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AP<\/p>\n
A person attends a prayer vigil for the victims of Friday’s mass shooting at a movie theater, on Sunday, July 22, at the Aurora Municipal Center campus in Aurora, Colorado.<\/p>\n
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A gunman mows down scores of people in a cinema in Denver, Colorado, after lobbing a couple of tear-gas grenades to get |them running in a panic. They had been at the premiere of a Batman movie. <\/p>\n
The US has an extraordinary capacity to combine the horrific with the banal. <\/p>\n
The gunman had military-type automatic weapons of a sort that could have no lawful application in a civilian setting. Yet he was able to buy them over the counter in a store, no questions asked. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s as astonishing as it is appalling. The lobby against the US\u2019s bizarre gun laws \u2013 which amount to non-laws saying: \u201cMind your own business, it\u2019s the citizen\u2019s right to bear arms\u201d \u2013 has been activated yet again. <\/p>\n
Yet nobody seems to look at the other side of the equation. What role does the digitalised mayhem of the PlayStation have? Where, from the earliest age, children are exposed not just to Batman, Superman and Spider-Man, but to conflict with a range of monsters and hobgoblins. Where the objective is to destroy \u2013 Zap! Zap! Zap! <\/p>\n
What kind of reality do such people grow up in? <\/p>\n
It\u2019s surely just a shortish step to oneself becoming The Joker with an automatic weapon in a crowded cinema. <\/p>\n
Who ever heard of anyone running amok after reading Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island or Ivanhoe<\/em>? <\/p>\n Election non-issue<\/strong> <\/p>\n Almost inevitably, the Denver atrocity is being talked up into |an election issue. But it\u2019s really a non-issue. <\/p>\n Even if President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney were to publicly agree that the US\u2019s gun laws need overhauling and that they would each work for it, whatever the election outcome, not much would happen. <\/p>\n The US doesn\u2019t have a House of Commons that can simply enact a law controlling gun ownership. <\/p>\n The citizen\u2019s right to bear arms is written into the constitution. <\/p>\n And it\u2019s the constituent states|of the US that actually decide |just what their gun laws should|be. <\/p>\n To override them is near-impossible. <\/p>\n Let\u2019s not even talk about the powerful Gun Lobby. <\/p>\n So stand by for more horror, more banality. <\/p>\n Oval drama<\/strong> <\/p>\n It\u2019s a three-way match at the Oval between England, SA and the clerk of the weather. The smart money is on the clerk. <\/p>\n It\u2019s also the start of a series |to decide which is the world\u2019s |top Test cricket side. <\/p>\n Some would say it\u2019s between South Africa A and South Africa B. <\/p>\n Some would also say it\u2019s to decide who is South Africa A and who is South Africa B. <\/p>\n Air miles<\/strong> <\/p>\n Investment analyst James Greener is not exactly bowled over by the growing accord with China. Nor, in his latest grumpy newsletter, is he impressed by the constant jetting about. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a pity that the air force VIP transportation unit don\u2019t award air miles to loyal and frequent flyers. Our Pres JZ would have bucketloads of them by now and might be able to take all the wives along on his jaunts instead of having to choose just one each time. <\/p>\n \u201cThis week he went off to China to bow very low to their President Hu Jintao before renewing the invitation for them to attend |our forthcoming R3.2-trillion infrastructure programme. BYOC (bring your own cash). <\/p>\n \u201cApparently the official |view is that the presence of a Chinese supermarket in every country village, selling plastic bowls and T-shirts, is a \u2018good sort\u2019 of foreign presence, compared to the previous invaders during the past 400 years who merely brought development.\u201d <\/p>\n Tailpiece<\/strong> <\/p>\n A golfer accidentally overturns his cart. <\/p>\n A beautiful girl living on the golf estate rushes out to help him. \u201cCome to my villa, rest up and I\u2019ll help you get the cart up later.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s mighty nice of you, but I don\u2019t think my wife would like it.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cAw, come on.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWell, okay. But my wife won\u2019t like it.\u201d <\/p>\n After a few drinks one thing leads to another and they wind up in bed making passionate love. Then he kisses her on the cheek and gets dressed. <\/p>\n \u201cI feel a lot better now, but I know my wife is going to be real upset.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t be silly, she won\u2019t know anything. Where is she anyway?\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cUnder the cart.\u201d <\/p>\n Last word<\/strong> <\/p>\n They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum. \u2013 Tallulah Bankhead <\/p>\n * E-mail Mercidler@inl.co.za. Letters PO Box 47549, Durban, 4000. Fax 031 308 2333 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AP A person attends a prayer vigil for the victims of Friday’s mass shooting at a movie theater, on Sunday, July 22, at the Aurora Municipal Center campus in Aurora, Colorado. A gunman mows down scores of people in a cinema in Denver, Colorado, after lobbing a couple of tear-gas grenades to get |them running […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-12710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}