27 October 2009

Going out in style

It's happened again. America's ridiculous love affair with guns has led another psychopathic citizen to blast away his fellow human beings for the sport of it. This time he killed eight, apparently as a set-piece to his own suicide because he reportedly wanted to "go out in style."

Some style. American style.

When are we going to get guns off our streets? Put differently, when are we going to join the civilized world? Readers of this blog, like anybody else in America who is paying attention, know that the chances that a gun will be used in a criminal homicide is far, far higher than the likelihood it will be used in self-defense, and that the number of gun-related homicides is surpassed by gun-related suicides.

America's homicide by firearm rate is in a league by itself, far above the civilized world. Canada is a country pretty much like ours, eh? Our homicide by firearm rate is more than ten times higher than Canada's. Surprise! Canada has effective gun control; the U.S. doesn't. Duh. Remember England, America's "mother country"? Their rate is barely a hundredth of ours. Effective gun control there, too. Oh yes, we need guns to protect our liberty, right? Well, that's what the N.R.A. and all the rest of the gun crazies say, but y'know, neither Canada nor Britain come to mind when lists of totalitarian dictatorships get compiled. Neither do Holland, or Australia, or Denmark or Japan, yet they all have firearm-related homicide rates that are a small fraction of ours, and yes, they all have effective gun control.1

This time it happened in Omaha, but don't worry, this peculiar form of American madness will soon be coming to a city near you.

Let us hope that the Supreme Court -- yes, I know it's the Reagan/Bush/Bush Supreme Court, so I'm not too hopeful -- makes it clear once and for all that the Second Amendment is about membership in the National Guard, and that Congress and the states have the power to start getting these terroristic weapons off our streets, and to start saving the thousands upon thousands of Americans who will otherwise be needlessly killed. It's time to finally start restoring some sanity -- and safety -- to our country.

Now, that would be stylish.

1. E.G. Krug, K.E. Powell, and L.L. Dahlberg, "Fire-Arm Related Deaths in the United States and 35 Other High- and Upper-Middle Income Countries," International Journal of Epidemiology, vol 27 (1998), p. 216.

Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 5 December 2007
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2 comments:

sanderling said...

I agree that it’s terrible that there’s so much gun violence in this country, but I don’t feel comfortable saying that the number of guns or gun control laws are responsible for said violence.

Note: originally submitted by Jamelle, 5 December 2007

27 October, 2009
sanderling said...

It’s not all the problem, certainly. For instance, America has a much worse culture of violence than many of the civilized countries, and I suspect that we may have greater alienation and a weaker sense of community.

But we also have guns. Millions and millions and millions of them; estimates vary, but we’ve probably got more guns than people. They’re accessible, they’re glamorized, and they’re the weapon of choice for killers. Especially killers who wish to maintain some distance — physical and emotional — from their victims.

Yes, we’d still have murderers if we didn’t have guns, but let’s be honest: a murderer with a knife is going to be far less dangerous — and more avoidable — than a murderer with a semi-automatic handgun or assault rifle.

If our murder rate was only slightly higher than the rate in civilized countries, I’d be willing to entertain more doubt, but it’s much higher. Consider Canada — a country about as similar to us as you’re going to find, yet they have significantly more stringent rules for access than we do, fewer guns in circulation on a per capita basis, and murder rate about one-tenth of ours. It isn’t because of the ice and snow.

One last thought: not only do we have a higher murder rate than the civilized world, but we have far stricter punishments for felons. If harsh punishment is the deterrent its supporters claim, then it’s possible that with the more lenient standards of Europe, our murder rate would be even higher, right? I won’t push this argument, but it does seem to me to illustrate that the rightwing advocates of easy access to guns and harsh punishment of criminals have a serious contradiction to work out.

Note: originally submitted by Sanderling 5 December 2007

27 October, 2009

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