This Is Seriously Funny And Americans Should Pay Attention To It - Sacha Baron Cohen's New Television Series

I have sat at dinner tables in New York and heard some seriously well put together arguments on why Americans should have the right to bear arms. But I never bought them and I held my tongue out of respect for these predominantly men. And they were not uninformed, and many of them had come from the top US universities. When we mentioned too many times guns and gun laws in front of the New Yorkers that we were staying with (it was mostly my ex partner who had the most to say - she is a left leaning journalist), our host got fairly snippy and I had to ask her to pull back, I did not want to sleep on a New York sidewalk in January.

The argument for guns was better understood by me when I watched Ken Burns' documentary on The West. It suddenly became a practicality. If you wanted to move west in territory occupied by hostile natives (who had every right to be hostile), where there was no rule of law and men behaved like savages, well then, you had to defend yourself. The land was yours if you were willing to fight for it. As crazy as that sounds, it made sense to me that I would want the right to bear arms in that situation.

But America reached the West Coast. So the reasons behind those constitutional rights no longer made sense post that event. 

It is not for Australians to discuss US gun laws in a self-righteous ad nauseam manner but I do find this comedy extremely funny, tongue in cheek and very very naughty. It reminds me of the Australian comedic character Norman Gunston. I remember seeing Sacha Baron Cohen in London at a book launch. I could see him behind a screen and he was preparing, totally normal as one would expect a human to be, and then, as they announced him to come out I saw him don his mask as though it was literally a mask that he lowered, and from that point onwards he did not break character. He is truly a genius and to think these ideas up is marvellous. More importantly, the idea that those that he interviewed did not cotton on suggests something about their own intelligence. 

I love all my US customers, but to those who love the right to bear arms, I simply say, let's agree to disagree.