Author: R J Adams

Having just slated the American nation for its ridiculous and deadly obsession with firearms, I’m now about to attack them once more over their second favorite deadly pastime.

A British report by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), today states that in 2007, on British roads, 25 fatal, 64 serious, and 259 slight accidents resulted from motorists breaking the law by using cellphones while driving.^[1]

According to research, drivers are four times more likely to crash if they use a cellphone while at the wheel.

Studies of this nature are never conducted in America. Agencies say there’s no evidence cellphone use while driving causes accidents. That’s because the evidence has never been collated. US police officers at the scene of an accident aren’t interested in whether a cellphone was in use at the time. Why should they be? It’s perfectly legal. Drivers are unlikely to say, “Hang on, officer, before you cart me off to hospital, I’ve just got to finish this call to my girlfriend.” Now, are they?

Driving a school bus around our local town allows me a perfect opportunity to observe what’s happening inside other motor vehicles. Believe me, the scenarios can be – and frequently are – horrifying; early morning commuters with a coffee mug in one hand, cellphone pressed to the ear, and a newspaper propped against the steering wheel, while fiddling with the CD changer or SatNav; applying make-up while phoning mom is very common; once, a guy masturbating while on the phone to God knows who….?????

And all at speeds in excess of thirty or forty miles an hour. If these people suddenly whipped out their Glock 38’s and began firing haphazardly, they’d scarcely be more dangerous.

It’s been illegal to use a cellphone in Britain while driving, since 2003. That the reason figures are relatively low. In the US, it boils down to this “freedom” thing again.

Apparently, Americans just love to have the freedom to kill people, whether its with a firearm, or a cellphone.

^{“Software blocks car phone users” BBC, October 14th 2008}

Filed under: Lethal weapons

I’ve written on this subject many times, but it’s one that bears repeating over and over, if only in the vague hope some of the thick numb-skulls out there will eventually allow the sense of it to penetrate their Tyrannosaurus-type brains.

If there’s one thing gets me mad enough to shoot somebody, it’s the neanderthal, let’s-go-kill-a-bad-guy, mentality of those who call themselves the “gun lobby” in this country. On the one hand, US citizens consider themselves the most civilized people on earth; on the other, they’re more than happy to blow each other away.

Americans are unable to grasp that, just across the ocean, are a multitude of nations where the citizen’s right to bear arms was superseded over a century ago by a group of individuals employed to protect the public from harm. They’re known as a “police force”.

Admittedly, in America, the police have evolved even less than the citizens they’re payed to protect, and would rather squeal tires and flash pretty lights all day, as they prance about dressed in wrap-a-rounds, Orwellian fancy dress, silly hats, and the biggest elephant guns the world has ever seen, rather than muster themselves into anything vaguely resembling an efficient unit.

For God’s sake, they’re still electing sheriffs in the manner of Tombstone Gulch. The only difference between an Illinois police force and the posse that pursued Billy the Kid, is that horses don’t work too well on blacktop, so they’ve had to trade in their saddles for Buicks.

A recent article in the Huffington Post explores the question of US moms packing sideirons to their kiddie’s soccer games.^[1]

Incredibly, if that last sentence manages to raise an eyebrow at all among US citizenry, it will only be from a sexist, redneck, pig who believes the right to carry a gun belongs solely to those with similarly shaped weaponry dangling between their legs.

This disease has now spread to Britain. Angelina Jolie recently declared she kept a firearm at home “for security”, and “if anybody comes into my home and tries to hurt my kids, I’ve no problem shooting them.”

Given that handguns are illegal in Britain, one has to wonder how she managed to obtain the permit required to own one, or whether, even as I write, the police are preparing the necessary charges.

Jolie is an exception in Britain. In America she’d be the norm. But then, she is from Los Angeles. To most Europeans, the idea of even owning a handgun, let alone using one, would verge on repugnant. There’s just no need.

Americans seem hellbent on keeping their country as uncivilized as possible. It is, I believe, something to do with their weird idea of “freedom”. Or, perhaps, it is more about America’s great sense of national insecurity. After all, they also keep enough nuclear weapons on tap to destroy the planet a couple of dozen times over.

“Trust” is a word no longer found in the American vocabulary. While US moms and pops pack heat in their handbags and pockets, every other American on the block is a potential enemy.

Both presidential candidates have got it right on one count, though it’s doubtful they mean it quite in the same way:

Change is long overdue.”

^{[1] “Moms With Guns” Huffington Post, October 14th 2008}

Filed under: Guns kill people

From their series, “Scenes From An Iraki Childhood”, this photograph of a Christian boy whose family are fleeing the campaign of persecution being waged against Christians in Mosul.^[1] Photographed at Qaraqosh checkpoint about 18 Kilometers east of Mosul.

“The surge is working.”

^{[1] “Gorilla’s Guides” October 14th 2008}

Filed under: Dissection of a nation