Second Amendment Remedies

As the rioting and looting diminished in and around London last night, but broke out in the West Midlands and Manchester, the pundits went into overdrive, with right leaning ones frothing sufficiently to easily achieve escape velocity. As with Melanie Phillips previously, those rotten lefties were the cause, along with dastardly lawyers, complicit judges, politically correct police, and of course the BBC.

So far, so unhelpful, but does anyone have any real suggestions, rather than the incessant generation of why-oh-why copy? Well, it seems, one inhabitant of the bear pit that is Maily Telegraph blogland does indeed have an idea: step forward Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, who you can tell because he’s a doctor.

Gardiner, whose posts usually consist of a barrage of whingeing about anything done by Barack Obama – it would not be a surprise to read “President Obama debased and disrespected White House tradition by getting out of bed the wrong side” – turned his attention to events in London earlier today, and concluded that the solution is to give people guns. Real ones. Loaded with live ammunition.

Yeah, right. There’s only one problem with so-called “Second Amendment Remedies”, and that’s that, once those defending their shops and businesses get guns, organised and other kinds of criminality get them too. And when folks without the kind of training given, say, to those Police officers authorised to carry arms start shooting, the likelihood of human collateral damage is significant.

But Gardiner’s view is not uncommon among the right in the USA, especially those who like him frequently grace the schedules of Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse). The increasingly scary looking Ann Coulter, like Gardiner a recent guest on Bill O’Reilly’s show, has gone as far as to advocate arming children, which she did after three students were shot dead at a prayer meeting.

Guesting on Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect, on December 18 1997, Coulter opined “If those kids had been carrying guns they would have gunned down this one gunman ... don’t pray. Learn to use guns”. What would happen in the event of an argument between students getting out of hand does not bear thinking about.

Expect to hear yet more suggestions of Second Amendment Remedies in the next few days.