I'm in Ireland

I'm in Ireland, mostly Dublin, for a week.

I don't know how many times I've been to Ireland. Twelve? Fifteen? Twenty?

I suppose I could look through my old passports and figure things out, but I'm guessing the Magic Number is between 15 and 20.

My first visit here was in 1973, and I immediately felt right at home. Which is not surprising, given that I grew up in an Irish-American family in a neighborhood largely peopled by Irish-Americans. I went to Catholic schools, where the nuns were Irish-Americans, as were most of the students. When I was in college, we were told that ours was the only school that our food service worked with where students drank more tea than coffee, testimony to the Irish-American roots of the majority of the student body.

So it was no surprise that Ireland seemed like home.

But there was more to it than the familiarity factor.

Despite the fact that Ireland in 1973 was cold and damp, and you couldn't get ice for your soda - if you could even find a soda that wasn't Schweppes Lemon - I found Ireland beautiful, the people friendly and interesting.

I was one of three places I hit during my first European adventure - months spent hitchhiking around, hitting a lot of countries - that I said I would get back to. The others were Paris and Yugoslavia. I have been back to Paris a handful of times. I have yet to return to Yugoslavia, which, of course, no longer exists. 

But Ireland? Yeh. I've been back. The last time was last September. 

So, yeh.

I do Ireland.

I'm here with my sister Trish, come to pick up her daughter Molly, who's finishing up a year in grad school. My principal role is to tote a mostly empty large suitcase in which to cram some of Molly's clothing to bring home, but we will be doing a few touristy things while I'm here.

Despite all my times over, I've never been to Glasnevin Cemetery. I've never taken a boat tour of the Liffey or Dublin Bay. 

We'll hang out, hit pubs/restaurants/theaters Molly has discovered, and generally have a good low-key kind of time. 

Not that there are no worries.

The weather in Ireland is always chancy. Dublin is a big city: the traffic is crazy and I may instinctively look the wrong way when stepping off the curb. Dublin is a big city: there is some level (minute compared to the States) of street crime - there are gangs, thugs, drug-related problems - and many pubs have signs warning patrons to watch their handbags. 

But one thing I won't worry about is getting mowed down by some maniac with an AR15. 

Ireland has relatively restrictive gun laws, and one of the lowest rates of gun possession in the EU. 

There are guns here.

People hunt. Farmers have shotguns. Thugs carry handguns.

And Ireland certainly has a near past history of political violence, largely bombing, largely in the North, but certainly some gunplay on the part of the IRA and the UVF and UDA on the other (Protestant) side.

But Ireland is just not a gun culture. A mass murder where people are mowed down at school, in church, at the theater, while shopping in the mall? This is pretty much unthinkable.

Unthinkable throughout most of Europe.

Not that it doesn't happen.

A few weeks ago, there were two mass killings in Serbia over a 48 hour period, something very rare anywhere in Europe (other than during times of war). Eight children and a school security guard were murdered by a gun-toting 13-year old. Two days later, a 20-year old random shooter killed 13 people in a small town.

Serbia actually has a pretty strong gun culture (and a recent violent history). While its gun regulations are strict, the country is full of unregistered, uncontrolled weapons left over from the ethnic conflicts, insurgencies and warfare of the 1990's.  But the sorts of mass killings (unrelated to those 1990's ethnic conflicts, etc.) that are fairly common in the US tend not to exist in Serbia, or elsewhere in Europe.

In response to the mass killings, the Serbian government is putting strict regulations in place, and has proposed a moratorium on gun sales (other than hunting rifles). 

Because normal countries don't want to live with mass murders, with gun violence. They want to do something about it, and not just make mealy-mouthed pronouncements about thoughts and prayers, give lame kudos to first responders, tsk-tsk some lip service to mental health. 

Anyway, I'm in Dublin, and one thing I'm not going to be worrying about is whether there's going to be some mad man on the loose, armed with a weapon of mass destruction, intent on mayhem. 

In truth, when I'm in Boston, I don't worry about it all that often, either. 

Not that it couldn't happen in my home state.

There's plenty of gun ownership in Massachusetts, but we do have one of the lowest rates of gun ownership among all states. Most of the gun violence  that takes place in Boston occurs (regrettably) in the poor minority neighborhoods. And our state, which has comparatively decent gun regulation, is second from the bottom when it comes to the rate of gun deaths relative to population. Only Hawaii has fewer.

Not that it couldn't happen in Massachusetts. It's just less likely to.

And in Ireland? The likelihood of getting killed in a mass shooting incident is infinitesimally small.

Because they don't worship at the gun altar. Because the average person in Ireland thinks it's crazy to give the average person in Ireland easy access to the sorts of guns that are built for military purposes. 

What in God's name is wrong with America?