The US may be violent, but NZ also has a gun problem

Tom van Meurs in his anti-American dribble (Letters, Oct 21) labels the American people as violent and gun crazy.

He examined their record of driving the native people of their land. Our situation here in Aotearoa is not much different, although on a much smaller scale.

We also have a gun problem: Shootings are regular events. Gangs control the drug trade and we are still dealing with the effects of the land confiscations. Our early settlers sold guns to the Maori so they could fight each other and the settlers. This led to the land wars in the Waikato.

Land grabbing takes place wherever there is colonisation and as a result people are displaced. In Australia there was ethnic cleansing in Tasmania and the native Aboriginals live in deplorable conditions, their culture destroyed.

The United States is a large country with large gun problems, but we here are not far behind. Gun shops do a roaring trade. Anyone can own a gun or obtain one.

America reluctantly entered World War ii and sacrificed their sons and daughters for our freedom.

The Marshall Plan did much for the economic recovery of Europe. If the Americans had not defeated the Japanese, Mr van Meurs would more than likely be the proud owner of a rickshaw and running through Colombo St.

Before focusing on the American problems and that country’s past, he would do well to examine the records of the Brits and many other colonisers worldwide, even ourselves.

Wilhelmus J Noordanus

Avonhead

Judge and executioner

Treading on the toes of liberty is the one thing Americans of any stripe react to violently. Yet ever since this loosely defined concept appeared prior to the French Revolution, a return to episodes of barbaric atrocities have accompanied it.

For example, the current Catalan push for freedom from the rest of Spain was met in General Franco’s time by the worst of human behaviour. Being Catalan, or even Basque, was seen almost as being diseased.

Freedom is only a feeling anyway. Society’s norms and institutions for justice are the real things that matter.

Simon Rolleston

Bromley