Gun Crime

I am a great admirer of America and the American people - in many but not all things.

One issue that divides America is gun control which seems to drive some folks mad - including the former Hollywood actor - Charlton Heston.

Now Charlton played many great roles including Ben Hur and El Cid - though Soylent Green is best skipped over it has to be said.

But Charlton once defiantly announced to a National Rifle Association (NRA) event that the gun control lobby would have to prise his beloved rifle 'from his cold dead hands' - so persuaded was old Charlton the right of every American citizen to bear arms.

The point that escapes me however is with so many American citizens bearing all these arms - why do the crazed shooters who hit the headlines with such terrible regularity never get stopped in their tracks?

Why does someone like Charlton Heston not stand up when the shooting starts - and drop the cowardly assassin with a single shot to the head?

The answer - of course - is that things like this only happen in movies and that the only way in the long run to reduce such terrible crimes - is to prevent ordinary citizens having easy access to powerful guns.

As Anders Breivik showed in Norway this is not an American phenomenon - deranged people with a potentially violent grudge against the world exist everywhere - even in Dunblane in rural Scotland.

But Scotland has never experienced another Dunblane - since the massacre of 16 innocent school children and a school teacher in 1996.

Yet the same kind of crime continues to occur in the the USA - two or three times a year it would seem.