Shocked by the "senseless" shooting in Colorado, people in the United States are searching for an answer that is in front of their nose
By Francis Adams
It is this century's biggest irony that the United States, the leader in the war against Al Qaeda and Yemen, haven for the terror group are the only countries in the world who treat civilian gun possession as a basic right. The rest of the world regards it as a privilege.
No amount of such maniacal spewing of blood -- Columbine, Virginia Tech and now Aurora, Colorado -- is likely to trigger a change in gun laws in the United States. According to the Associated Press, the White House, in its first official response to the deaths of the 12 people, has, in fact, pledged to safeguard the Second Amendment that, following the Supreme Court's ruling, states that "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
At the ground level, seething and dejected at what President Barack Obama described as "senseless" killing, the entire nation, led by the media has gone on an overdrive, digging deeper for every piece of information on James Holmes, the killer. Only a few have chosen to sift through the sea of emotional outburst and get to the bottom.
LiveScience, a website that calls itself a "trusted and provocative source for highly accessible science, health and technology news for people who are curious about their minds, bodies, and the world around them" took the honor by unraveling the trail of politics over gun control through Mark Tushnet, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University.
According to Tushnet, in 1970, there was a coup d'etat within the National Rifle Association - a body founded in 1871 as a sporting and hunting association -- following the defeat in re-election of Democrat senator Joseph Davies Tydings in Maryland. Tydings lost because he had introduced the Firearms Registration and Licensing Act, an act that was viewed by his countrymen as an infringement on their rights.
The incident proved to be the turning point. When conservative members within the NRA saw that gun rights could decide an election result, they orchestrated a shift in the association's stand, that, only two years ago was in favor of the 1968 Gun Control Act. This Act had, for the first time in U.S. history placed federal control over ordinary weapons. The NRA's reversal in attitude and approach was embraced by some Washington insiders, who, Tushnet says "then took the organization over from the more established gun enthusiasts who ran it, and converted it from an organization that was involved in supporting gun-related sporting activities into a Washington lobbying organization."
They succeeded in changing the motto from "Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation," to "The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed."
According to GunPolicy, a website hosted by the Sydney School of Public Health, the University of Sydney that promotes the public health model of firearm injury prevention, as adopted by the United Nations Programme of Action on illicit small arms, the estimated total number of guns held by civilians in the United States is 270,000,000. In other words, the rate of private gun ownership in the United States is 88.82 firearms per 100 people.
This whopping statistic has placed the U.S. at No. 1 in World Ranking in comparison with 178 countries for the number of privately owned guns.
The GunPolicy stats on firearm homicides in the U.S (see figures and chart below), shows that during the decade 1998 to 2008, the lowest gun-related death was 8,259 in 1999 and the highest 10, 225 in 2006.
2007: 10,129
2006: 10,225
2005: 10,158
2004: 9,385
2002: 9,369
2001: 8,890
1999: 8,259
1998: 9,257
See: chart
The annual value of small arms and ammunition exports from the United States is reported to be US$689,170,60325, according to 2009 figures. And in a comparison of the world's major/mid-level/minor/unknown small arms exporters, the United States is categorized as 'major'.
Small Arms Survey, an independent research project located at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, says that the annual authorized trade in only small arms worldwide is estimated to be more than $7 billion, of which the largest number is with civilians. See podcast:
There is hope for the better should all Americans collectively take responsibility for such mindless shooting acts. Ronald Pies, M.D. and a professor of psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University and a clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, had, last year, written on psychiatryonline that "Psychiatrists Should Be Advocates for Gun-Control Laws."
Psychiatrists, Pies wrote "are sometimes called ambassadors of reality. It is now time for us to become ambassadors of responsibility."
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