Colorado will have fewer tourists, now, after last night’s shooting. Just like Kenya.
A test of Kenya’s security abilities starts tomorrow. Yesterday al-Shabaab announced that increased and renewed attacks on Kenya will begin Saturday, the start of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. And for the first time, the terror organization specifically mentioned “Nairobi.”
So we have a new real threat, acknowledged by Kenyan officials, and an announced plan to prevent violence from happening. It’s a test if ever there was one, and tourists around the world will be watching.
Colorado, on the other hand, has no desire to test its inability to control home-grown terror. Like so many other states recently, Colorado has reduced gun control including allowing concealed weapons. Unless these absurd tendencies are changed by American lawmakers, shootings like last night won’t diminish.
But Kenya’s gun laws are strict. Kenya’s problem is with foreign terrorism not home-grown terrorism, and Kenya has very strict – some say too strict – security laws. Starting Saturday and through the month of Ramadan, we’ll be able to measure how effective Kenya is at preventing terrorism.
More than a hundred people have been killed in terror attacks this year alone in Kenya, and many more injured. Two large attacks were notable in Kenya’s second largest city, Mombasa, and smaller grenade attacks did occur in Nairobi (not claimed by Shabaab) but the majority have occurred in remote areas near Somalia.
Unfortunately according to Nairobi’s main radio station, “Al-Shabaab is believed …building up to a larger attack.”
What strikes me as so sadly ironic is that Kenya is doing everything possible to prevent terrorism. Moreover, tourism is critically more important to Kenya than Colorado.
Colorado, on the other hand, is being governed by wildly conservative fanatics who we can safely predict will do little more to control the market in guns and explosives. There’s little reason to believe things will get better in Colorado; in Kenya, their chance is about to begin and they have sounded confidence.
Tourism is something earned; there’s no inherent right that any place just because it exists should be visited. Colorado and Kenya are falling to the bottom of holiday makers’ lists of places to visit. And they should be.
So as tourists around the world plan next year’s vacations, Colorado, whose reputation has only declined again and again more than ten years after Columbine, is being scratched out. Kenya is being watched.
Good luck, Kenya.
Where were the concealed carry guns at the Aurora Theater Saturday night? Everyone in favor of conceal carry touts that that would deter a situation like the one in Colorado, yet no one shot back. I am wondering when common sense will return to America. Unfortunately, we will probably see more senseless acts like this before we put stricter gun regulations back in place.
May Kenya have great success in sparing their country from terrorism. I am on the edge of my seat watching.
Heidi, the reason why there was no concealed carry at the Aurora Theater in Colorado is that it is a Gun-Free Zone which basically means that nobody at the Aurora Theater had any possibility of defending their lives by shooting back at the attacker.
And do I really need to point out to you that gun regulations will only work if the criminals obey the law and that they are considered criminals because they actually don’t so no matter how much gun regulation you put on the books the criminals will never care because they don’t follow them and the only people it will be affecting and hurting are the law-abiding people who own and carry legally owned firearms.
I am sorry to see what Al Shabaab has done in Mombasa and also what happened in Nairobi, I am not sure if concealed carry would have helped or not but I am fairly certain that it could decrease the robberies where several people use threats against another or a single person robbing another with a knife.
When the various states in the US introduced concealed carry the crime rate in those states dropped almost immediately, it worked in the US so I am certain that it can work in Kenya as well, put into the Kenyan Constitution that law-abiding citizens as well as aliens are legally allowed to carry concealed and that they have the right to defend themselves at home, in their cars as well as outside if they are being threatened with death or bodily harm and announce it on the radio and the TV, then the crime rate will fall very quickly because the criminals will never know who is actually carrying a firearm and they will be afraid to be killed if they attack the wrong person.
It has worked before so it can work again but with the strict regulations that Kenya has now, if the police aren’t close enough to see or hear the robbery take place and able to intervene then the criminals can do whatever they want because they know that the victim is not able or allowed to defend themselves.