Meditation and Shotguns

Now, I was queried by a certain person about my mental health today, so if I could quote the ever elegant Marshall Mathers on the case, I could describe the subject in two lines:

"Yeah, I probably got a couple of screws up in my head loose
But no worse, than what's going on in your parents' bedrooms" 

However, I don't think that this applies to how amazingly paranoid I get when I read an article entitled '10 Year-old's legally issued Shotguns'. Now it might be a bit of a secret to some people, but the state of arms (Both legal and illegal) in this country is very cleverly covered up by the media. Considering we're just across the pond from America, where its a man's constitutional right to be able to own a firearm, it does seem a miraculously easy job to make us look safe, when it's quite the opposite.

From what I gleamed from the article, I learned that just over 7000 gun licenses were issued to under-18's (Including children as young as seven) for activities such as competitive shooting and 'farm-based duties'. Now this doesn't seem overtly bad, when presented with the fact that under 15's must be supervised with them, and the lack of age restriction is due to the varying amounts of maturity and responsibilities (Which seems fair), but combined with the large amount of illegal weaponry in the country, and the fact that we're facing an age of depression and possible rebellion due to oil-prices and other reasons found in the book '101 Reasons why we're all Screwed', I can see this turning ugly rather easily.

So you can imagine, that as I lay there listening to the Lancashire-tinged whispers of my R.E. teacher during our later meditation session (Yeah, I chose good options), that my mind wasn't exactly at rest, as I pictured 10 year old's with shotguns rebelling against the fact that previous generations have really screwed us over.

- Lewis