Sunday, September 22, 2013

U.S. needs an intervention on guns

About half of America is insane about guns and the other half cannot cure their illness:

There have been fewer than 20 terror-related deaths on American soil since 9/11 and about 364,000 deaths caused by privately owned firearms. If any European nation had such a record and persisted in addressing only the first figure, while ignoring the second, you can bet your last pound that the State Department would be warning against travel to that country and no American would set foot in it without body armour.

In fact, if we take the entire history of U.S. warfare vs. the past 50 years of gun deaths, our national sickness looks even worse:

The figures from Congressional Research Service, plus recent statistics from icasualties.org, tell us that from the first casualties in the battle of Lexington to recent operations in Afghanistan, the toll is 1,171,177. By contrast, the number killed by firearms, including suicides, since 1968, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI, is 1,384,171.

Porter believes it's time for the rest of the world to intervene and stop the bloodshed in America, since we Americans are mentally and physically incapable of ending it ourselves.


By Henry Porter
September 21, 2013 | Guardian

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