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A seemingly rational discussion between two people, who agree on most things, has taken a sharp turn this afternoon.
While both holidaying in the same place, two middle-aged women, both with children that are similar ages, have found themselves disagreeing over the idea that more guns and more access to guns results in more people who shouldn’t be allowed to have guns using guns to kill people who don’t deserve to die.
The key difference between these two upper-middle class people appears to be that one is American and one isn’t.
Off the back of a completely seperate conversation, the two women began bonding over several things that they both have in common through their relatively similar lives as suburban semi-employed stay-at-home mothers.
That was until the most recent tragedy was brought up.
“Oh it’s such a tragedy” says Sarah, an Australian.
“Oh isn’t it” says Carrie, the American, who goes on to reminisce a time before over 29 innocent people could be gunned down in the same day, without any form of political intervention.
“I just wonder when it will end. It just keeps happening. I don’t know what is wrong with the world”
“It all started at that high school years ago”
As the two holidayers begin to wrap up their discussion around the commendable efforts from emergency personnel, and the situational variations between this particular tragedy and the last one – that happened nine days ago – the Australian woman begins to edge towards the topic of ‘preventative measures’
“Something’s got to be done to make sure these people can’t do things like this” says Sarah, the Australian.
“Definitely” says Carrie, the American.
“I guess, we figured it out in Australia about twenty years ago…” says Sarah the Australian before being cut off.
“Oh did you? You don’t have gun crime in Australia?” asks Carrie in a lightly defensive tone. Sarah responds
“Well yeah, but not since –”
“So you do!?” Carrie interjects agin.
“There’s no use pointing the finger at guns, there’s much more at play here” she says.
For the following twenty minutes, Sarah is given a comprehensive run-down on how criminals don’t care about gun laws and that simply banning guns will not solve anything.
“But none of these people involved in these particular tragedies have had criminal records, surely it would stop them” says Sarah, The Australian.
“You don’t know that!” says Carrie, the American, who says that God-given-rights should not have to be stripped from the everyday American because of a toxic culture of mass-killings.
“So, what? We are just going to ban Americans from owning guns in the hope that it MIGHT stop some of these crazies from getting their hands on them” she spits.
“Yeah, I guess that be worth a look into” says Sara, The Australian.
Carrie, who doesn’t seem to have a loaded retort to this particular tangent, responds by saying something quite racist about the differences in demographics between Australia and America.
