Copying all the wrong things

Jan 31, 2019 Editorial

It would seem that everything that develops in the United States is copied in Guyana. There were the fashion statements; the music systems and even the nature of television.
When Guyana contemplated television, the broadcast system was intended to be European—PAL. After all, Guyana was a European colony. Its trading partners were, for the greater part, the European countries.
However, Government faltered with the introduction of television in 1980 and a private entrepreneur opted to experiment with satellite connections. The most available satellites were American, so before long the American system –NTSC—became the preferred broadcast system. Other television stations came on stream and they all adopted this system which dominates the local broadcast system today.
For some time now Guyanese have been regaled with news of school shootings. People, some of them very delusional, some filled with hate over an action taken against them by the school, bought guns in a country where the constitution gives Americans the rights to bear arms, and to buy guns with little questions asked.
Of course there were regulations. Some states allow people to carry their weapons in the open, while others demand that the weapon be concealed. But in all cases there must be a permit, pretty much like Guyana.
Unlike Guyana, people over a certain age would walk into a gun store and make a purchase. Pressure on the National Rifle Association allowed investigations of people before the weapon or weapons could be bought or sold.
There were also restrictions on the nature of weapons sold. In Guyana, the legal limit is for small handguns. In the United States, until recently, people could actually buy assault weapons. In Guyana, the number of ammunition one license holder could possess is limited by law. Not so in the United States.
But there are always loopholes, with the result that even people with criminal records have been able to purchase weapons. And they have been able to source deadly assault weapons. These have been used with deadly effect in shopping malls, in schools, in night clubs and even in churches.
Over the years, at least since 1998, hundreds of people have been slaughtered in the United States. For this year alone ten people have been killed in mass shootings. A 21-year-old man killed five people, including his parents, in two parishes in Louisiana on January 26, last.
At least five people were killed in a hostage incident and shooting at a bank in Florida. The suspect was taken into custody by police on January 23 last.
A man opened fire in the Tree of Life synagogue in an anti-Semitic attack, killing eleven people and injuring six others (including four police officers). The suspect was taken into custody by police on October 27, last year.
On February 14, 2018, a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Florida, entered the school, killed seventeen people, and wounded seventeen others. He was taken into custody by police.
A fifteen-year-old student killed two other students and injured sixteen others before discarding his weapon and attempting to hide among other students on January 23, 2018. He was apprehended by police. This was the Marshall County High School shooting in Kentucky.
Those were only two of the recent school shootings. Today, this trend seems to becoming to Guyana. Copying what some of the school shooters did in the United States, our would-be shooters took to social media to announce a plan to shoot up schools.
We tend to copy all the bad things out of the United States.

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