The News from Home

To: President Barack Obama
From: An American Expat in London -- and the side of a hill in Italy (not much lately)
Re: Guns

Barack, you gotta do something about the gun situation at home.
Because we're always shooting each other there. In great numbers.
When we're crazy.
It's horrific.
And it's become our signature overseas, which is horrible. Stories about shootings in the States -- even a relatively small shooting, like yesterday in Orlando -- get huge play here, because it reinforces our stereotype.
Bunch of crazies. With guns.
But people are crazy everywhere, Barack. You know that. Despairing, barely getting through it. Don't know how people do get through it actually. And now especially, with so much sorrow around.
The difference is, in the States, you can just go get a gun and shoot people when you can't cope anymore. Which you can't in most places. Which you shouldn't be able to do.
Simple as that.
I covered the shootings at Virginia Tech University at my old newspaper job. The shooter there was simply crazy. No doubt about it.
The firepower he amassed was also simply shocking, someone as disturbed as that college kid was.
And now Fort Hood. Another horrific mass shooting.
By another crazy. At the end of his tether.
Barack, can we just try limiting people's access to lethal weapons used only to kill other people?
I mean, let's just try it and see if that helps at all.
Please.