Guns

Two things. One, a cartoon by Pat Bagley, the other, an article by Tom Carver written in April of 2000.

Bagley:


Tom Carver:

The pro-gun lobby is fond of saying it is not guns but people who kill.

In some cases that is certainly true. Some people would kill whether they had a knife, a gun or bare hands. But in many other cases, access to a firearm is what triggers the murder.

This might seem self-evident to a European audience but there is debate on this side of the Atlantic - a debate not about how to remove guns from society but whether or not guns are even to blame.

The right to own a firearm is embedded in the American psyche like a splinter of flint, jagged and immovable.

It all goes back to the Founding Fathers who in 1791 amended the new American constitution with the following words: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

This amendment was drawn up by people living in an precarious agrarian society unrecognisable to modern Americans, when communities needed guns to hunt and to protect themselves from Indians and highwaymen.

The gun lobby has plucked out the phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" and used it ever since to beat down every serious attempt at gun control in America by claiming a violation of the constitution.