Country LifeIt’s fair to say us Brits are pretty quick to judge our American counterparts for their gun policy – especially when we hear of yet another horrific mass shooting. But what if I told you were we just as bad, if not worse?
In the last decade alone, the UK has sold a shit ton of military-grade weapons, to pretty much anyone despite our own Foreign Office blacklisting them all as ‘human rights abusers’ previously. Guess that was until they could give us a ton of money, right?
Wong Maye-E/APOnly the likes of North Korea, you know, that country with that bat shit crazy dictator Kim Jong-un and South Sudan- currently bottom of the Fragile States Index are countries we refuse to deal with. Well, at least we have some morals, eh?
The list is staggering. We’ve given £12 billion quid to insane dictators around the world, on a yearly basis nonetheless with the likes of Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, China and Egypt happily profiting and keeping a stranglehold on their nation’s people. Well, thats embarrassing…
RexOn top of that we’ve produced billions of pounds’ worth of weapons for the unstable, war-torn Middle East, including those who will soon be overrun by Isis. Oh, but I’m sure our former PM Tony Blair put up a fight against this shocking weapons trade and did his very best in Gulf… to work on his tan.
Our affiliation with making and supplying guns isn’t new either. We’ve been at the forefront for nearly 400 years, with the first gun maker being recorded in 1630 in Birmingham and the city’s Gun Quarter by the 1690’s was the centre of this heaving manufacturing trade. These days shady world leader in deadly firearms, Lockheed Martin is based in Coventry.
AlamyGun crime is higher in America, yes, of course it fucking it is. But how are we getting on here you may ask? Well, not very well. We have millions of documented guns in the UK, some used to kill innocent people who are unarmed. The underworld is thriving on illicit gun sales, on top our sky-high knife crime, assault figures, burglary and rape figures – which are higher than our American cousins, we look like right dicks now don’t we…
But yet, we don’t even seem to blink. Completely different story if another mass shooting happens in the U.S. though, we are very quick off the mark to criticise are American cousins and think we know what’s best for them.
No one is better at this than monumental bellend Piers Morgan – a guy who we couldn’t wait to see the back of here and now enjoys spending his spare time lecturing ‘trigger happy’ Americans about why having access to firearms is bad on his own show. It’s not going very well, apparently.
So, what’s the answer to this madness? It’s pretty obvious really, lets just stop meddling in their affairs because ultimately we are just as bad, if not worse – on a much larger scale.
The ExaminerMaybe America does need gun control, but we should sort our house out before lecturing everyone else.
