It's not guns that kill, it's letting idiots have them

I do like, no wait a minute like's a strong word, I do read Big Dick Littleboy's column padding. You know the bits at the end of his main rant about speed cameras or BBC2 documentaries or whatever he's noticed in the 25 minutes before his deadline. He must ping up an idea in that cavernous head of his and then bang it out on his Amiga word processor.

He could and he does.

"Hmmm, word count function shows I'm a couple of hundred short of cheque collection. That leaves me with two options. One; I can look deeper into the topic I'm writing about, perhaps do a little research and see if there really are 3 billion Polish carpenters living in Slough who all claim on the sick and yet still manage to undercut British chippys by 20% while eating swans and stealing church roof lead. I could, perhaps, start by speaking to a Carpenter perhaps see what the real deal is..."

"Actually as I've only 17 minutes until deadline bites I'd better plump for option two. Make up an opinion about something I half caught on the news and, seemingly, know jack-shit about."

And so that's how we get this pearl of wisdom about the horrendous shooting in the Netherlands last week.

Being a vigilant top-drawer journalist for a quality publication he keeps abreast of world events and so managed to catch the news between rounds - when he remembered to take off his 3D glasses. From this deep analysis of the media reaction he seems to think the world's taking a swipe at the gun crazy moonshine drinkers of America.

Apparently if a shopping mall rampage happened in the States we'd be analysing why these things happen in the US so often and talking about fear driven gun cultures, whereas when it happens to drippy liberals it gets ignored, swept under the carpet.

Not true, the shootings got a lot of coverage all over the world. around 8,000 stories about Alphen aan den Rijn on Google news, from sources as diverse as Latvia, Vietnam and even America. I recall it being on BBC & Sky news in the UK and it wasn't missed by any of the daily newspapers.

The reason there's less debate about the causes of the tragedy is that it's such an exceptional event, the debate following a similar atrocity across the Atlantic would focus around "Why does this keep happening?"

In the US, where guns are seen as a right there are around 7 murders per 100,000 people using a gun. In the Netherlands, where guns are seen as a privilege, there are around 0.4.

It's not less significant that it's happened in the Netherlands, it's more significant that it happens so often in America. Tweet