Most bizarre headline I’ve seen this week? Los Angeles Times:  TWO SHOT IN BICYCLE DRIVE-BY OUTSIDE SOUTH L.A. HOUSE.

American hitmen are now pedalling bicycles to their assignations?

When you put Americans and their sacrosanct RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS into the same equation the outcome is anybody’s guess. Take the man California cops found slumped over and bleeding heavily from what was euphemistically described as massive groin damage caused by a gunshot. The guy also tried to blame drive-by shooters, but the cops noticed a sawed-off shotgun lying nearby and figured out the truth. The victim — a member of an L.A. gang — had been practicing his macho moves by jamming the shotgun in his waistband and sneering into a mirror.  Somehow he managed to discharge both barrels into his ahem, pants.

Then there was the story out of Harrold, Texas where the school district officials voted in favour of arming their elementary school teacher.

There are 110 kids enrolled in the Harrold Independent School, ranging from kindergarten to Grade 12. They already live with constant camera surveillance and a school-wide alarm system.

Not enough, the school board deemed. “I can lead my children from a tornado,” intones school superintendent David Thweatt, “I can lead them from a fire. I can lead them from a toxic spill quickly. I cannot lead them from an active shooter.”

Right. And the Grade 9 music teacher swapping bullets with a gun-toting maniac over the students heads? That should work out well.

Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, called the new policy embarrassing and, “the stupidest move that I have seen done in public education.” 

About 30,000 Americans use a gun to kill themselves or others each year. Another 75,000 or so merely cripple themselves. By comparison, about 1,200 Canadians die from gunshot wounds each year — still appalling, but a statistic that the city of Detroit, say, would, er … kill for.

It’s not because Canadians are smarter, it’s because it’s a whole lot harder to pack heat. You can’t buy a Saturday Night Special in a Canadian pawn shop. 

Canada is not nearly so insane about arming its civilians as our pistol-packin’ friends to the south — but that doesn’t mean we’re immune.  A few days after the grisly murder and decapitation of a passenger on a Greyhound bus in Manitoba, some gun nut wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper opining the whole incident could have been avoided “if just one passenger on that bus had been carrying a gun.”

Uh huh. And if that one passenger happened to be the killer — sporting, say a MAC-10 machine pistol (1,000 rounds per minute) instead of a machete …

My second-favourite news story of late? The one about bridegroom Jeff Nichols of San Diego lifting the hem of his wife’s wedding gown to retrieve her garter so he could toss it into the crowd, only to encounter a thigh holster, complete with loaded revolver. Jeff’s blushing bride is a police officer, you see. 

His response: “Oops, wrong leg.”  Much merriment all around.

My question:  Who the hell wants to live in a country where it’s considered amusing when the blushing bride wears a loaded pistol under her wedding gown?