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Life imitates art with gruesome results
Art imitates life, but in Colorado early yesterday morning they had a gruesome example of life imitating art.
It was a midnight showing of the Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, when a gunman went berserk. He detonated a couple of gas canisters and began firing at the audience, killing at least 12 people and injuring over 50 others.“We were watching a scene of the movie — it was a shootout scene, there were guns firing,” one witness said.
“Then loud bangs came from the right of the theatre. Smoke took over the entire theatre, and it was really thick and no one could really see anything.” The lone gunman began shooting into the audience.
Aspects of the outrage will no doubt be incorporated in future movies, and this will then be seen as art imitating life. The whole thing is a vicious circle.
The horrific event will again undoubtedly raise questions about the ready availability of guns in the United States. This issue is usually debated in the wake of random gun violence. The gun lobby has traditionally been a powerful and influential shaper of opinion in the US. The right to have a gun is guaranteed by the US Constitution since the introduction of the Bill of Rights in 1891. The Second Amendment of the Constitution specifies the right of everybody to keep and bear arms.
As recently as 2010 the US Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protects the right of an individual to have a weapon and to use it for traditionally lawful purposes, such a self-defence within the home.
Certain restrictions have been imposed in relation to carrying concealed weapons. But the man who opened fire in the cinema in Aurora, Colorado, was openly carrying a rifle, a handgun, and a gas mask. He was dressed in a bulletproof vest and a riot helmet, and he put on a gas mask before detonating gas canisters. The whole thing was surreal.
In this country we have a different tradition. When the modern Irish State was formally established in 1922, a licence was required to hold firearms.
Indeed, in the early months of the State, the possession of an unauthorised gun was considered a capital offence. People were actually executed on the authority of the government for possessing illegal arms.
This did not eliminate illegal weapons, but it did encourage a different public attitude towards the possession of guns.
Many cultural changes have been popularised due to the imitation of trends in American movies.
We have already witnessed the emergence of the drug culture, and there has been disturbing evidence of the rise of a gangster culture with an increase in the number armed robberies. Some people have been aping the worst aspects of American society.
What happened in Colorado is another grim warning of the consequences of an unbridled gun culture. This must not be allowed to foster in this country.
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