Gun Law
The Grim Reaper
No. 19 in a never-ending series. Autumn 1997
Having just returned from a fact finding mission to Louisiana, I can report that motorists show ever more imaginative ways of doing my work for me.
The Louisiana state legislature has shown great imagination in passing a law, by 123 votes to one, permitting the use of deadly force by drivers to prevent suspected carjacking. Providing you hold a gun licence it is now a legitimate defence to shoot a pedestrian or cyclist dead providing you had reason to believe they were about to hijack your car.
We have already adopted the best of American culture as our own: Big Macs, disposable nappies and zero tolerance, to name but three. I trust that New Labour will now proudly and courageously grasp the nettle and give our harassed and downtrodden motorists the same civil rights to shoot other road users that they enjoy in the U.S.A.
No longer will motorists feel their blood pressure rise as they see cyclists weave past them in traffic jams. No longer need they become rattled as pedestrians delay them crossing the road. No longer need motorists suffer the humiliation of being overtaken by a bus in a bus lane. Any movement by a pedestrian, cyclist or bus in the direction of your car and just blow them away.
There's no case to answer m'lud. Case dismissed.
Even if New Labour fails to extend this progressive motoring law to British car drivers I see that motorists have found another way to kill us. Heart attacks.
A survey at St. George's Hospital in London concluded that one in 50 heart attack victims suffered their coronary directly because of traffic related air pollution. They found that heart attacks rose in line with high levels of CO, NO2, SO2 and sooty particulates, and that the link was strongest in the winter months when this pollution was at its worst. They concluded that, in total, air pollution from traffic triggers 6000 heart attacks each year and half of these are fatal. Add these to the 10,000 killed by particulates, the thousands who die from asthma and other pollution related illnesses, and the annual reduction in road carnage statistics trumpeted by the Department of Transport looks increasingly unconvincing.
On reflection, perhaps if shooting rights are to be extended to road users they should be given to walkers and cyclists to defend themselves when they feel their lives at risk of being hijacked by our motoring brethren.
bang bang!
The Grim Reaper
