Sunday 16 December 2012

Latest casualties in the American Civil War

The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in context.

The USA has been involved in a ground war in Afghanistan since 2001. At the time of writing, over a decade of war has cost just over 2,000 US lives.

Back in the US of A, over 9,000 people are murdered with guns every year.

 A lot of those murders will have been committed with illegally held guns, but it seems unlikely that the death toll on the home front is unrelated to the fact that the USA leads the world in civilian gun ownership, with 88.8 guns per 100 people. It doesn't take a great stretch of the imagination to conclude that having all those guns in the system is a risk in itself, regardless of what proportion of perpetrators got access to part of this arsenal illegally, as opposed to having a licence.

In short, The National Rifle Association is probably a greater threat to ordinary Americans* than the Taliban ever was.


*And Mexicans, if you factor in the narco-funded American guns flooding south of the border to arm Mexico's drug gangs.


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