Gun culture thrives in U.S. despite cinema massacre
Lifestyle Jul. 26, 2012 - 07:11AM JST (
124 )
A man stands at a memorial to the dead near the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado AFP
AURORA, Colo —
A girl aged five or six tries out a rifle in an Aurora gunshop, oblivious to Friday’s massacre in this Colorado town.
“Honey, it’s too big for you, we will find you another,” says her mother.
This is a normal scene in the U.S. heartland where it takes more than a few mass shootings to drive a wedge between patriotic Americans and their right to bear arms,
as enshrined in the Second Amendment of the Constitution.
One argument brandished by diehard supporters of gun rights is that if the citizenry is armed, crazed gunmen like alleged Aurora shooter James Holmes will be taken down before they claim so many lives.
“If I were there, I would have killed him,” and
“Guns don’t kill people, people do,” are popular refrains.
Speaking after a gunman, presumed to be Holmes, shot dead 12 people and wounded 58 others in a packed Aurora cinema,
John Oberly, a 51-year-old rugby coach, told AFP it was not the right to bear arms that created the problem.
“If I had been there, I would have stopped some damage,” he said. “In fact, if anybody had been carrying a gun, they may have stopped some of the damage.”
President Barack Obama’s Republican challenger in November elections,
Mitt Romney, reiterated
his strong support for the Second Amendment as he stressed on Monday that now was not the time to work on new gun legislation.
“With emotions so high right now, this is really not a time to be talking about the politics associated with what happened in Aurora,” he said.
