in Belfast, as a guest of the British Army and was given a briefing by senior officers and a couple of tours around the city in a Land-Rover.
They then asked him, if he’d like to go out on a patrol.
He said he would like to go, so early the next morning he was taken to a barracks and introduced to his patrol. He said that as a white US officer, he was surprised that the patrol would be led by a black corporal. At the time in the US Army, such a patrol would always be led by an officer or at least a sergeant.
They kitted him up, so he looked like the average squaddie and off they went. He didn’t really describe the patrol, except to say that he was impressed by the professionalism and that nothing untoward or unexpected happened.
On returning to barracks and after a good lunch with his patrol, he was taken to a debriefing. There he was shown a film taken by the SAS, who had had a sniper on the roof-tops with a film camera.
He realised that the US forces had a long way to go, if they were to handle urban situations like Northern Ireland.
Guns Kill People
When I read stories like this one from Arizona, I despair. Here’s the first paragraph.
A nine year-old girl in the US has killed her shooting instructor by accident while being shown how to use a high-powered automatic weapon.
I always feel edgy when guns are around. I think I have good reason and believe strongly that the world would be a better place,if guns had not been invented.
A Telling Statistic
Justin Webb in this article in The Times says the following.
This year under 70 per cent of American 19-year-olds have driving licences, down from 87 per cent two decades ago.
I have heard young people in London, say they are not going to learn to drive, as they have no need. So as [ublic transport and cycling gets better, are we all falling out of love with our cars.
In a thought provoking article he goes on to say this.
Does the hunger for live events in the internet age — concerts, exhibitions, demonstrations — encourage people to meet and talk again?
Certainly here in East London, there are two groups of four seats on the new Routemasters on route 38, where people do seem to congregate to have a chat. If they don’t chat, everybody also interreacts in a very polite way.
So has a good design, made life in the world’s greatest city better and less fraught?
The Overground Features In The United States
This story from the Telegraph is priceless!
The Americans needed some meaningful footage for an advertising campaign and chose some stock footage taken on the London Overground.
I should think all those concerned with London’s superb new railway, from management to drivers and passengers, are pleased, as it is rather flattering and in a way says, it must be one of the most photogenic railways in the world.
