So – what to make of the shooting death of South African Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius’s girlfriend? I’m just catching up on all the background information.
The facts : there was a domestic disturbance at Pistorius’s home inside a gated community at 1.30 am Thu morning, and gun shots were heard at 3.30 am. His girlfriend and model Reeva Steenkamp, was found dead with gun shot wounds to the head and arm at the property in Pretoria shortly after that.
So Pistorius is now in custody, charged with murder by the State. He and his family say it was a tragic accident.
Here is what the British ‘The Guardian’ says about guns in the home in a report they title
Fear and Self-arming in South Africa
Despite efforts by the government to limit it, the level of private gun ownership remains high in South Africa, with some estimates putting the number of firearms at almost 6 million – or 12 for every 100 citizens. South Africa ranks 17th in a world league of gun ownership. In 2000 the government introduced a Firearms Control Act, introducing a competency test to restrict gun ownership. But anti-gun groups say that domestic shootings remain an inevitable outcome of allowing gun ownership. “For many South Africans having a gun in the home is about protecting them against the stranger-intruder but data both in South Africa and elsewhere shows that you are four times more likely to have a gun used against you than to be able to use it successfully in self-defence,” said Adèle Kirsten, spokeswoman for the anti-gun group Gun Free South Africa (GFSA).
Meanwhile, here in the USA we have Wayne LaPierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association (NRA) writing in an on-line op-ed called ‘Stand and Fight‘.. no wonder Americans are buying guns in record numbers right now, while they still can and before their choice about which firearm is right for their family is taken away forever. After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia. Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.
So La Pierre is tapping into the survivalist and ‘Obama-is-going-to-take-your-gun-away’ sentiments of his supporters – and totally distorting what really happened during Hurricane Sandy. Yes, there were reports of looting. Yes, there was no food, no water and no electricity. But there were no marauding gangs of criminals, and no deaths attributed to crime, only due to drownings and the storm.