The great American experiment in personal liberty has once again yielded its predictable dividend: a pile of corpses in a cornfield. Six bodies, cooling in the Iowa air, after a domestic dispute escalated to its logical conclusion with the application of the Second Amendment. The weapon, as ever, was a firearm. The mental state of the perpetrator, as ever, is being described as 'troubled' by shocked neighbours who saw nothing but a perfectly ordinary man who kept his lawn immaculate.
Meanwhile, in the hallowed halls of British policing, a think tank of experts has convened to examine the American gun violence epidemic. They will stroke their chins, produce a 200-page report concluding that fewer guns might be a sensible idea, and then adjourn for tea. The report will be sent to Washington, where it will be politely acknowledged and then promptly used to line a birdcage.
The irony is so thick you could spread it on a scone. The American right will bluster about mental health, not guns, as if mental health crises are uniquely American and not a global phenomenon. They will point to the Second Amendment as a sacred text, divinely ordained by powdered-wigged gentlemen who could not have foreseen the AR-15. The left will wring its hands, call for 'common sense' reforms, and achieve precisely nothing because the gun lobby's coffers are deeper than the Mariana Trench.
But let us not be sanctimonious, for we Brits have our own peculiar madness. We have county lines drug gangs stabbing children for postcodes. We have a government that thinks austerity was a grand idea. We have a royal family that costs a fortune and does what, exactly? The difference is scale. American violence is industrial, a grim factory of death churning out headlines with metronomic regularity. Our violence is artisanal, a boutique affair involving kitchen knives and football hooliganism.
So let the experts convene. Let them tut and analyse and produce their graphs. The real question is not 'why does America have so many shootings?' but 'why does America accept this as the price of freedom?' Because the answer is that they do. They accept it with a shrug, a thought, a prayer. And the bodies keep falling, from Iowa to California, from schoolyards to supermarkets, a ritual sacrifice to the god of 'shall not be infringed.'
The gin in my glass is lukewarm, which seems fitting. Warm gin and cold corpses, that is the flavour of this piece. I raise a toast to the six dead Iowans, and to the experts who will spend a fortune telling us what any barman knows: when you put a gun in every pot, you get blood on the floor.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a bottle and a deep, existential loathing for the human race.
