America, You Blockhead!
Foshan, Guangdong Province, China, December 16, 2012.
Salaroche

I live in the city of Foshan, Guangdong Province, China, which is at GMT/UTA+8, just as the rest of China is; New York is at GMT/UTA-5. That means I’m presently 13 hours ahead of New York and 16 hours ahead of LA. When it is around 10:00 AM on the US East Coast, it is around 11:00 PM in China.

Last Friday night at around midnight, as I was exchanging some emails, the news of the Connecticut massacre started flashing on the International media. “Not much new about that”, I first thought to myself, but then I saw the age of most of the victims and my initial small shock doubled or tripled in intensity.

“Another lunatic that literally blows his top after doing the unspeakable”, I thought, “another mad idiot looking for notoriety after death”. I was left a little bit numb by the news, but I only read a bit about it and then continued writing my emails and reading my articles.  

On Sunday morning, as I was getting ready to go out, I turned on my computer and opened the New York Times. They had the names and the ages of the victims listed on the front page.

I read the first two or three names and ages and, without any warning or anticipation, I just began to cry with a depth of sadness I don’t recall having felt before. They were all six and seven year-old children. Who would want to kill those children? Why?

Madness. That’s the only inexplicable answer to that inexplicable deed. But why should guns be at all within reach of madmen? Why was the mother of that deranged boy allowed to accumulate a full collection of lethal weapons in her house? And keep them within reach of her son?

Sheer madness.

Some sane Americans want to kickstart legislation to enact some form of serious gun control, and as usual there comes the NRA along with some of their bought-out politicians of both parties and take the ball away and America falls back on its head again. America, you blockhead! Will you ever learn?

More than 10,000 American deaths by gun every year and many thousands more wounded; would those people have been killed or wounded had there not been so many guns available to so many people in America? No way. Would those 20 children and those 6 adults who died last Friday be alive today had some serious gun control been in place in Connecticut today? No doubt they would.

The pro-gun lunatics say that “guns don’t kill people, people do”, but people without guns cannot commit massacres. People cannot commit mass murder using their naked hands or using knives, they have to have guns to do that. So why don’t we once and for all have the pro-gun loonies’ motto point straight to the real culprit in these tragedies and say that “guns don’t kill people, the NRA does”.

America, you blockhead! How many more massacres will you have to suffer before you finally learn?

Salaroche