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DAY SEVEN: America is being governed in accordance with laws created by people who thought the Earth was flat?
TODAY I would like to take umbrage with an issue that has perplexed me for some time.
The so called 'right to bear arms'. The Second Amendment. The untouchable written clause in the American way that gives anyone - from a yeehaa Texan President to a yahoo Detroit drug dealer - the God-given right to wield a weapon capable of causing death.
How? Why? I don't get it. This is not something level-headed and even sane people should do. Unless you're a farmer with a need to shoot vermin, perhaps.
For anyone who doesn't know, America is governed by a written constitution. A series of amendments cast in stone - like the Commandments handed to Moses.
The UK is governed by an unwritten constitution. The UK's laws are not easily changed, but if a law becomes archaic, out-dated or unworkable, it can be changed. You've got more chance of hell freezing over than you have of changing the US constitution.
These laws were adopted in 1789, a time when a police force per se did not exist. The reason people kept arms was because the people WERE the police. They were asked to keep watch on the community and confront any suspicious persons.
So let me get this straight. The most powerful and developed country in the world is being run in accordance with rules set when people still thought the Earth was flat?
Well, not quite, but you can see my point through the hyperbole.
Had Joseph Matterazzo not been allowed to keep guns, his .22 calibre Colt couldn't have killed his step-daughter and her baby, if indeed it did. And I dare say this mantra could apply to a whole host of senseless killings in the US.
How can anyone justify owning something which is created to cause destruction, death and misery?
Why can't the second amendment be scrapped? All guns could be taken into a police station and destroyed. Following this period of amnesty, anyone caught with a firearm, without an appropriate licence, should be arrested.
I'm not saying British law is better at all. I'm saying the Second Amendment - the right for everyone and anyone to own a gun - is absurd.
I may be misjudging the vociferousness with which Americans will defend their 'right' to own something which, in the wrong hands, can - as in this case - take away the lives of a doting mother and her nine-month-old baby.
Will Joseph Matterazzo have his guns melted down? Will he hand them in? Will his conscience move him to rid he and his family of these weapons? Somehow I doubt it.
I'd be interested to hear from people on both sides of the Atlantic on this one. Maybe I can be convinced that owning guns is a good thing.
I doubt that too.
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Weather for Worksop
Friday 25 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
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Temperature: 11 C to 22 C
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