Security and Temerity

After watching Michael Moore’s ‘Bowling for Columbine’, in lieu of dissenting with the fad of owning firearms as a means for security and reprieve from diffidence on account of the rising deprave acts of psychological, sadistic violence particularly prevalent in the U.S as compared to the rest, I reminisced my erstwhile predilection for those guns with innocuous plastic bullets. I had been an ardent follower of the action genre of movies, never watching them in quick succession so as to savor the craftsmanship involved in the execution of such devastating scenes made more enthralling by the robust firepower. Terminator 2 Judgment Day, which apart from the sublime special effects had showcased an exciting plethora of weapons, my favorite being the M79 grenade launcher, a compact and effective weapon to counter a much more innovatively advanced nemesis.

But the preponderance of pertinent and solemnly debatable issues presented in the film was enough to get me back on track. From the bizarre idea of granting a firearm, on opening an account in the North County Bank(not without a background inspection) which claims have a license on some 500 firearms stored in a secured vault, to the availability of bullets in a barber’s shop and walmart stores, the awry state of affairs perplexed me a little. Is it the fact that the Americans are so insecure and dreadful that they need to own a gun apart from a half-baked assurance of police protection which even foisted Utah to make gun ownership a law or is owning a gun a current fad, a new symbol of snobbishness, or a congenial way to relinquish pain and suffering?

However, out of this vacillating and precarious cloud there is one man who has been intransigent from the beginning, the Oscar winning actor Charlton Heston, former president of National Rifle Association (NRA), who seems to be least affected by the atrocious unscrupulous killings in the Columbine High School and that of a 6 year old girl by a boy of the same age. He shockingly held pro gun rallies subsequent to these deplorable events calling for strong protests. Although he claimed he was oblivious to the Columbine massacre while holding those rallies but the enormity of such a drastic situation decimates its validity.