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Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?

By Peter Simmons

People who like guns and defend their right to own guns [largely Americans] often say 'guns don't kill people, people do', but I've never known someone shoot somebody with their pointed finger. Guns do, of course, kill people, it's an abuse of argument to maintain they don't; no one claims they can kill on their own, but they are partners in murder, indisputably.

That murder may be of another human being who has angered the owner beyond self control, of a byestander who just got in the way, or of an innocent animal under the label 'sport', but it's murder in every instance, even when called self defence.

Guns make it all too easy to move a momentary rage into a life sentence or worse [depending on which state you're in], without them people might shout, punch even, or in extremis stab another person, but these are less often terminal actions. Once a gun has exploded its cartridge and fired its projectile, there's no going back, no retracting, no amount of saying sorry will change anything.

When it comes to animals the gun has been responsible for the extinction or near extinction of many species; hunters once had to rely on their hand-made weopons, skill in tracking and courage in the face of a large beast. The modern hunter is a coward; he fires his piece of modern technology from a distance without danger of harm to himself, sighting the unwary animal in telescopic sights as it goes about its peaceful life, and then places a large piece of metal inside its body in a split second which tears through it slicing organs as it goes. And done by people who don't need to hunt to survive, who shop in the supermarket for their food but like the buzz of killing, a sickness many humans [mostly men admittedly, Sarah Palin exempted] suffer from; mainly, it must be said, in the US where owning guns, even assault rifles designed for war, is legal.

Guns are fetish objects for a lot of these people, a substitute for sex, a penis substitute, and a morale booster for inadequates and devients. Guns make the owner feel powerful and therefore sexy, and they are caressed and cleaned sensuously as a thing of technological beauty. But let's not forget, their purpose is death to someone or something else, and the reality of bleeding your life away on the floor of A&E is far from sexy.

Guns make teenagers brave and stupid, they make gangs lethal and the wasting of young lives commonplace. Every posing inadequate little runt becomes, in his eyes, a strong man when he has a gun in his hand.

Guns rid the West of buffalo and so ensured the demise of the native tribes whose sustainable lifestyle depended on them, and who stood in the way of the modernising whiteman to rape the land and turn it into dollars.

Now with modern warfare guns have become even more sophisticated than the six shooter and they can fire depleted uranium bullets which not only help reduce the pile of spent nuclear fuel, but distribute it around poor countries which then suffer birth defects and radiation illnesses; a neat way of disposing of toxic waste. It's the American way! Despite which, the nation that relies on guns more than any other is losing to a rag tag army of uneducated dissidents, poorly armed, barely commanded and bound to win just as the Vietnamese won, because they are fighting for their country in their country. The moral is; guns can be turned on the user, so best to find another way, a peaceful way, a non cowardly way, to get your point across.

Guns are what makes the upright naked ape so terrifyingly lethal and more destructive than any other species that ever evolved.

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You know, intellectually what you say may be true and all, but if you have your life saved by a gun that someone happened to have in a nasty situation, you would feel a whole lot differently about guns. If you can give me a guarantee that nobody's gonna mug me or murder me, that'll be the day I'll be in favor of the elimination of guns.

But it's guns that pose the threat of murder and mugging with this wild west attitude. In the UK with very few guns, not many people feel that threatened. Which countries have the most killings? Those which have widespread gun ownership, such as US, Pakistan, Mexico etc. The more civilised countries that don't allow citizens to go around armed to the teeth have a lot less. The argument that guns protect against guns is a bit circular! How many murders by shooting are there in the US by people who just happened to have a gun handy? My impression is that those who carry guns are both more paranoid than those who don't, and more likely to kill someone than those who don't; whether accidentally or in a rage. Then there's the kids who get hold of 'mommy's gun' and blow their little sister away...

I don't seem able to edit my intel, but I can edit this!... just to add that the recent shootings in the US of a politician and several innocent bystanders further reinforces the argument against guns. The US has a lot in common with Pakistan; plagued by religious fundamentalist lunatics, political extremes, massive military, nuclear weapons, and universal gun ownership. Since the recent shootings gun sales have risen...

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