I was born in the wrong country.
While the other kids were watching The Man From U.N.C.L.E., I was tuning in to The Saint. America was all about I Spy but I was all about The Prisoner. OK, so everybody got James Bond but I got Harry Palmer. Cowboys like Jim West were much more appealing to me than the shoot first and ask questions later types.
As a result of this obviously twisted upbringing, you can imagine my reaction to the suggestion from some Virginia legislators, that all Virginia college students over the age of 21 be allowed to "carry concealed". Holy body bags, Batman! What kind of nutjob thinks this is a good idea? One such person is David Briggman. As a former police officer you would think that he would be familiar with the harm that guns can do and therefore welcome any restriction. You would be wrong.
Mr. Briggman is one of those folks that thinks if all of the Virginia Tech students were packing on April 16th, Seung-Hui Cho, America's newest three-name killer, would not have been able to murder 32 of his fellow students and wound 25 more. What an interesting theory!
For as horrific as the shootings in Blacksburg were, it's hard to imagine that the situation could have been improved if there were a real western-style gun battle. Imagine the collateral damage from that scenario. Five or six students firing back might have saved lives or they might have killed another half dozen by mistake. How would we treat those who shot students in the panic? Sounds like a great plot line for Law and Order.
How did we get to the point where a portion of our population feels that the solution to violence is more violence? You can't blame TV. The Canadians and most of Europe watch our shows and they are not running around armed to the teeth. There's something in our DNA that makes us believe that gunfire is the best way to settle an argument. Let's call it the JW (for John Wayne) chromosome.
It could be that our civilization is still very young. For the first 900 years of their existence as a country, the Brits solved every problem the same way...they declared war on France. Ditto for the French. From Hastings to Waterloo the English never met a Frenchman that wouldn't look better draped across his shield. By that reckoning, we still have another 700 or so years of madness ahead of us. Check, please!
Americans apparently feel helpless in the face of violent crime and the only logical response (if you can call it logical) is to fight fire with firearms. The fallacy of this argument is that most Americans couldn't shoot another person even if they thought the killing justified. If you think it's easy to shoot a person, ask a cop that has had to fire his/her weapon in the line of duty. If they tell you it was no problem, they're lying.
Europeans have apparently either had their JW chromosome removed or they have evolved to the point that, like prehensile tails, the gene went dormant and fell off. Unfortunately, so many Americans don't believe in evolution that surgery may be the only answer.
In the meantime, I need to weigh the pros and cons of moving to the UK.
Good things: beer, men's fashion, pubs (see also beer), accent.
Bad things : weather, cost, driving on the wrong side, women's fashion, dentistry.
I would have included Benny Hill on the good side but I understand he's dead. Gee, I hope some American didn't shoot him.
