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The other day I was at Johnsonville Mall, one of Wellington’s northern suburbs. Michael Wolff’s exposé, Fire and Fury was available at the mall’s Whitcoull’s at a discount, and I was keen to read for myself what was happening on the other side of the planet. The lunatic asylum currently inhabiting the White House held a fascination much like driving past a train-wreck and trying to make sense of the tangled, smoking carnage.
Approaching the counter, with one customer in front of me, we suddenly heard several loud *pops*, slowly spaced out, emanating from the same direction.
We looked out into the mall…
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We saw a worker from the pharmacy across the way climb back onto a ladder. She affixed balloons to the shop frontage, and as she did so, several burst…
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I looked at my companion and remarked;
“You know, if this mall were in the United States, we all would’ve been diving for cover by now.”
We approached the counter and the Whitcoulls counter-attendant, having overheard my comment, remarked;
“That’s exactly what I said to the customer before you!”
What does it say about two predominantly anglo-saxon societies – both settled from Europe, where English is predominantly the lingua franca – but which over two centuries have diverged in such a radical fashion? Where bursting balloons would raise curiosity in one society – and abject mortal fear in another?
And how lucky we are to be living in the former and not the latter.
If ever New Zealand draws up a constitution, our Second Amendment should guarantee the right to bear balloons. And that’s it: balloons.
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Previous related blogposts
NRA response; more guns. Common sense sez otherwise.
How many more? For god’s sakes, how many more?!
Why arming our Police is not such a flash idea
Michael Moore on yet more shootings in the USA
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= fs =
I could never live easily in a country where lethal weapons were so easily available, any nutter could acquire one, and the *pop*pop*pop*pop* in a shopping mall signalled the death of innocents. That is no way to live. (And no way to die, either.)
My comment ‘lost’ again, I suppose.
I posted on the US Second Amendment last night, and it was not appreciated, it seems, while it made total sense, was not abusive and objective.
Frank is scared of the truth
I suspect that the difference is that genocide and slavery were never institutions of colonisation in NZ. Even though there have been horrible breachs of the ban on both they were never actually institutions in settler society.
Unlike the USA which is founded on genocide and slavery
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