The Right to Bear Arms

I, like many other people read with horror the news of the massacre in the theatre in Colorado. I don’t think there’s anything I can say that probably hasn’t already been said and I can’t begin to imagine just how bad it must be for those that were involved or even remotely close to the incident.

However, having said that there was something that I read a couple of days later that truly blew my mind.

Following the shooting, applications for guns went up by 41% in Colorado (including applications to be able to carry a concealed weapon).

I can only surmise that this is a fundamental and significant difference between the psyche of Australia and the US.

After the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania there was almost universal agreement throughout the nation for better gun control and tighter gun laws. Sure there was protest within the gun community and objection to it, but all in all, the cry was there and the government acted upon it.

Yes in the US, even after such a significant and tragic incident, we have not a cry for greater control or to get guns off the street, but a deference to that much loved (?) line of the constitution about the right to bear arms.

I am astounded that the reaction to the event is to carry a gun. Would it truly have been better if more people in that theatre had been carrying concealed weapons? Would they have fired back at the intruder? Would they have been good enough to stop him before he inflicted tragedy? Would they perhaps have created even greater mayhem and potentially injury or death with the cross-fire they would potentially create.

It reminds me of a story told to me by a South African friend who said that he knew it was time to try and get out when he was almost accepting of the fact that there had been a shoot out in their street/compound. He joked that he thought that most of the firing had possibly been the two groups of security guards at each end who had probably ended up shooting at each other as the would-be burglars ran off somewhere else. That’s not an environment in which I’d like to live.

People say that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, but I still maintain that if there isn’t a gun about, or if it’s locked away, you take away that capacity to grab it in the heat of the moment and potentially change someone’s life forever.

I’m not so naïve as to believe that tighter gun laws will completely remove them from the streets, there will always be someone willing to go outside the law in an order to get ahead, but surely if the number of guns available even legally is reduced then the opportunity for those outside the law reduces as well. We’ve come to far from a world without guns but if every one of them was destroyed, no one could be shot.

I just don’t know that I’d feel safer in a cinema in Colorado today than I would have before the shooting.

The Claw

One of the attractions of coming up to Queensland to visit Nick, Ramona and the boys was of course the theme parks on the Gold Coast. After much research by Caroline it was decided that Dreamworld would be the park of choice and with the weather not particularly conducive to much else we’ve spent a significant amount of time over the past week.

One of the good things about the park this time around is that all the kids are now tall enough to go on any ride that they choose. Of course, being tall enough to ride the Tower of Terror and the like doesn’t of course mean that the little pink thing will be enamored of the idea which means that there’s still an element of family splitting involved to try and keep everyone happy. Michael doesn’t really want to be caught dead on the Madagascar ride and Emily sure as hell wasn’t going near some of the scarier rides.

Back in 2007 we went to Disneyland and one of the rides that I had been really looking forward to was Space Mountain. It’s a roller coaster in the dark and Emily was just tall enough to go on and so we dragged her on. I spent that entire ride with Emily screaming and crying in my ear as I tried to reassure her that she was going to be ok and that the world wasn’t ending. I didn’t get a chance to experience that ride properly until 3 years later at Disney World. What it did do however was to put a significant dent in Emily’s willingness to go on anything that she thought might be scary.

So fast forward back to the present day and during our first visit to Dreamworld for the trip, we come up to the ride known as the claw. Emily agreed to go on the ride with Michael, Sam, Thomas and I, but as we drew nearer and nearer to the front of the line, Emily’s willingness was evaporating fast. Being the good father that I am, I talked her into going anyway.

Lets just say that that didn’t pan out particularly well and I was immediately reminded of the Space Mountain experience, thinking that we’d never get her on anything else for the rest of the trip. It was certainly the case for the rest of day 1.

The next day was a juggling act but on our third day, somewhere and somehow, Caroling convinced Emily that the Buzzsaw wasn’t such a bad ride despite it rising some 43m in the air, suspending you upside down and going backwards (which Emily had declared the worst part of any ride). I had seen the past coming back to haunt the future.

I was to be surprised. Emily didn’t pull out at the last moment and didn’t refuse to never go on another ride ever again. In fact a day later, she also decided to go on the Tower of Terror II despite the previous declaration that she wouldn’t ever do it because she hated going backwards and was scared of heights. She even decided that it was the best ride ever and insisted on doing it again immediately after getting off!

Seems that we might just have another little thrill seeker on our hands.

Camping with the Griswalds Tembys

We recently had a lovely time camping in the flinders rangers with the Rowlands and the Haines. All seemed to be going somewhat loosely according to plan. After failing on the ‘pack Saturday night after our sport’ plan, we managed to get everything loaded and stored on Sunday morning and were off before lunch. The drive went well and we arrived at Rawnsley Park Station in time to set up for dinner.

One of the issues that we had was that in planning to sell the caravan, we’d started to strip things out which meant that the stuff that we normally just assumed was already packed had to be considered, found and stored in the van again. Apparently at the end of our last camping trip I failed to pack the tap connection for the hose. We had one part, but not all the parts … so no running water.

It was getting rather cold with night time temperatures expecting to hit -2C though we weren’t overly concerned as we had the heater in the caravan (though Michael, Sam and Thomas were all outside in tents/annexes and the like and were going to have to deal with sleeping bags, blanket and good old body warmth.

All was good until about midnight when the heating seemed to cut out in the caravan. That meant that someone had to get out of bed and face the cold to work out what was going on. There was only ever going to be one person doing that. Caroline noticed (from bed) that the microwave was off and that led me to believe that we’d likely tripped the circuit breaker (especially given the fact that we’d had the a/c and a fan heater running at the same time. I went out side, checked the box that we were plugged into … no good. I explored the van, pulling fuses, all good. I pulled cords and reinserted them changed points at the box … still nothing).

Finally, lost for any other potential cause, I pulled the connection between the cord and the van. I’m not quite sure what made me do it, but I gave it a sniff. Something smelt burnt. Clearly not a good sign and given it was now about 1am and bloody cold, I simply dropped the cord in the dirt and went back to bed thinking about how this was suddenly starting to look like it was going to be one of those trips.

We decided that in the morning we’d drive the 30kms or so back to Hawker, the nearest town to pick up a new cord and a connection for the tap. We drove all over town (took about 5 mins) and found the one store that was likely to have what we needed. Despite having a reasonable amount of camping equipment, they didn’t have the electrical part that we needed for me to fix the cord. We tried the garage down the road that had an auto electrician on hand but they didn’t have it either.

In a fit of desperation, we walked across to the service station and huzzah! Where I least expected it they had a nice new caravan extension cord of the right amps. We were saved. So we trekked back, set everything up and didn’t face any further dramas with our set up! Griswalds evaded

The rest of the trip was great fun. We climbed Rawnsley’s Bluff (even with Thomas sick as a dog) and drove up to Blinman and back through Parachilna and Brachina gorges. A great trip indeed that left us with a desire to go back and further explore the Flinders when we next manage to find the opportunity.