There is more than one Alex Jones, and one of them is the notorious right-wing commentator whose opinions on gun control is in my opinion both inflammatory and dangerous; just check out his interview with Piers Morgan to see what I mean. Anyhow some American citizens occasionally mistakenly contact me believing me to be him, and a few years ago an American student got in touch with a series of questions about a proposed gun control bill. I emailed back to let him know that I was ‘the British playwright Alex Jones’. He confirmed that he had indeed thought he was contacting the American Alex Jones, but was still interested in my opinion, so I answered his questions for him. Following more recent mass shootings in America, and President Obama’s plaintive and somewhat resigned response to a horrific crime which is now seemingly a terrifyingly common event, I thought I would post the answers to the questions posed to me by Shannon Miller for a paper he was presenting at Ivy Tech College Lawrenceburg …
1. Why do you disagree with the Proposed Gun Ban?
I obviously don't disagree with the gun ban. It puzzles me and my fellow countrymen that guns are so openly available in America. Gun laws are extremely tight in our country, and gun licences are more or less only granted for shotguns for farmers or games sportsmen. No one in our country is allowed to own a handgun, and automatic or semi-automatic rifles are simply not available here. The safety of the public would to my mind be compromised if our laws allowed private citizens to own fire arms, and anyone found in possession in this country would certainly be looking at a hefty custodial sentence.
2. Do you believe passing stricter background checks will help stop mass shootings and keep guns out of the hands of the criminals?
Criminals are criminals because they know how to subvert the law. How could stricter checks possibly make that much difference to someone who is intent on owning a dangerous weapon? The mass killings that seem to be something of annual event in America truly shock us. It seems unbelievably crass that your government would actually allow anyone to own a weapon that could be used in this way. And after the event, your gun lobbies and NRA are always the first on the scene to spout banalities about how the ownership of guns protects society against these maniacs. It seems to me that when these events occur, the second amendment of your constitution is generally cited as if it was some sort of biblical truth: well that particular document was composed in 1791 together with the rest of the bill of rights when the world was a very different place - it's an historic document, and should be treated as such, and not wheeled out on it's creaky rusty wheels to justify mass murder.
3. Why do you think private individuals should be allowed to own these types of semi auto rifles?
Not only should private individuals not be allowed to own semi automatic rifles, but no one in America should be allowed to own such weapons. Why on earth would anyone need such deadly firepower; it's like taking a sledgehammer to crush a walnut. But I would go even further; I fervently believe that American citizens should not be allowed to own fire arms of any description. If these weapons were removed from American streets and the ownership of guns made entirely illegal, it seems obvious to me that gun crime would inevitably go down. Our police force don't carry guns at present because they don't need to; there are of course some guns on our streets, but it's an extremely rare event when police here are called out to tackle gun crime, and criminals here are reticent to use these weapons because they understand that even being in possession of an illegal fire arm could lead to a possible life sentence.
4. Do you think the government’s true goal behind the Proposed Gun Ban is to reduce gun crimes or do you think there is another agenda behind the ban?
I do believe that the Obama administration would like to tackle gun crime in your country, but even now they aren't going far enough. I said some years ago that what America needs to do before the rest of the world listens to its opinions, is to take care of its own people and grow up as country. I have always believed there were three different things USA needed to do in order to be taken seriously as a voice of reason; the first was to provide a national health service free at point of contact for all of its citizens, the second was to elect a black President, and lastly ban the sale of fire arms to all private individuals, even if they think their precious bill of rights tells them otherwise. America has achieved one of these aims, perhaps one day it will be grown up enough to tackle the others. When someone shoots someone there is a summary justice at work that is obviously morally reprehensible, and your senators and governors are always straight away rightly ready to label the perpetrators as being monsters and deplorable criminals, but some of those very spokespeople also condone the use of the death penalty in various states. A question needs to be asked of America I think, and that question is – how much do you really care about your citizens?
