Virginia Shooting

As most of you will now know, yesterday two journalists were shot and killed on live television as they reported from Virginia's Smith Mountain Lake. This is a short blog like the ones I do from time to time when I want to express an opinion on something but don't feel the 140 characters available on Twitter is enough to get my point across.

Coming from the UK, if you see someone who may have a grudge against you, someone you think want revenge for something that happened to them in the past, you may get a bit nervous. You may turn around and say "I think he might start something here." However, you never have to worry for one second that that person will pull out a gun and fucking murder you.

I'm not denying that people in the UK get murdered. It happens, but you fancy your chances of survival a lot more knowing that a psycho can't legally buy a lethal firearm in the local supermarket. There's knives, yes. But if someone intends to use a knife they know there's a very good chance that once they've stabbed someone they'll get done in themselves. Not like with a gun, where you give someone the power of God.

People in America will claim there are responsible gun owners, there are those who would never use their guns in this way. However, the harsh reality is that guns are aimed at people like yesterday's shooter. In his own manifesto after the shooting he claimed he committed the murder due to previous acts of discrimination against him. Guns give people who feel helpless or worthless power. The power of God, lethal force in the palm of their hand. And those with inadequacies thrive of this feeling, and that is why guns will always find their way into their hands whilst they're still legally and readily accessible.

America set the agenda when it comes to opinion's on the likes of ISIS. They're portrayed as barbarians, and their shocking acts are condemned by the West and rightly so. But in America yesterday, an innocent young woman was brutally murdered in cold blood, by a man carrying a firearm he could legally fucking buy in a supermarket.

The man proceeded to post videos of the shooting to social media, a barbaric act reminiscent of the aforementioned ISIS. But the barbarism is not in the act alone, the barbarism is in the system that allowed this murder to occur. The barbarism is in a nation supposedly at the forefront of the civilised world that allows people to legally own lethal firearms that they can use to murder young women in cold blood.

Rest In Peace Alison Parker and Adam Ward. Not victims of ISIS, not victims of terrorism or war. Rest In Peace Alison Parker and Adam Ward. Victims of America.

@adamheath