RE: Yee-haa! Gun Lobby Capers

As I've mentioned before, it gives me no joy to be compiling the Yee-haa! Gun Lobby Capers series of tragic news reports of gun-related murders and/or murder-suicides presently emanating almost daily from the USA. However, I feel I must.

That being said, I have to admit that I seldom paid such reports much attention before, simply because I found them too disturbing. So, this series is a little bit of confrontational Psychotherapy for me.

Having been several times to the USA, I'm an unashamed fan in many ways, while in others, I'm appalled. However, beyond my personal observations, the most evident thing for me about the USA in relation to anywhere else in the world that I'd been, was that it was big. Everything there was B-I-G!:

• handshakes
• kindness
• politeness to a stranger
  

while on the other hand, there was patently an acceptance of:

• a simmering violence, like being told by a taxi driver in L.A., "Don't think of getting out here, it's too dangerous."
  
• a shocking racial inequity in the distribution of wealth (whose fault it was, was another question, altogether)

etc. and guns always seemed just one part of the crazy patchwork quilt that was the USA, which I chose not to judge. However, these murder-suicides got me to thinkin' (a dangerous sign) and I believe that I've worked out something.

You see, in the USA, there doesn't seem to be much pondering about religion, little searching for the subtleties behind what Christ might have been alluding to in the gospels (Let's face it, "Many are called but few are chosen." is an incredibly direct dismissal of any mass-movement's rank and file).

No, American religion seems to be driven by a fairly literal collection of old and new testament sayings, sold to the congregation as a mish-mash of:

• used-car salesman spiel
• gospel-music hysteria
• a "we're under assault" appeal to an imaginary USA of the past &
• an often shameful, immature, need for "quick" answers (not paralleled by the answers of Life, in any way)
  

Somehow, along the line, my guess is that in the USA, there may be some kind of cultural understanding that "If we can't be together in this world, we will be re-united in the next." and that these killings are really mercy-killings, carried out for the good of the family.

I'm not saying that I'm right but it does give me a clue to understanding this mostly-American phenomenon. So, the problem has widened from just being a Gun Lobby question to one of Gun Lobby + American Apocalyptic Religion.

As for me, my view of Life inevitably returns to these simple, in this case, tragic, words, Cause & Effect.

Andrew Goulding

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