Boooom. Goes the noise in the distance. My Guadeloupian housemate runs into the kitchen."Wat is zis noize?" he enquires excitedly."Could be a car backfiring," I say."No! Zis must be gunz! I asked ze people at work and they say it is gunz."I surmise the noises, which happen about once a fortnight, come from the hills of St Ann's."Nobody is getting shot in St Ann's..." I try to convince him.He goes back to playing PlayStation. Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty. Maybe he just has guns on the brain.Trinidad has guns on the brain. There's lots of them and they end many lives. At year end the homicide count passed 400 after the Boxing Day shootings.In the UK in 2012 there were 553 murders. Just 39 were caused by guns.
Nobody likes guns in Britain. Nobody wants them, not even police. I remember the first time I saw a police officer with a gun. It was in Paris, when I was a kid. I stared at the two gendarmes lounging outside a train station, black revolvers tucked neatly into holsters at their waists. They must have felt tough, invincible. The same mindset as any gun owner.For most the psychology of firearms is straightforward: guns kill. For others, including the US president, it's more confusing–like he can't figure out if guns are bad or good. Guns that killed 20 primary schoolchildren in Connecticut in December 2012 and 120 more children since that massacre.
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