Chris Gelken has nearly 20 years experience as a photographer, writer, news editor and broadcaster.

For the past 11 years Chris has been based in Asia where he now works for Hong Kong's leading AM radio news station, Metro Plus.

Chris also contributes freelance material on a wide variety of topics to newspapers, magazines and radio networks internationally.

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Around the Newsdesk

An American Tragedy

Two officers down, a bystander seriously wounded. A teary-eyed Congressman tells the television cameras that "you never expect this sort of thing to occur." What? In a country that has the sloppiest gun control laws outside of Cambodia this is exactly the sort of thing one expects to occur. And it does, all too frequently. An American tragedy.

We've been over this ground before. I am very much in favour of strict gun control, but I am not one of those who are naive enough to think that the gun can be taken out of American culture. What I'd like to see and what is realistic are two quite different things. Having said that, there has to be positive gun control movement, and a good start would be to hold gun owners responsible for crimes commited with their weapons.

The way things are shaping up it looks like the weapon used in the Capitol Hill attack belonged to the gunman's father. If that is the case the father should be indicted as an accessory. Apparently the father didn't know his .38 was missing until a newspaper reporter brought the subject up. This clearly suggests that the weapon was being stored in a completely inappropriate way. Let's face it, if it had been under lock and key, the father might have noticed that his bedside safe had been forced open. The father does bear some of the responsibility for this tragedy.

Two lives lost, two widows and six kids who will grow up without a father. I'm not saying it wouldn't have happened if the gun had been locked up properly, but in life there is a sequence of events - fate if you like - and if one element of that chain is broken, the outcome will be different. You know the principle, if you'd left home one minute earlier you wouldn't have been at the intersection when the drunk driver jumped the light.

If the gun had been locked up, there is every possibility that perhaps Russell Weston would have been forced to abandon or put off his attack - a different day, time and officers on duty - perhaps things would have turned out differently. Who knows, one could go nuts speculating.

I just can't over how an obviously disturbed man could get his hands on a lethal weapon to shoot cats - and another to gun down police officers at the very heart of the U.S. Government.

Chris Gelken
25 July 1998
Hong Kong