I noticed that some people are putting out the inevitable messages on social media claiming that ‘if only’ somebody out there in the street had a gun, they could have dealt with the Lindt cafe gun man by now, and some are harking back to the Port Arthur massacre as a parallel and saying that ‘if only’ some ‘good brave man’ had had a gun, Martin Bryant would have been taken down earlier.
Well, being the countryside and all that, there were people around with guns. After I’d fled into the shop at the local garage, they said that the bloke there had thought about getting his gun out. The people inside had seen Bryant, a man with long blond hair, shoot a woman, take her companion hostage in the boot of his car, then drive off. A little later, they then saw a man drive up again. This man had long blond hair. Thinking that Bryant was returning, the bloke thought about getting out his gun, until noticing that there was a woman in the front seat of the car, and deciding of course it would be too dangerous.
But even if he’d been a crack shot – as gun toting militia types always seem to think exist aplenty – he’d have got the wrong man. For the long blond haired man driving the car was my ex-husband, and the woman in the front seat was me. And, unseen by anybody, in the back seat, was our small child. You may tconsider that on the world stage, a few individuals here and there may be of minor importance, but still, that’s one reason why guns are best in the hands of those who are highly trained. It is not a good strategy to try to defeat lone nuts with guns by employing other loners with guns randomly scattered among the populace.