The whole world shares America’s grief at the terrible mass shooting in which 17 children and teachers were gunned to death and many others badly injured. But then come the questions. Why does America do nothing about the root cause; the constitutional right for every citizen to bear arms? No other country in the world has a legally armed population with more authorised guns in circulation than people.
What interpretation of freedom demands that children’s lives are at risk in school? Or anyone anywhere is legally and constitutionally at risk of being shot? Because that appears the be the effect of the deeply flawed provision in a document which was intended to bring light to the world and indeed has done so. Is the National Rifle Association a power greater than the State? These and many others are questions that the world asks, but which are for Americans themselves to answer.
There is something very wrong with a civilisation in which teenagers can legally buy and own automatic assault weapons designed to kill, yet cannot buy beer to make them tipsy. Whatever the evils of alcohol, they are as nothing to mass murder.