Dear LPG, 

I try not to see the news because so little of it is good these days, but I am writing this message on yet another morning when I turned the television on to find a news story about yet another student who has gone into an American school with a gun and, before the authorities shot him dead, he managed to kill some 19 children.  The report included news of more than one ten-year-old victim and the fact that the gunman was only 18 years old is even more disturbing.  

The sad thing is that it has happened so often over the past few years that we get used to this sort of news.  Firstly, it happened in the USA where if it has to happen, is where many of us have come to expect it, and that is so far away from the average morning television-viewing rest of the world we so often hear such news without actually listening and taking note of the immediateness and reality of the situation for longer than the news item takes to transmit. 

I found a few statistics about the relationship between the volume of civilian gun-ownership in the different countries of the world and I have to say that I am really glad that England and Wales are relatively low on the list with Scotland and Ireland showing few more privately owned guns per 100 people, but that same list shows that there are actually more privately owned guns in the USA than there are American citizens living there.

The thing I don’t understand is that northern-world-hemisphere-wide, the oldest of us pensioners who have never opted for working in the armed forces, are likely to have had parents who experienced living in a war-torn country.  Those Brits now in their 80s will still have first-hand experience of war, shooting and bombing from the tail end of WWII but when there is such news, the person with the gun is so often so young and nowadays often a student themselves.  This means that the only war or shooting they have seen is from television, film, or computer games.

I know that we in the UK are more likely to learn of stabbings, and that so much more violence of any description is publicised as news these days, but is it not frightening to know that young people are so much more depressed and disenchanted with their lives in our bright new 21st century that these things have to happen?  

JC. Brockley

LPG shares a few bits of relevant information…

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…and LPG have found a little about todays celebration…

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