WASHINGTON (Rooters agency) – “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” This argument of the US pro-gun lobby has been proved true by an experiment that no one ever expected could be conducted.
Scientists are still not certain, but most tend to support the theory that last week’s strange events were caused by an unprecedented electromagnetic convergence of sun spots with a rare alignment of the zodiac. Whatever the cause, as everyone knows, the nation experienced seven days in which guns could not fire.
The situation might have been expected to meet the wildest desires of the anti-gun lobby, who would have predicted that it would result in a sharp drop in the number of mass homicides. But this did not happen.
It is true that there was a small but statistically significant decline in killings during the first six hours of gunlessness, which is believed to have begun at 10:30 pm (EST) on the Sunday night. However, this decline is believed to be due to would-be killers having to look around for new methods after discovering that their weapon of choice didn’t work.
But already by Monday morning, it was clear that the unusual situation would not prevent Americans from getting back to their normal practice of killing each other.
On that morning, a 15-year-old high school student (who cannot be named for legal reasons) in Northern Eastbrook, West Virginia, annoyed that he had been issued a detention notice after a vocal dispute with other students, first tried to shoot the teacher. When his gun didn’t fire, he seized a plastic ruler from an adjacent desk and used it to disembowel the teacher. He then rushed to the classroom blackboard, seized several erasers, and pushed them, one by one, into the windpipes of the four students he had been disputing with, killing all of them.
The nation had barely finished mourning this tragedy when, on Wednesday, violence erupted at a seemingly peaceful office picnic in Ohio. One of the picnickers, Darrel Kumquat, outraged by the umpire’s decision against his side in an improvised softball game, ripped a branch from a tree and used it to beat to death the umpire and six of the opposing players.
Then, on Thursday evening, a person whose motives are unknown entered a motion picture theater in Codswallop, Maine, and poured a bottle of a still unidentified chemical over popcorn in the popcorn machine in the theater foyer. He then gathered up several boxes of the contaminated popcorn, rushed into the theater, and forced the popcorn into the mouths of at least six people in the audience. Four of them died and two are in a hospital in intensive care. The killer escaped because most people in the audience thought the events were part of a new development in live-action cinema.
On Saturday in Largefoot, Washington, a driver upset by a ticket issued by a speed camera entered the local office of the state Department of Traffic Fines and tied plastic bags over the heads of eleven employees, only one of whom is expected to survive.
During the week, there were also the usual numbers of small-scale killings (fewer than four deaths) around the country.
Politicians were commendably prompt in responding to the unexpected evidence that guns are only incidentally related, if at all, to mass killings.
Jeb Metoo, the leading Republican candidate when the others are left out, said that the events proved that “Rumsfeld-like stuff happens, and there’s not much we can do.” But he did suggest that it might help to outlaw blackboard erasers in schools, and maybe students as well.
Another Republican hopeful, hair stylist T. Ronald Dump, said the week’s events proved the need for “a multi-pronged response to terrorist threats, so when I am President, John Rambo will be my Secretary of Defense and all popcorn machines will be sent back to China.”
Curtly Fired, who has been rising in the polls of Republican candidates, said, “If you have seen, as I have, the videos of these killings and the killings still to come, you will understand the need to defund Planned Parenthood and make me the next President.”
On the other side of politics, the President acknowledged that “this evidence from life” had forced him to change his views on gun laws, although he did not specify whether he would support the proposed Constitutional amendment to make it compulsory for corporations to carry guns. After an intruder at the press conference had fired a bullet at him (which fortunately missed) and been taken away, the President joked, “That’s a relief; it proves the gun blackout is over.”
News From Somewhere 