Another tragedy - America’s crazy gun culture

LAST week America was numbed — and again divided — by the latest in a long line of school massacres when psychopath Chris Harper-Mercer killed nine people, before police shot him, at a community school in Oregon.

An emotional President Obama expressed his deepening dismay that the country’s political system could not work to try to better control private gun ownership and reduce the frequency of these preventable tragedies.

Yesterday that culture-wars tragedy was expressed differently, and almost as tragically, when it was reported an 11-year-old eastern Tennessee boy was in custody for murder for shooting and killing an eight-year-old neighbour with a shotgun because she would not show him her puppies.

What kind of a society suggests to an 11-year-old boy that he should use a shotgun to resolve a child’s tiff? What kind of society allows an 11 year old access to firearms?

It seems incredible that so many Americans are utterly wedded to the rights bestowed by their Second Amendment, rights at the root of thousands of gun deaths each year.