In May 2013, moved by the tragic news of the Sandy Hook Shooting in Connecticut, December 2012 I began background reading about guns in the USA and the effect they have had on the country.
Since I was a teenager I’ve been aware, like many other British kids, of the different culture in the States involving guns. It seemed so odd that you could just go into a shop and buy a lethal weapon. But guns are part of the cowboy culture, and what boy doesn’t like cowboy movies. Many kids of my age all had toy guns to be like those cowboys. Trouble was, in the USA, they had real guns. Soon you’ve got a country with civilians owning far more guns than the military. Guess how many–300 million guns. More than one each for every man woman and child in the USA. The facts are astonishing–there have been more Americans killed by gunshots in the USA over the past thirty years than American deaths in the all the military campaigns combined. Hence the line in the song “The havoc of war is in your own land”.
The phrase ” God didn’t make all men equal, Samuel Colt did” has been used in various forms for many years in the USA, some sources maintaining it’s an old frontier saying.
Many countries, including the UK, have suffered massacres from guns. The difference between those countries and the USA is that those countries altered their laws to make gun ownership more difficult. It’s very hard to understand how such a developed country tolerates so many deaths of its own citizens, especially children.
Some of these arguments are discussed on UK television recently, for example with Piers Morgan and Susannah Reid on Good Morning Britain.
The song “Samuel Colt Did”was recorded featuring Simon Coan as the vocalist. Simon sings in another band What Next ?
An extremely moving video has also been made to accompany the track, produced by Geoff Cockwill of Silvertip Films and portrays a young family’s loss as a result of gun crime.