Guns - my alter (massive!) ego, Leary Buckarootown, weighs in!

Yup, it’s been a tragic few days ... as the media erupts in an apocalyptic display of outrage and hand-ringing at the senseless murder of 20 children and 6 adults by yet another mentally unhinged individual intent on creating as much havoc, distress and support for gun law reform as possible.

Whatever his warped motives, one thing is clear – he sought revenge on society and his actions were designed to leave a permanent mark on those who had in some way offended his twisted sensibilities.

Chances are we will never know what drove him to wish for the death of fellow citizens or how he came to the conclusion that children could in some way be anything other than innocent in the demons that were tormenting him.

Whether we like it or not, the issue of gun ownership is raising its ugly head, yet again as calls go out for the population to be disarmed. Before I begin the defence of the individual to own a firearm, I would like my readers to understand the very reason that American citizens maintain the right to bear arms.

It is for protection against the State and the right of self-defence.

Most Americans do not own guns to shoot children, gangster rappers or wild bears! They own them in the knowledge that if a deranged lunatic decides to invade your property to settle whatever mental health issues he has with you or society in general, he can quickly and permanently be subdued.

A pistol in the bedside table is standard in many American homes because that is how they choose to protect their nearest and dearest.

Whilst we in the UK debate the legalities of being open to prosecution for merely owning a baseball bat to fend off the drunken chavs breaking down the front door because you dared to criticise them for pissing in your garden, the average American knows that an armed society is a polite society.

Certainly, the ease at which a psychopath can obtain weapons is a concern, but lest we forget, Timothy McVee ended the lives of 168 innocent Americans, including children, with nothing more than fertiliser to form a bomb.

Religious zeal caused four demented bigots to fill rucksacs with chapatti flour and destroy the lives of 54 innocent human beings on the tube, yet calls for Mosques to be closed or chapattis to be banned are strangely silent. The issue is not with the weapon, but with the motivation. It’s like blaming spoons for obesity or petrol for reckless driving – illogical.

Those who cannot obtain guns will simply find other mechanisms to wreak havoc on the society they hate. From a transit van driven at crowds in Cardiff to a machete-wielding fruitloop entering a Birmingham nursery school, or a whooping American GI remotely sending an Afghan wedding party to their drone-inflicted deaths, the means are but a way to an end.

I don’t know about you dear reader, but I and many of my peers refuse to frequent areas after dark for fear of being robbed, beaten, stabbed or maimed by a new type of feral youth out of control on the ease at which they can inflict violence on an innocent public.

Not a day passes without one of us being beaten to death for “looking at someone a bit funny”. Further disarming that public will not result in crime falling, just more victims for the evil and the warped to prey upon.

Sadly, this is not the last massacre we will see because we have not cured the wish of the psychotically violent to inflict terror on others. Until we bridge the gap between the insane, the oppressed and the downright mad and bad, the banning of spoons or cricket bats in a built up area will serve no useful purpose other to facilitate yet more violence against the innocents.

UPDATE: Having had one or two slightly puzzled responses, I feel obliged to append the caveat: Alas, This Is A Parody! I thought the use of "hand-ringing," "rucksac," "mental health issues he has with you," and "the means are but a way to an end" should have made that abundantly clear ... my more po-faced response, which is not dogmatically "pro-gun control," can be read here. Oh dear, perhaps I'd better leave this sort of thing to Posie. (But then I can never be sure when she's being serious!)