It’s easy to judge America from outside. In Australia, our socials ills are insidious and pervasive and have been going on for so long that it’s easy for us to essentially overlook them, no matter how horrific they might be. As an Australian looking at America, their problems are big and cartoonish. Their racists are loud and proud, their politicians don’t bother to disguise their naked self-interest, and their deep fixation with guns would almost be comical if it wasn’t so hideously tragic.
Having a country founded on the belief that the only way to maintain your own way of life is with bloody, white-knuckled violence has seeped into the American consciousness in a deep, deep way, with the result largely being that asking “Do we really need military grade weapons in the hands of regular people?” is political suicide. It also results in stories with headlines like this: ‘Father spinning gun on finger accidentally shoots self at daughter’s birthday party‘.
While someone in Australia might think it’s kind of weird to pull out a loaded gun at a child’s birthday party, this might not register the same way for someone in a country where having a gun is perfectly commonplace and perfectly normal.
As local news station KPRC-TV reported, an unnamed man in beautiful Humble, Texas shot himself in the stomach on Saturday while doing the extremely badass manoeuvre of spinning a pistol on his finger like a cowboy at his daughter’s 16th birthday party.
According to authorities, the man was taken to hospital after the incident, with no further report on his current condition.
