Rusted Sky

Jerry:

Notes from a parallel universe.

Over at Emperor Misha's site one commenter pointed at this recent article from the BBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7359513.stm

At first I thought this was going to be another one of the BBC's standard "All Americans are Gun Crazed Cowboys" screeds. At least, it started off like it:

As a New York Times columnist put it recently:

"The nation is saturated with violence. Thousands upon thousands of murders are committed each year. There are more than 200 million guns in circulation."

Someone suggested a few days ago that the Democrats' presidential candidates might like to take up the issue of gun control.

But then the writer took a turn into the Twilight Zone:

Why is it then that so many Americans - and foreigners who come here - feel that the place is so, well, safe?

"I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place"

A British man I met in Colorado recently told me he used to live in Kent but he moved to the American state of New Jersey and will not go home because it is, as he put it, "a gentler environment for bringing the kids up."

This is New Jersey. Home of the Sopranos.

Brits arriving in New York, hoping to avoid being slaughtered on day one of their shopping mission to Manhattan are, by day two, beginning to wonder what all the fuss was about. By day three they have had had the scales lifted from their eyes.

I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place, the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns.

"It seems so nice here," they quaver.

Well, it is!

Obviously the writer has never read Heinlein or he'd already know relationship between an armed citizenry and civil courtesy in American society.

Go Yee Hence and read the whole thing.

otpu

Oh, I have, John. I'm just wondering how long it'll be before the Brits realize they're seriously down the wrong road - and they've got to do a U-turn no matter the screaming and shouting from their pacifists...

J.