Ironically, Texas is possibly the easiest place to acquire guns in the world. You just walk into a shop, buy as many as you like and they apply for a ‘license’ for you. A process which looks very much like ‘taking your payment on a credit card’ but apparently ‘checks are done’. A week later you get your license but you can take the guns now anyway. If you’re shown to have a history of violence or mental health issues, your license arrives within 3 days. Well, you’re probably going to need the weapons sooner if you’re a nutter. And if you think ‘guns’ means, like a pistol, or a hunting rifle, then think again if you’re in Texas. You can buy virtually anything short of a nuclear warhead in the Lone Star State. Assault rifles, rocket launchers, grenade firers, flame throwers. Because you never know how ‘pesky’ those li’l critters like raccoons can be. Some farm pests are actually armed themselves. And you may need AND HAVE A RIGHT!!!!, to defend your home against invaders. So prepare for Putin, that’s the rationale.

I blame John Wayne. He presented a fictional representation of the classic ‘tough guy’, never backed down, stood his ground, always with a gun in hand or at his hip. True Grit. Fill yer hands ya sons of bitches. The role model for an entire nation’s consciousness. Or, in the case of Texas, unconsciousness. Over here we just had Charles Hawtrey, David Niven and Terry Thomas as role models. Rarely with guns.

So Americans are programmed from birth to be heroes. Armed. Fearless. Back down from NOTHING!.

Why did it take the police nearly an hour to ‘take the gunman down’ at the school then? What were they doing, playing bridge? Due to the massive and increasing popularity of lunatics killing children in schools, I am 100% certain that every police department in every single tiny one-horse village across all 50 states have ‘a protocol’. Police departments live and die for protocols. And most situations will be covered. They’ll have trained, rehearsed, practiced, precisely what to do in each and every possible shoot-em-up situation. But in Uvalde, the 19 police who were at the school for over 45 minutes, decided to ‘wait for more resources’ (what they call ‘people’ over there). They thought ‘there was no immediate risk to children’. Well they go that fucking wrong. They waited for a master key to get in. What, they don’t know how to ‘force entry’???

So we’re confronted with something of a ‘disconnect’ between the heroic ideal and the reality. Which cost the lives of 20 gorgeous little kids, forever destroying 20 families.

Bruce Willis would have been in there in 20 seconds, armed only with a can of beans and wife-beater vest. Jack Reacher wouldn’t have waited for a sodding key. Steven Segal would have only had to try and smile to make the gunman surrender.

It also addresses the ridiculous NRA definition of ‘security’ which is ‘if the baddies have guns, the good guys need bigger guns’, because the police have all the guns in the world. They just chose to wait til the dust had settled before using them.

I despair.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx