Monday, August 15, 2011

Wild West

As a rule, I don't like kicking a particular country. Because there are good people living in every country, as well as a sprinkling of nutjobs. So it's unfair to tar everyone with the same brush, and I hope I'm not doing that.

A couple of days back I went on-line to read up on some exercise forums. I've been looking at the way I've been training, and thought I should see if I can do things a bit better or a bit smarter. Anyway, while scrolling through a US based jogging forum, I spotted the following thread heading:

"What is the best way to carry your gun when out jogging?"

"Back in the army barracks with all the rest of the guns" would have been the correct answer, I should have thought.

Apparently not. Far from being ridiculed (as I assumed the poster would be) replies came thick and fast from other joggers, all offering advice and their tales of pesonal experience. Digging further I then discovered manufacturers who were making gun holsters specifically for this purpose. I guess that the demand is that big.

Geez, people. Step back for a minute and look at what you are discussing. What scared me the most was that not one single poster expressed concern, dismay, or sadness, that they would be needing to carry a loaded gun with them as a matter of course when they were out jogging. It was as normal a discussion as one would expect if the question was "what type of jogging shoes should I buy?".

In what kind of decent civilised society should it ever be considered both normal and acceptable to have a loaded weapon with you 24 hours a day ? As easily as one would wear a watch. I could not imagine living in such chaos where, even in my leisure time, I would have to prepare for the possibility of killing another person. Maybe I'm the niave one here, but at what point should a society stop asking that question ? Maybe the whole "Right to Bear Arms" thing was a typo, and was supposed to have read "Requirement to Bear Arms".

I'm really struggling to believe that several hundred million people can't stand together and refuse to accept living like that. If a couple of billion million other people can leave their homes every day without having to check that their gun is loaded with anything other than paintball pellets or foam tennis balls, then it is possible. Surely there's more to life than living in fear? Is the Land of the Free really the Land of Prisoners ?

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