One thing that I didn't see in the recent memories of Queen Elizabeth II is the false assassination attempt on her. Does anyone remember Marcus Sarjeant? In June 1981 the Queen was riding her horse in a parade along the Mall, toward the Admiralty Arch.
Did you know that all malls are named for this royal route between Buckingham Palace and the Admiralty Arch?
Marcus Sarjeant suddenly stepped out of the crowd and pointed a gun at her. He got six shots off before he was tackled and disarmed. The horse panicked but the Queen didn't, and she continued the parade.
Fortunately it wasn't a real gun. It was a racing starter pistol. This was a time of assassinations and attempts on public figures. It came just after the assassination of John Lennon and the attempted assassinations of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul.
But unlike his overseas counterparts Marcus Sarjeant didn't use a real gun. His motive was similar, the familiar case of a loser trying to "be somebody", in his own words while being arrested.
This was also the era of Britain's "loser songs", that I have written about here. The rock music songs about being a loser made it seem not so bad. As we saw these loser songs delayed the modern era of mass shootings. Could it be that Britain's "loser songs" are what resulted in Marcus Sarjeant using a starter pistol instead of a real gun? He didn't really want to hurt the Queen, although she could have been thrown from her horse.
The posting is "Stopping Mass Shootings", June 2022.
By the way one thing that I haven't seen written is the relationship between Queen Victoria and women's movements. Queen Victoria had a very long over the largest empire that the world had ever seen. She died in 1901. The next thing we know there are movements toward women having equal rights, and the right to vote, all over. Queen Victoria was certainly the catalyst behind this.
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