Work? Usually such grand and strange ideas don’t always work. The whole purpose of legislation is to come up with something that will satiate the masses but it doesn’t necessarily have to work.
So the idea is that a politician or a Minister could be addressing a kgotla meeting and a gun-toting hothead would pull out a gun in an attempt to shoot the legislator but the latter will beat him to the draw and gun him down. So what does this mean? This is another attempt to diversify the economy because giving legislators guns means there has to be gun schools to teach the legislators how to shoot and how to beat gun-toting rogues to the draw.
There will also be a bit of work for the undertakers to pick up bodies of rogues who attempted to shoot legislators. There will also be need for cleaners to clean up the scene of the shooting so there will be a whole industry that will emerge from this. Talk about mind set change. For the custodians of justice, it in a way makes sense.
Imagine watching a match at the stadium and you have an individual going for mention in your court sitting behind you. When he starts getting all sorts of crazy ideas, the magistrate or judge could pull out his gun and go pop pop and the offending rogue would be snuffed out. This will also reduce the number of cases in our courts and help trash the saying ‘justice delayed is justice denied’. Less accused, less cases. We too ordinary citizens without constituencies need guns. We don’t want to have to wait to be voted into Parliament to be given guns.
No, that is too difficult for most of us who do not even have a budget to run a campaign to be a Ward Development Committee chairman, forget VDC chairmanship. Without guns we will remain fodder for burglars and muggers who have guns. If there is one fundamental unifying principle of human psychology, it is that everyone, everywhere, regardless of age, gender, religion or ethnic origin, hates burglars and robbers. So if we had guns we could do our bit in cleaning up our streets and window sills, the latter being the preferred route of entry for wretched burglars. I doubt if we have reached that crazy level of Americans where an idiot can rock up in a school and kill innocent children. Obviously if they manage to legislate this, the constituents who are essentially a Friday Night crowd will set off flares to celebrate.
The anti-gun groups will quickly form and look for funding from outside the country to support their cause. Before the funding comes, they will gather – about 10 individuals – and have a march with placards written things like ‘Botswana Should Remain Gun-free’ and ‘My House Is Proudly Gun-Free’ and ‘Protect Citizens Not Guns’. The groups usually start small until the funding comes and then they start having more individuals, some intent on diverting the funding to their accounts.
I once came across a group of people marching to bring awareness to breast cancer and when I asked one of the marchers what it was all about his response was he wasn’t too sure but he was there because he had heard Charma Gal will be entertaining people at the end of the march! (For comments, feedback and insults email [email protected]) Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA-accredited courses. His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email [email protected].
