OF KIDS AND GUNS AND WAITING

What sort of man gets his 10-month old son a gun permit? Sorry to say my USA cousins, but there’s something sick about a society where this can happen. Would someone explain to me this obsession with owning a gun? Is it for protection against all the other 1,000’s of people who are out there waiting to shoot you? Is it a “man” thing – you know, the great outdoors and buddies shooting crap out of the wildlife? How does a private organisation like the NRA have so much political power? Even the “so he claimed” peace-loving John F Kennedy accepted life membership – how come? Dumb questions maybe – but a whole lot dumber letting the general public own guns in my opinion.
Statistics speak for themselves. Gun deaths in the UK are 0.01 per 1,000 – USA 0.3 per 1,000. 30 times the rate. Think that might just be connected to gun ownership?
I lived in the USA for 2 years and still don’t understand the obsession with the right to carry a gun. I prefer the right to go to school or go shopping without fear of being gunned down myself.
Is it some sort of “real man” thing? A visible symbol of male virility? If so, it sure is more dangerous than the original.
There is hope for sure – the NRA have a list of blacklisted celebrities and organisations. It includes, American medical associations, churches and law firms. Celebrities include Oprah Winfrey, Bon Jovi. Sean Connery, George Clooney and Madonna, to name but a few. Shame more politicians aren’t on the list.
Go stick that in your rifle butt Charlton Heston and all who sail with you.

I wrote a short while ago about the 200th anniversary of the end of the slave trade, and questioned why people felt they needed an apology for something that happened so long ago – why people felt the need to apologise for something they were not responsible for. How about more recent incidents, such as the forced emigration of British children during World War II to Australia? How about the government, or whatever agency was involved, apologising to the man who is still living and who only recently discovered his parents were not dead at the time he was deported? The parents who were told their child had died, whereas he had been shipped out down under? Makes the self-righteous cry for apologies over the slave trade even more hypocritical given none of that trade’s survivors still live, whereas many of kids deported during World War II do. Could it be anything to do with a sort of reverse racial bias? Whatever, it makes the recent sanctimonious speeches about the slave trade turn my stomach.
Luckily a Social Worker in Nottingham where I live took the matter into her own hands and started a charity to try and reunite people. Shame a lot of the kids deported are dead now and will never know the deception practised on them.

I have never been a patient person, and I guess this waiting for results, hospital appointments etc. should have made me more patient, only it hasn’t. Yes, I know, accept what has happened and it will fade into the background – might be easier if there wasn’t so much going on health-wise. Arthritis, the inherited clotting problem and leukaemia – all were sort of woven into the general tapestry of my life fairly soon after the last was diagnosed– now along comes the probability of the hole in my heart being closed. Not even that is simple, because any surgery involves an increased risk of infection given the leukaemia and the drugs I take for the arthritis; the anticoagulants I take involve an increased risk of bleeding; will the operation improve or make worse the atrial fibrillation I already have? No, I am not depressed or wallowing in self-pity. I just hate not knowing. I have always needed to understand any aspect of medicine because of my work in Pathology; but it’s a different ball game when you’re the patient and not the one involved in treatment. I’m not a difficult patient either – just bloody curious. I never realised before how often adverts and newspapers encourage us to think about the future. I hear people planning vacations or job plans for the next year, get asked about a possible holiday in Mexico next winter. Sorry folks, my time line for planning’s rather short right now – like about the next couple of weeks. I can’t see beyond that, and I know I should be able to, and that really pisses me off.
See ya