Another massacre of innocent people in the gun-toting, Wild, Wild West. This time twenty children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut.
From my vantage point, here in Australia, it seems like nothing has changed in WWW.america.com - it's still the nineteenth century in the gun-toting, Wild, Wild West.
Guns belong in the army and in the hands of licenced shooters. When the Port Arthur massacre occurred in Tasmania, Australian PM John Howard commendably seized the opportunity to tighten up the gun laws and to introduce an amnesty to hand them in.
I cannot see that happening in the Wild, Wild, West. While people get killed, US politicians cannot bring themselves to even talk about gun control for fear of a voter backlash.
Worse still, they cannot even discuss such massacres rationally. Already, the prolific nineteenth century US religious nutcases have begun focusing on the "reason" for the massacre and it's not gun proliferation. In this case, they say, god didn't care to stop the gunman because schools are being used to teach maths, science and history, instead of christian scripture. Confusingly, in the case of hurricanes, the concensus among US christians is that god brings violent weather as a punishment for tolerance of minority groups. Yet when other things go wrong, christians call it god's plan.
Make up your minds! When disasters occur, is it: (a) god's mysterious plan; (b) god failing to stop the disaster; or (c) god initiating the disaster? Clearly, you don't know, because you are just making it all up as you go along! What kind of god would allow young children to be mass murdered? Well, she's either a vengeful, blood-thirsty, uncaring god caught up in her own vanity; or an imaginary god, whose views concide identically with your own delusions. Take your pick. It just makes me sick to read your twisted, confused logic at work, putting your nineteenth century god-spin on every disaster.
Why not try to understand the reality that a young person lost his mind? Why not rationally analyse what happened to see what we can do better, to see how children can be more protected and to see how young men can be channelled away from such dreadful acts? Why not make a start on rational gun controls?
Unfortunately, rational twenty-first century solutions are unacceptable in irrational nineteenth century gun-toting America.