Boom

When I was a kid, I was entranced by the image of the British policeman, with his domed hat and baton - no gun in sight. He always was a he and always looked like a person you could deal with, even when he was trying to wallop you with his baton. He was a character who could be written into children's stories, being wise, being silly, giving advice or giving chase. Good cop or bad cop, he was always a human cop.

Things are not so child-friendly in USA. Even traffic police have guns. The only ones that do not have guns are the police in training. But the guns don't stop there - everyone and their grandpa wants to be a gun toting army of one. It is all a little unsettling for a person who grew up on Enid Blyton, but many do not share my view, evidently. The theory is that if you have a gun, no one can hurt you because you will always be the one to pull your gun first in order to protect yourself. Because everyone claims that the gun they have is for self defence and yet there are shootings, what seems like, every day. How would that happen if everyone was protecting themselves?

Over the last 4 months, 8 policemen have been shot in New York City. New York has pretty serious gun laws but, as we do not have a wall and moat surrounding our city, people tend to bring guns in from out of state. All 8 policemen were shot using guns that were legally bought outside New York. The 8 policemen are significant, to me, because they are the one group of people who have guns on them all the time and have actually been trained to use them. And somehow, miraculously, when being shot upon, sometimes they get hit and hurt. You would start to think that these gun things are seriously dangerous and that, despite one's best efforts, sometimes someone else will shoot you, even if you have a gun. And, mind-blowing as this idea might be, you may start thinking that if efforts were made to keep guns out of everyone's hands, fewer people might get shot.

Crazy, huh?