"I think one's got to make a difference between what the weapons can do and what the people can do. And there are always going to be unstable people who are going to do monstrous things. We know that but I don't think it helps by taking it out on the rest of the population."
This entirely sensible comment by The Queen's husband, Prince Philip in a BBC Radio 5 interview has outraged the tabloid press and anti-gun campaigners.
Because he also said:
"If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?"
Anti-gun campaigners claim he is saying cricket bats are in some way as dangerous as hand guns (without having any clear idea by what they mean when they characterize an item as dangerous in any case). Either this is crass stupidity on their part, or they think everyone else is sufficiently stupid that mis-representing the Prince's views will deflect attention from his basic point.
It seems to me, that considering that Timothy McVeigh (the "Oklahoma Bomber") killed over a hundred people with a fertiliser bomb (according to the US government) and that revoking Thomas Hamilton's gun licence would not have endeared authority to him further, the gun-banners are seriously barking up at the wrong tree. But then, their arguments are not based on reason…
Johnny <johnny@dvc.org.uk>