Women in the News

On the front page of The Sunday Times in Britain this morning the story of the US Senator Gabrielle Giffords. First and foremost our heartfelt sympathy to our American friends.

Although the USA is not alone in mindless random mass gun attacks the view of many outside the US is that America seems affected by a disproportionate number of such outrages. Certainly here in Britain, as elsewhere we have our share of embittered loners. You rarely see them in real life. But here in our cyber world you come across them far more frequently. On line they seem to have found a voice for their bitterness and malice. As well as needing to assuage the serial failure of their lives they all seem characterised by a Messianic sense of detachment from their reactions and their sense of being right. Not wishing to invoke controversy, many outside the US feel rightly or wrongly such outrages are exacerbated by the right to bear arms. However that seems perhaps an overly simplistic and deceptively easy answer. Meanwhile all one can do is express our revulsion and our sympathy to the family of Gabrielle Giffords and hope she has a full recovery.