You Can Almost Smell The Baffled Incredulity...

The ordinance didn’t even faze Shirley Miller, an Englishwoman who moved from Essex to be with her American husband. She said her adjustment was easy for the most part.

At this point, one feels the CiF columnist hired to write the usual hoplophobic screed is scratching his or her head. Not fazed by guns? How can this be?

Coming from a small village to the east of London, Great Wakering, she finds small-town England and small-town America mostly alike, except for Nucla’s blazing, dusty summers and, of course, its bounteous guns. That aside, Nucla’s culture is not so different from small English villages, Miller said: the lack of diversity; the mix of open-mindedness and old prejudice among the residents.

Hmmm, why should 'the lack of diversity' be considered as disturbing as a proliferation of firearms?

There have been small adjustments. She imports her Tesco and Yorkshire tea by mail, along with the occasional package of sultanas and Marmite, and each year she lets a friend’s sheep graze in the empty pasture by her house, adding a nice pastoral touch to the property.

Still, our intrepid guide forges on:

She refuses to say a word against the gun ordinance.

“Although I come from a culture where there are no guns, and it’s different here, I don’t see the problem here in Nucla,” she said diplomatically.

“If I were living in the city [these gun laws] would worry me. Here it doesn’t,” she said before adding wryly: “There is no crossfire here.”

Once can only imagine the look on the columnist's face at this point!