Seradata gives its sympathy to all those involved in the Las Vegas mass shooting in October. As we have noted before – guns have their place – even on Soyuz spacecraft where they are carried for defence against wild animals in case an Earth return goes off course.
In the same vein, limited magazine slow firing bolt or lever action rifles, shotguns and six-shooter magnum revolver pistols do have a role in America, whether for hunting, or for defence against wolves and bears, and yes – perhaps even for defence against armed criminal assailants.
However large capacity semi-automatic rifles and pistols (often with magazines carrying 15 shots or more) really do not have a place in civilian use, especially given that some of them can be converted using special butt-stocks and rapid crank handles into machine guns able to churn out hundreds of rounds per minute. These surely were not what the second amendment’s right “to bear arms” had in mind when it was accepted into in the US constitution. It was, of course, written and accepted in the single-shot-at-a-time flintlock era, rather than in the modern day machine gun and semi-automatic rifle one.
Yes – firing a fully automatic machine gun or a semi-automatic pistol in the controlled circumstances of a Las Vegas firing range can be a blast. But having done so, this British writer found that nicest thing of all was to be able to return to the UK where such dangerous guns are banned.
With 59 dead and hundreds injured in this latest of mass shootings in the United States, we can only hope that President Trump, along with the US Senate and House of Representatives, will do the right thing and bring in sensible gun control.
