Guns

According to the 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution, "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". Partly as a result of this, America has by far the world's highest per-capita rate of gun ownership, with 300 million guns distributed among 311 million inhabitants. That's nearly 89 guns for every 100 people. It's nearest rival, Yemen, is at almost 55. Put another way, the US has 4.5 percent of the world's population, but accounts for 40 percent of all civilian guns.

The United States ranks 10th in the global league table of per-capita gun-related deaths, topped only by  central and south American countries and Swaziland, whose small populations (with the exception of Brazil) skew their ranking. The rate of death from firearms in the United States is eight times higher than that in its economic counterparts in other parts of the world. Indeed, the overall firearm-related death rate among US children under 15 years old is nearly a dozen times higher than among children in 25 other industrialised countries combined.

Last December, a young man went into a primary school in Newtown, Connecticut and shot dead 20 six- and seven-year-old children and seven staff members before turning one of his guns on himself. As a visibly moved President Obama subsequently pointed out, this was already the fourth mass shooting in his first term in office, and the second such incident that year. A rampage at a cinema in July left 12 dead and 58 injured. Two shootings in 2009 resulted in 27 deaths and 34 injuries.

Since 1990, there have been 55 mass shootings in the US, yet there have been few if any calls for tighter gun control. In 1994, Bill Clinton enacted a federal ban on semi-automatic firearms (though only those manufactured after the law was enforced) and high-capacity magazines. This ban, which many claimed was in any case easy to circumvent, expired in 2004. All efforts to renew it have failed.

The reason for this is the National Rifle Association, arguably the most powerful lobby group in Washington. The NRA vets political candidates for their pro-gun stance and has vehemently argued against any limits on gun ownership, asserting - so far successfully - that it is the constitutionally-decreed 2nd-Amendment right of every American to have a gun. As a result, it is legal in most states to buy and own so-called "assault weapons" that are made specifically for killing many people quickly, but which serve no purpose whatsoever for hunting or fishing. Consequently, the vast majority of massacres are committed with legally-owned guns.

Americans are inherently suspicious of state authority and feel passionately about upholding what they see as their "freedoms" (i.e. rights) - including gun ownership. The Wild West, log-cabin, pioneering, every-man-for-himself mentality runs incredibly deep. This plus the NRA's stranglehold on the weapons debate and scaremongering that "the Government wants to take your guns away" means politicians automatically shy away from the issue. Just the hint of a desire to limit gun ownership can be political suicide. In the 2012 presidential election, neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama proposed limiting firearms.

Fortunately, the Newtown massacre has horrified Americans to such an extent that the debate finally seems to be on the table and tighter gun-control has a chance of success in Congress, albeit a slim one. Even the NRA is scared this time, though its proposed solution would be to permit people to carry guns in schools, claiming that armed teachers would be able to stop armed crazies.

President Obama has asked Vice-President Joe Biden to put together a report on possible changes to the law. Although it is likely that Obama will limit the controls on who can buy or own certain guns (there are, for example, currently almost no restrictions on gun purchasing at trade shows, which account for 50-75% of all sales), it won't affect those weapons already in circulation. Because of this, there has been a run on the purchase of especially assault weapons since immediately after December's bloodbath, with people desperate to get their hands on one of these insanely deadly guns in case the regulations are tightened. Indeed, gun shops are complaining that they sell out the moment they get a delivery, and gun manufacturers are working flat out to meet demand.

Last week it was reported that a man in Minnesota pointed a gun at his daughter following an argument about her grades at school. She had two got Bs instead of As. The man had only just bought the AK-47 assault rifle - and another rifle - because he had feared looming restrictions on gun purchasing.

The US may be the Home of the Free and the Land of the Brave, but in terms of guns it is truly the Home of the Dangerous and the Land of the Psychotic. I therefore sincerely hope that my family and I can avoid being involved in a shooting before we return to the relative safety of the Old World.