IN THE MIDST OF the battle raging in the United States between the right to bear arms and the left to fear arms, came this joke. A redneck walked into a gun shop, and asked for the largest gun in stock.
Glad for the sale but curious, the store owner asked, “Why do you need such a big gun?”
The redneck responded, “I’m gonna shoot me some cans.”
The store owner was surprised at someone wanting such a huge weapon to shoot cans. He questioned, “Cans? What kind of cans?” To which the redneck replied with a huge grin, “Just some AfriCANS, MexiCANS, Puerto RiCANS and even some gay AmeriCANS.”
Following the deaths of 20 children and six teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012, the gun control debate in the United States has heated up. President Barack Obama, having defeated Mitt Romney and the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the 2012 elections, is seen as public enemy number one.
Comedian Bill Maher quipped: “The NRA made an ad saying that Obama is elitist because his kids have armed guards. Yeah, that crazy Obama thinking his kids need special protection. I love the NRA accusing anyone of being paranoid. It’s like a septic tank saying, ‘You need a mint’.”
Jimmy Fallon said: “In a recent attack ad, the NRA claims that President Obama cares about his own children more than he cares about other children. In response, President Obama was like, ‘Yeah, that’s how families work’.”
Given the grimness of the debate, I tend to stick to a comedian’s eye view of how it is evolving. Comedian Seth Mayer joked: “Firearms groups across the country have declared today the first annual Gun Appreciation Day. So don’t forget to set your clock back 100 years.”
Commenting on Gun Appreciation Day, which the organizers callously said “honoured the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King Jr”, Stephen Colbert remarked: “Yes, Dr King is pro-gun just as surely as Jesus would be pro-nails.”
John Oliver of The Daily Show made a telling point: “One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns.”
There were even sarcastic references to the NRA’s boast of knowing exactly what God would have wanted: “Oh, keeping God in schools would have prevented the recent shooting? Please tell me how many cases of child molestation he’s prevented in churches” and “If you’re more concerned about possible delays at the gun shop than you are about the safety of our children and our mental well-being as a nation, then maybe it’s not really ‘God’ you’ve been praying to at night”.
While all this is happening the mayor of Port of Spain, Trinidad, Louis Lee Sing, wants bigger guns for the city’s police force.
“The equipment that [the police] have . . . is not in sync with the kind of equipment that is required to police the hot spots,” he said. “It’s not that the firearms are old, but they’re small,” Lee Sing, a big gun in the Opposition People’s National Movement, added.
I suppose that the mayor is unaware of the lesson of the Titanic, that size is not everything or even the only thing. It is the kind of mentality that makes penis enhancement one of the fastest growing industries.
Additionally, given Mr Lee Sing’s age and stature he, too, might have solid reasons for wanting a bigger weapon and, like the redneck, do it because he CAN. Or maybe, because he’s tired from shooting from the lip now pines for shooting from the hip.
The Jamaica Gleaner, commenting on a similar request from the police in Jamaica, stated: “The issue, though, is whether the problem is to be confronted with more and better fire rather than brain power . . . . For in the long, or even the short run, criminals in Jamaica, even the more dangerous ones like Delano ‘Bigga Prime’ Williams, who was highlighted by Commissioner Thomas, will be defeated not by matching their firepower, but by sophisticated, intelligent policing – in other words, by brain power.”
The problem, of course, is that intelligence is a rare commodity and definite deficiency in our police as it is in our politicians. I can see the gun situation escalating and after it reaches the howitzer stage, the mayor ordering one-hundred tanks. The purchasing clerk mistakenly buys septic tanks and the mayor then boasts: “We have bought a hundred tanks and we are going to have 24-7 patrols in East Port of Spain as soon as our soldiers teach our city police how to drive them.”
• Tony Deyal was last seen saying that the sight of someone waving an automatic at him makes him faint. It is called “Glock-coma”.