LAST weekend’s tragic event in Orlando, Florida - where a gunman, allegedly yelling his praise to Allah and his commitment to ISIS, took a semi-automatic ‘machine’ gun into a gay nightclub and murdered 49 people, injuring scores more - brought into sharp focus for me a conversation I had with three ladies in September 2015.

I was travelling by train – three days and three nights – from Seattle, Washington on the US west coast, to New York City on the east coast. Due to the accommodation I had chosen for this odyssey, my meals were included and I found myself seated in the company of three ladies of, ahem, a certain mature age.

We got to talking and I was asked what I thought of the US. I responded that, this being my fifth trip to their country, I had found, somewhat pleasingly, that a great number of Americans no longer believed that the Universe revolved around the good ol’ US of A. That there was both a broader, global outlook and that people seemed interested and knowledgeable about ‘the outside world’. This, against the back drop of the fact that (and it depends on the source) somewhere between 10% and 36% of Americans hold a valid passport, against, for example, 49% of Australians. These ladies were thrilled to hear my view.

The ladies had all settled in Pennsylvania after their retirements and had just returned from a rail and sea journey through the Canadian Rockies and the Inside Passage to Alaska. By way of geographic explanation, Pennsylvania and Connecticut almost abut each other but for a sliver of land belonging to another north-eastern state.

So, we got to talking further and, somehow, the conversation turned to guns and gun violence. I had taken a particular interest – being a father and grandfather – of the events in December 2012 when a crazed gunman opened fire at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut killing 22 children aged six and seven, as well as four teachers. 

I found occasion to weave that event into the conversation and was expounding the general view of Australians that such senseless killings needed to be stopped, when one of the ladies – all of whom were gazing quizzically – asked “excuse me, what’s Sandy Hook?”!  The slaying of 26 individuals in a state almost next door to their home state had clearly had little impact on them.

We briefly discussed the Second Amendment to the American Constitution which gives the authority for citizens to own firearms under the daintily shrouded language of the day, to wit:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Now, the Second Amendment was declared in 1791 – part of the US Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution).  1791. Remember that date. It’s 225 years ago! It’s doubtful, to say the least, that ANY of the shapers of the Amendment envisaged assault rifles, semi-automatic weapons and machine guns as ‘Arms’.

On a highway into Tucson, Arizona during my second trip to the US in 1982 (that’s a long way back, too, I’ll grant you), I witnessed a motor cycle rider travelling down the same highway ‘packing heat’ – some sort of revolver in a holster attached to the belt of his jeans. I asked a few questions then and was told that, at least in Arizona, it was legal to carry anywhere as long as the firearm was not concealed. Strange, but true.

I get that a country’s people ought to have the right to ‘arm themselves’; indeed, the Second Amendment seeks to ratify the right, by way of intimating that a society without arms may be held hostage by its government. But, that said, Australia has a strict policy of gun ownership, control, security, etc (mostly from the 1996 Laws brought down by the then PM John Howard in the aftermath of the Port Arthur killings of 35 people. Our gun-related deaths are as a consequence, miniscule, and less so if one removes the gang-related gun killings).

Which brings us to Orlando and the Pulse nightclub. Questions. Questions like: how does a gunman get to walk into a nightclub – gay or otherwise – with a semi-automatic rifle and gun down 49 people, removing and replacing clip after clip in his murderous spree? Like: if the gunman was on the FBI persons-of-interest list, how on earth did he secure a semi-auto in the first place?

Make no bones, Australia’s gay and straight communities alike need to stand in support of this massive and heinous rampage. Could it happen here? Possibly. Will it happen here? Possibly.

President Obama has publicly stated that the one downside of his Presidency is the inability to convince Congress, not to ban the right to own firearms, but that more and improved checks need to be required before a gun can be purchased. The National Rifle Association, in league with the Republicans, have blocked ANY notion of changing the “right to bear arms”.

Would it not have been easier to overcome such atrocities as we see from the US on an all-too-often basis, had not the shapers of the Second Amendment spelled the word ‘bare’ differently?  And it does it not behove EVERYONE, black, white, Hispanic, Christian, Atheist, Muslim, Jew, male and female, gay and straight, to remember – unlike my lady friends on that train – to remember those tragedies that come of a law passed 225 years ago?