The horrific events in Connecticut on Friday make one wonder just what it will take to convince the US authorities to change their stance on the universal right to carry arms.
The USA is such a childlike nation is so many ways, wedded as it is to semi-mythical stories about its past and having the gung-ho mentality of the cowboys who never actually existed. That it has enshrined a right to own and use guns in its constitution and th; at powerful parts of its population resist any suggestion that this right should be curtailed tell us how how much they live in the past and refuse to acknowledge the realities of the modern world.
When the US Consitution was written, machine guns and automatic rifles didn't exist; a man with a gun could, possibly and with luck, shoot one or two others before he was shot. Today, one man with an automatic weapon can kill 20 or 30 before anyone even realises what's actually happening; in Norway not very long ago, Anders Breivik managed to kill 77 before being captured. It seems abundantly clear that the US Constitution has failed to keep up with the technological developments of the last 200 years and that the world's most powerful nation is, in this respect, as backward as Afghanistan and the poorest nations in Africa.
The madman who perpetrated Friday's horror will be villified quite rightly but so should be the US authorities and lobbies that allowed this situation, and previous ones, to happen by their refusal to bring their country into the modern world. Barack Obama and others will make headlines with pious speeches and demands for change but it is surely time that someone did more than simply pour forth meaningless and pointless rhetoric.
Personally, I doubt that much will change. Once the bodies have been buried, with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, it won't be long before things get back to normal. Then we will simply wait for the next murderous rampage and the next round of tearful soul-searching.
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