The ‘Wild West’ was actually quite tame, compared to Malta…

The year is 1881. The place: Tombstone, Arizona. In a dusty vacant lot a few doors down from the OK Corral, two groups of men stand facing each other, at a distance of only around 6 feet.

On one side is town marshal Virgil Earp, accompanied by his three brothers – including the much more famous Wyatt – and the newly-deputised Doc Holliday (Tombstone’s resident dentist; and, apparently, a notorious psychopath to boot).

On the other, five members of the so-called ‘Cowboys’: a rag-tag bunch of horse thieves/cattle hustlers, often described as ‘the first example of organised crime in US history’. [Though to be fair, this might tell us more about how this incident has since been mythologised, than about the Cowboys themselves. But I’ll save that for another article.]

In any case, what happened after that brief stand-off has since passed into legend as ‘the Gunfight at the OK Corral’: arguably, the best-known (and certainly, the most filmed) single incident in the entire history of the Old West.

Less than a minute after the first shot was fired, three men lay dead in that vacant Tombstone lot: all of them on the same side. The Cowboys were, in a word, utterly ‘outgunned’; whereas both Holliday and the Earps emerged from the gunsmoke almost completely unscathed.

The rest, as they say, is history; though it is a history that keeps getting written, and rewritten, all the time.

From early movies, which depicted the Earps (especially, Wyatt) as ‘fearless upholders of law and order’; to subsequent revisionist Westerns, that have cast the Cowboys in a more favourable light… the jury is effectively still out, when it comes to distinguishing the between ‘the good guys’ and ‘the bad guys’ in this particular scenario.

Nor does it stop there. The same ‘Gunfight at the Ok Corral’ also dispels a few of the more widespread misconceptions about the ‘Old West’. Contrary to the impression you might get from many Westerns – especially, the Spaghetti ones popularised by Sergio Leone – actual, flat-out ‘gunfights’ were in reality quite rare, at the time.

Sure, murders happened – like they still do today – but when you analyse the recorded, per-capita homicide rates in towns like Tombstone (or Dodge City, for that matter)… you will find that they quite frankly pale to insignificance, compared to the USA’s murder statistics today.

Indeed, this is what made the Gunfight at the OK Corral itself such an instant sensation, when it happened. In a country where gun-crime was actually quite infrequent, all things considered… ‘three men being gunned down, in a single day’ would obviously make front-page headlines, across the entire nation.

Meanwhile, the same incident was also subject to at least two federal inquiries (thus dispelling another widely-believed Western myth: that the law’s federal arm was ‘too short’, to reach far-flung towns like Tombstone in the first place).   

Much more pertinently, however: the Gunfight at the OK Corral also disproves the time-honoured notion – embedded into nearly all Westerns: including many about the same incident – that the ‘Wild West’ was a time where America had no form of ‘gun control legislation’, whatsoever.

On the contrary: there WERE, in fact, regulations regarding the ownership, possession and use of firearms, back in 1880s America. And they were enforced rather strictly, too (ironically, the official reason for the Earps even confronting the Cowboys at all, on that fateful day, was precisely to ‘arrest them for defiance of Tombstone’s gun-laws’…)

All of which inevitably raises a teeny-weenie little question, about the so-called ‘Wild West’. How ‘wild’ was it, really?

And it might actually be worth asking, at this stage: given that we so often compare our own country to ‘the Wild West’, precisely on the basis of its own presumed ‘lawlessness’ in so many areas.

Now: I am well aware, of course, that when we use words like ‘Cowboy’, to describe the lawless antics of certain Maltese individuals… we’re not exactly complaining about ‘High-Noon’-style shoot-outs, taking place in our own backyard.

No: we tend to only ever talk about two main sectors, of Malta’s entire ‘Wild-Western’ landscape: driving, and the construction industry. (And personally, I would like to think that’s because ‘actual, flat-out gunfights’ are still quite infrequent here too, all things considered…)

On the rare occasions when they DO happen, however… well, let’s just say that we might actually be doing ‘the Wild West’ an injustice, by drawing comparisons between its handling of gun-crime, and our own.

Consider, for instance, all the evidence that is now emerging from the ongoing trial of Noel Azzopardi: who stands accused of murdering Eric Borg with a shotgun on New Year’s Day.

Naturally, I don’t mean to imply any like-with-like analogy, between these two ‘gunfights’ (though they do have a few details in common: both incidents took place in broad daylight, in a very public place; and then as now, there appears to have been a brief ‘confrontation’, before shots were fired…)

But I’ll put that down to mere coincidence, for now (even because the case itself is ongoing; and Azzopardi himself still has to be ‘presumed innocent until proven otherwise’, and all that.)

Instead, let’s focus only on the issue of ‘gun-control legislation/enforcement’. What does this incident tell us, for instance, about how ‘easy-or-difficult’ it is, for someone like Noel Azzopardi to actually get hold of a licensed firearm in the first place?

Let’s see now: according to news reports, “Azzopardi is understood to have held a [firearm] licence since he was 18” [He’s now 39. Do the math]; and “was able to keep it despite receiving psychiatric treatment since 2016, and being under the care of a psychiatrist since then.”

Much more alarmingly, however, we are also told that: “Police were warned by a psychiatrist 12 years ago that a man who allegedly committed a murder on January 1 this year, should not be in possession of firearms because of his mental condition.”

Court-appointed psychiatrist Joseph Cassar even testified that he had found a note in Azzopardi’s medical records – dating back to 2012– which “concluded that [Azzopardi’s ownership of three shotguns] was a public danger”.

This concern was promptly conveyed to the police, in no uncertain terms, by psychiatrist David Mamo: who wrote that “he felt duty-bound to bring this to the attention of the police; and that since Azzopardi had mental health issues, he believed that his possession of firearms was a danger to the public.”

In other words, the police have known about Noel Azzopardi’s mental condition, since at least 2012. Separately, they also know – from their own records – that Azzopardi has been in possession of a firearm licence since 2003; and that, by the time of the murder, he had actually become the owner of no fewer than SIX (6) shotguns, all licensed to his name (with access to another three, licensed to his father)…

On top of all that, the police also knew that Azzopardi had successfully renewed his firearms licence at least once, since 2003: and that was in 2016 (i.e., four years AFTER they had been officially alerted to the ‘pubic danger’ he has represented, for all that time)…

So, erm… can anyone out there explain why the police took no action whatsoever, regarding this ‘public danger’ that they had been so bluntly warned about all those years ago? Why did they not strip Noel Azzopardi of his firearm’s licence (as they were duty-bound to do, given the official nature of the 2012 notification)? Why did they not confiscate even a single shotgun, from his entire personal armoury, in all that time? And why did they have to wait until someone actually got ‘gunned down’ in the street, in broad daylight… before conducting a raid on his residence, to seize all the guns they already knew he possessed?

Above all, however: why did the police actually RENEW Azzopardi’s licence, in defiance of that earlier warning? (Not to mention, approve his multiple applications to own even MORE ‘licensed firearms’, than the three that had caused so much alarm, to begin with?)

I mean… sorry, but the Malta Police Force’s handling of this case makes even the ‘wildest’ of Wild West myths look rather tame, by comparison. For whatever you make of the Earps’ actions in Tombstone, back in 1881… they were – officially, at least – ‘trying to enforce local gun-control laws’.

In Malta, on the other hand? Leaving aside that our gun-control laws are themselves shot full of ‘bullet-holes’, to begin with…. there doesn’t seem to any actual attempt at ‘enforcement’, of any kind whatsoever.

Almost makes you wonder, doesn’t it, which is actually the ‘wilder’, and more ‘lawless’, of the two scenarios…