An Armed Society?

Is a polite one, according to the BBC’s ‘Murican correspondent:

I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of (Manhattan), the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns.

“It seems so nice here,” they quaver.

Well, it is!

…

Wait till you get to London Texas, or Glasgow Montana, or Oxford Mississippi or Virgin Utah, for that matter, where every household is required by local ordinance to possess a gun.

Folks will have guns in all of these places and if you break into their homes they will probably kill you.

They will occasionally kill each other in anger or by mistake, but you never feel as unsafe as you can feel in south London.

It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquillity and civility about American life of which most British people can only dream.

It’s interesting that the one person who speaks out most forcefully for gun control in the article is a young man who has been shot nine times, and who recently lost his brother to a shooting – in Washington, DC. Home of the country’s most restrictive gun laws.

(H/T to the Barcepundit, via Jules)