BBC News Glamorizes Terrorism

Yesterday's attack on an off duty soldier in the London suburb of Woolwich is a truly shocking event.  The two deranged men hacked the man to death in broad daylight and then stood around proclaiming "god is great" and other medieval nonsense until the police arrived to deal with them. The press have been quick to tell us that this murder has all the hallmarks if an al-Qaida inspired attack, the terror organisation has apparently migrated to low tech "lone wolf" operations to reduce the chances of being caught by the security services.  The two assailants remained on the scene until armed police eventually arrived up to 20 minutes later, how long does it take to respond to a terrorist incident in central London?  Surely not 20 minutes!!  Scotland Yard's police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said officers from the counter-terrorist unit were leading the investigation into the "shocking and horrific" incident.  "We have launched a murder investigation, being led by the counter-terrorism command. Two men have been arrested in connection with that murder." There is a simple and chilling message that this sick crime is trying to communicate to other terror-curious Muslims - "anyone can be a terrorist now".  Given the scale of latent anger that exists within our Muslim communities and the lack of an alternative positive narrative for disaffected young Muslim men we should be concerned.  We should be concerned that inside our boarders we now have a pan-religion anger management problem that will certainly spill more innocent blood.  Solving the global problem of coexistence between our modern society and unreconstructed fundamentalist with Dark Age belief systems is going to be a long term project and the UK is on the front line.  Clearly the worst aspect of this incident is the violent death of an innocent man and the loss inflicted on his family and friends.  Insults has been added to this tragedy through the appalling coverage of this horror event by all the news media and particularly the BBC.  To have to watch the BBC news and Newsnight last night, where they gave these loony religious zealots airtime was one of the worst editorial decision in the BBC's recent history and that is saying something.  To broadcast the murderer, with blood all over his hands and the body lying in full view, was a gift to terrorism and a gross affront to the victim and all right minded viewers.

Ending a small war

We are lucky that Britain has had very few mass shootings in modern times. During the latter half of the 20th century there were only two incidents -  The 1987 Hungerford massacre and in 1996 the Dunblane school massacre; each led to ringing public and political demands to restrict firearm use.

The result is that we have  the strictest firearms laws in the world.  The law bans most semi-automatic weapons, long-barrelled weapons the private possession of most handguns, if you want to shoot you have to join a club.  However, this did not stop the shootings in Durham in 2010 when Derrick Bird's rampage cost 13 lives and 11 other injured. Bird held legal permits for three shotguns and a rifle, so this regime isn't the perfect answer.

As a partial of these restriction (maybe) we have low rates of death caused by shootings  with 0.07 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants in 2009 compared to the United States 3.0 (that 30,000 lives a year - a small war).

These changes to the law on gun ownership where a direct result of a public clamour demanding change.  It is therefore very strange for us to see the results in the graph below, which show the public attitudes to gun ownership in the US.




This should remind us Brits and Americans that although we speak the same language, we worship the same God (open to dispute), we enjoy the same culture (broadly) and we are somewhat related biologically  - in fact we are foreigners to each other as much as the Mongolians are foreigners to us in Britain!

Prior post on the same subject - so you know I am biased!
http://getwd50.blogspot.com/2012/12/why-people-like-guns.html

No need for guns

I have served in the army, I have spent memorable days shooting pheasants with friends and sad to say I absolutely know that guns are a universal evil.

However conscious of the need for safety and careful the gunman is, the overriding feeling a gunman gets from holding a weapon is one of power.  My plus-four garbed friends won’t admit this, but it’s true.  How could the act of holding a killing machine affect one differently? 

We need to respond to the problem globally whether its a lone Fascist in Norway, Drug runners in Mexico, Moose hunters in Alberta, a lunatic in Newport or Pheasant shooters on Exmoor - I think the answer is straight forward GUNS RESULT IN DEATH - and the correlation is clear.