Amer­i­cans try­ing to make sense, or oth­er­wise, of their lat­est mass shoot­ing tragedy, might find it instruc­tive to con­sid­er the best-known line from renowned 18th cen­tu­ry Scot­tish poet Robert Burns’ “To a Louse”: ‘O wad some Pow­er the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us!’

Politi­cians like Texas gov­er­nor Greg Abbott and sen­a­tor Ted Cruz who insist the prob­lem isn’t guns, it’s a “men­tal health issue”, could stand back and take stock of their own men­tal state. Where’s the log­ic in putting assault weapons in the hands of peo­ple on the sole cri­te­ria that they are 18 years old, when you claim there are a lot of peo­ple with untreat­ed “men­tal health issues”?
The only glim­mer of pos­si­ble san­i­ty is that vot­ers will stand back, take a long look and realise elect­ing peo­ple mere­ly on the basis of par­ty affil­i­a­tion isn’t always the best option. It’s the one that pro­duces a mind­less — some might even say spine­less — col­lec­tion of leg­is­la­tors will­ing to be herd­ed by the likes of Sen­ate Minor­i­ty leader Mitch McConnell, a man whose vision is laser-focused on his own power.
Rather than at least giv­ing pass­ing men­tion to the idea that maybe, just maybe, tighter gun con­trols ought to be con­sid­ered in the wake of 19 chil­dren and two teach­ers hav­ing been slaugh­tered by a teenag­er with an AR-15, Sen­a­tor McConnell quot­ed the Bible: “The Lord is near to the bro­ken-heart­ed.” He might at least have added that the NRA’s cheque­book is what’s near to those like him, for whom plat­i­tudes sub­sti­tute for inde­pen­dent con­sid­er­a­tion of the gun issue.
But give the man his due, he did find an alter­na­tive to the one-phrase-cov­ers-all response of “thoughts and prayers” that is rote for pret­ty much every politi­cian, self-pro­fessed ‘Chris­tians’ being the most ardent.
Sen­a­tor Cruz added a new lay­er with the boast that he and his wife were “fer­vent­ly lift­ing up in prayer the chil­dren and fam­i­lies in the hor­rif­ic shoot­ing in Uvalde.”
One won­ders if they under­stand that mass mur­der wasn’t part of what Christ had in mind, when, accord­ing to the Gospel of Luke, he said; “Suf­fer the lit­tle chil­dren to come unto me, and for­bid them not”.
How­ev­er, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the image they think they project isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the one oth­ers see, is, on avail­able evi­dence, beyond the adher­ents of “guns are an invi­o­lable right”.
                      INSECURITY ON PARADE
Grown men who feel it nec­es­sary to strut around in pub­lic wear­ing “tac­ti­cal gear” and car­ry­ing auto­mat­ic weapons, or “pack­ing heat” open­ly on their belt, might want to ask them­selves what it is they are so afraid of. And if you need a semi-auto­mat­ic weapon to kill a deer, or any oth­er crea­ture, you’re not much of a hunter. But you are in the com­pa­ny you deserve. The head of the Nation­al Rifle Asso­ci­a­tion, Wayne LaPierre — chief of the “good guys with a gun” NRA mem­bers see as the ulti­mate pro­tec­tors of the inno­cent — didn’t man­age to end the suf­fer­ing of an already wound­ed ele­phant, from point blank range.
The NRA’s reac­tion to the lat­est Texas slaugh­ter of the inno­cents was a state­ment that “we rec­og­nize this was the act of a lone, deranged crim­i­nal.” NRA mem­bers attend­ing the organisation’s annu­al con­fer­ence in Hous­ton “will reflect on these events, pray for the vic­tims, rec­og­nize our patri­ot­ic mem­bers, and pledge to redou­ble our com­mit­ment to mak­ing our schools secure.”
Does that mean more con­fer­ence con­ces­sion stands hawk­ing the now in-demand bul­let-proof back­packs and acces­sories for kids?
Even if the answer is no, the NRA shindig might well be the safest place in Texas; not because of all those “good guys with a gun”, but because it’s the only place in the state where car­ry­ing a weapon will be for­bid­den. For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is a fea­tured speak­er, so in a decree that rais­es irony to a new lev­el, the Secret Ser­vice banned all guns but theirs in his vicinity.
                 THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN
It’s prob­a­bly safe to say that armed or not, in the unlike­ly event any atten­dees per­am­bu­lat­ing “14 acres of the lat­est guns and gear” have ever heard of Burns, they won’t be tak­ing his wish to heart dur­ing what the NRA cheers as “a free­dom-filled week­end for the entire fam­i­ly as we cel­e­brate Free­dom, Firearms, and the Sec­ond Amendment!”
Grow­ing up next door to the U.S., I gen­er­al­ly felt that while Amer­i­cans as a nation were (and remain) brash, loud and annoy­ing­ly full of them­selves, their self-image as the envy of much of the world was not com­plete­ly unjustified.
Dur­ing one of those beery 1970s pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­al evenings beloved by my gen­er­a­tion, I not­ed that it took a sick and pitiable sys­tem to pro­duce Richard Nixon and his cohorts, but only a healthy and admirable one could purge itself, hand over pow­er and move on with­out a shot being fired.
Look­ing at Amer­i­ca from the out­side today, I won­der how many Amer­i­cans look at them­selves and won­der how much longer that will hold true?
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