GAUTENG
COMMENT, by Pete Bower
MAGAZINE
HOW TO MAKE YOUR PLOT PROFITABLE
Vol 16 No 7
July 2015
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FRONT COVER
Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens’ 40th
exhibit at the Chelsea Flower show will
be re-created at Garden World in
Muldersdrift from this month. See page 10.
Guns kill, duh
T
he tragic shooting of nine black churchgoers by a 21-year-old
white racist misfit in South Carolina must, surely, focus Americans'
minds on the question of gun control.
For this little waste of skin had allegedly been given a gun by his father for his 21st
birthday. Not only that, but an uncle of his was reported, after the fact, to have said he
spent a worrying amount of time “by himself”. And friends are reported to have said
that he'd speculated about whether to attack a college rather than a church, and
decided against it because he thought gaining access to a college would have been
more difficult that gaining access to a church. How right he was: Apparently he sat with
his victims in a bible class for an hour before annihilating them.
Barack Obama, who with his wife Michelle knew one of the victims, was rightly tightlipped about the incident saying ~ rather mildly, it seems to me ~ that the incident
should focus Americans' minds on the question of the wholesale and largely unregulated ownership of guns.
Frankly, Americans, along with any other nation who believe that gun ownership is a
God-given or constitutionally-enshrined right, need to catch a wake-up.
For, here's the thing: If you believe that owning or carrying a gun is a measure of selfdefence, you're deluding yourself. Guns kill. They kill people, and they kill animals.
That's what they were designed for: To kill. That's why you see soldiers carrying guns. A
soldier's job is to go out and attack, and kill, his enemy, hopefully in larger numbers that
his enemy kills him and his comrades. And the side that kills the most is usually
declared the winner. And for this killing soldiers use their guns (and other nasty devices).
That's hardly self-defence.
Similarly, when you point a loaded gun at somebody the outcome is decided by
nothing more than a twitch of your forefinger. For waving a gun around in the hope that
you're going to scare off an attacker (presumably your justification as “self-defence”) is
something one only sees in the movies. Hell, if that were the case one would see more
hold-ups accomplished using water pistols. And should the firearm discharge following
the twitch of your forefinger, how can you possibly justify blowing a hole in somebody
(whether it kills him or not) as an act of self-defence? It's the most brutal, violent thing
you could possibly do, short of hacking his head off, IS-style, with a machete.
Defending yourself by killing somebody else? That's illogical.
Furthermore, by allowing society to be awash with firearms, as we are in South Africa
for reasons of crime, poor policing and our violent past, and as Americans are because
of their ridiculous, historical reliance on their interpretation of their constitution where
they argue that it grants them the right, in perpetuity, to carry a gun, you are putting
guns into the hands of fanatics, murderers, extremists and loonies of all stripes. Let
alone the fact that such individuals, mentally unhinged as they probably are, are
unlikely to undergo any psychometric testing or training in safety or other procedures
before venturing forth with their weapons. To whit the 21-year-old in South Carolina.
So this publication fully supports any moves by the authorities, both here and elsewhere, to remove guns from the hands of the general public, and to severely curtail
their availability, through stringent testing and licensing requirements, to only those who
absolutely need them, for very specific and predefined reasons. Gun-free is, we believe,
t