Friday 13th November 2015, the Bataclan, Paris where the rock band the Eagles of Death Metal are playing a concert. Three terrorists, armed to the teeth, open fire on members of the audience killing 89 of them outright, seriously injuring many more.
15 February 2016, the Olmpia Hall, Paris, where the rock band the Eagles of Death Metal are playing a concert. Band frontman Jesse Hughes announces that French restrictions on guns had helped to enable the terrorists. Here is what he said, word for word:
“Did your French gun control stop a single fucking person from dying at the Bataclan? And if anyone can answer yes, I’d like to hear it, because I don’t think so. I think the only thing that stopped it was some of the bravest men that I’ve ever seen in my life charging head-first into the face of death with their firearms.
“I know people will disagree with me, but it just seems like God made men and women, and that night guns made them equal. And I hate it that it’s that way. I think the only way that my mind has been changed is that maybe that until nobody has guns everybody has to have them.
“Because I’ve never seen anyone that’s ever had one dead, and I want everyone to have access to them, and I saw people die that maybe could have lived, I don’t know.”
I don’t know where to begin with this one. It’s wrong on so many levels.
For starters, starts with the wrong question, a totally unanswerable question. Perhaps the emotions are still running high with Hughes and who could blame him for that? I have heard the interview and he blubs all the way through it; it’s heartbreaking, but let’s get back to the point. What if the audience at the Bataclan had all been armed? No one was expecting a terrorist attack that night so a couple of thousand people would be there guns. Three heavily armed men open fire in the darkness. How does the audience react? By firing in all directions, hoping they might just kill whoever it was that was shooting out them, not knowing who they were, not knowing how many of them there were; would the outcome have been any less gruesome? I just cannot see it. Who is to say that many of them would have opened fire on the police who entered the building to stop the killing? We are not to know any of this, but I somehow doubt carnage would have been averted.
I do not see how Jesse Hughes’ intervention has helped anyone. Knowing about him what I now know, my opinion of him has gone through the floor. I am sure his stupidity and crazy illogic were meant with the best of intentions (and I am not joking), but these were not the ramblings of a traumatised man. The man has form, is a member of the NRA and is an active supporter of Donald Trump.
“Until nobody has guns everybody has to have them,” adds Hughes, seemingly oblivious of the endless mass shootings in his own country.
The Eagles of Death Metal are both brave and right to return to Paris but Hughes has learned absolutely nothing from the events of last November, just like he has learned nothing from everything that has happened in America, thanks to the actions of shooters and those who enable and indeed encourage them.
