Senseless Acts Of Violence.

 

Oscar Dominguez.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Dom%C3%ADnguez 

The news that 12 people were killed and more than 50 were wounded at a midnight premiere of a Batman film in a suburb of Denver, Colorado was shocking.

Devastating to hear the details of those killed, one of them was a six-year old child; and among the wounded a baby of four months.

A truly horrible story, all those people going there to enjoy the first viewing of a new film, they must have been very excited to be there.

Until they realised one of the audience had launched an attack on them, dreadful to think of their excitement turning to blind panic.

What happened was a totally senseless, irrational act; one that I think was made possible by the ease with which the perpetrator could acquire guns.

I find it really hard to believe that in America you can legally buy guns so easily and it seems that they are available everywhere.

Apparently you can buy them in Wal-Mart, which surprised me somewhat, as large supermarkets in Europe do not sell guns.

Supermarkets like Sainsbury's and Tesco in England do not have a gun department down the corridor from children's toys and accessories.

Maybe if it were made impossible to pop into a shopping mall and acquire handguns, shotguns, semiautomatic and automatic weapons.

In England you can only acquire a shot gun to shoot rabbits or birds if you have a license, you can no longer buy handguns.

It may not be a perfect way to control the use of firearms; it certainly keeps down the number of incidents involving the use of guns.

The other thing that needs to be changed is the film industry fixation with promoting violence as something intrinsically masculine.

Films like the ones in which Bruce Willis made his name, totally glorify violence, they send a message that killing can resolve situations.

These films seem to say that killing can be good if you kill the right people; what dreadful propaganda.

I believe that not allowing guns to be freely sold in shops needs to be underpinned by a different mentality in the film industry in Hollywood.

They need to stop making the link between being a man and being violent; Hollywood has been responsible for promoting a culture of violence which should not be tolerated any longer.

Perhaps when guns and violence are no longer presented as acceptable and guns are no longer easily bought maybe there will not be any more shooting sprees in America.