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How U.S. Gun Control Compares to the Rest of the World
In June the Charleston killings renewed the sporadic debates over whether gun control might have prevented this terrible tragedy. Four months on, the massacre at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon has left nine dead.
And once again, as after Charleston, President Obama has spoken openly about his frustration with the fact that “this kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.”
On October 1st he put it this way: “We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours – Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.”
So far, however, the US has not come up with “ways to prevent it.” The National Rifle Association (NRA), it seems, has so much power over politicians that even when 90% of Americans (including a majority of NRA members) wanted universal background checks to be adopted following the Newtown killings of 2012, no federal action ensued. Certainly, the type of comprehensive response that has been effective in other countries is unlike to emerge in the United States.
The NRA stranglehold on appropriate anti-crime measures is only part of the problem, though.
The gun culture’s worship of the magical protective capacities of guns and their power to be wielded against perceived enemies – including the federal government – is a message that resonates with troubled individuals from the Santa Barbara killer, who was seeking vengeance on women who had failed to perceive his greatness, to the Charleston killer who echoed the Tea Party mantra of taking back our country.
The fact is that if NRA claims about the efficacy of guns in reducing crime were true, the US would have the lowest homicide rate among industrialized nations instead of the highest homicide rate (by a wide margin).
The US is by far the world leader in the number of guns in civilian hands. The stricter gun laws of other “advanced countries” have restrained homicidal violence, suicides and gun accidents – even when, in some cases, laws were introduced over massive protests from their armed citizens.
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