Guns and gales

They are like Siamese twins, Gabbar Singh the villain and his gun. The gun-wielding Gabbar, a fugitive from justice, pacing up and down in his hideout, grinning disapproval at his sidekicks for being shamed by the duo that had the audacity to challenge him on his turf. Gabbar has become an icon. Not long ago, his becirc;te noire, who went on to become Big B in Bollywood, had no qualms about donning the mantle of the malefactor as if the villain, the epitome of the gun culture, had ceased to be an anathema.

If only the gun had not been invented! For it takes numerous lives. The killing machine is so easy to come by. You land one as swimmingly as you buy a loaf of bread. You might say the gun does not shoot; it is the shooter that pulls the trigger. True. But to a criminal, on a killing spree, a gun comes handier than a knife and the destruction it unleashes is massive. A gun wielder has a unique edge over his unarmed victims, as we witness in every mayhem.

Anthony Grayling, the British author, aptly begins an essay on guns with a quotation from Tagore which says, 8220;He has made his weapons his gods. When his weapons win, he is defeated himself.8221; The United States is home to periodic but predictable hurricanes. It is also home to trigger-happy and unpredictable gunslingers. Predictability takes the sting out of the gale. But a springing gun trotter surprises you 8212; with death or misery. He bursts into classrooms or pounces upon unsuspecting picnickers. With his face vanishing into a sadistic scowl, he empties his bullets into innocents and snuffs out lives. 8220;See you soon. No luck next time,8221; he seems to tell the horror-stricken survivors scampering for cover. One dreads the prospect of this gun culture finding its way to our shores. Or is it already here? Perish that thought.