There are about 90 guns every 100 persons in the US. There are about 700 million guns in civilian hands in the world, half of them in the US. Many guns sold in the US are banned in most countries as they have nothing to do with sports. Gun controls are enforced strictly in most countries, not in the US. More than 30,000 people died every year as result of gun shots in the US. In the UK, for example, 20 people or less die per year for the same reason.
Nevertheless, I believe that killings in the US are not only about guns. They are the result of a deadly combination: a gun culture and a culture of violence.
People own guns in many countries for many reasons. In the US there is a gun culture. Guns are held in high …. esteem. People love them; people collect them. People have the need to own guns. People justify their love for them. It is so common to hear “we need guns to protect ourselves”. From whom? From professional criminals? That would not be enough. “I like guns; we need them to protect ourselves from the government”. What? Are you thinking in fighting the police, the army, and other law enforcement agencies? “We need to protect our Constitutional rights”. Really? Why don’t you change the Constitution. It is too old after all. The Second Amendment establishing the right to bear arms was written by people who owned slaves. At that time, rights did not apply to blacks, Indians and women. It was produced for a rural society. Firearms were the most powerful fighting tools at the time of the Second Amendment. Now there are bazookas, automatic guns, atomic bombs. Do we have the right to “bear” them? After all they are also arms. The gun culture is systematically promoted by a very lucrative gun industry and even by countries who export guns into the US (those countries will not dare to sell internally some of the very guns they export to the US; not so liberally at least).
There is also an imperial culture of violence. For example, it is common to hear politicians and pundits to discuss the need to “kill our enemies”. The justification of torture as a legitimate tool for fighting terrorists (and other enemies) is also part of the culture of violence. TV, films, radio all espouse violence as a normal way of dealing with social and political issues. The (over) promotion of the military as the heroes of society, apparently the only ones in the public discourse, is also a less than subtle way to promote the culture of violence. The death penalty applied in the US, but not in any other developed country, is an expression of a medieval culture of violence. It must be pointed out that the constitutional rights so strictly apply to sell millions of guns and munitions do not seem to have reached thousands of demonstrators of Occupy Wall Street which were subject to harsh repression in New York and Oakland, perhaps beyond the orders provided by the legal authorities.
The repeated killings we witness are not just the result of “evil”. That is a very stupid explanation for a generalized, repeated problem. The gun culture and the culture of violence are public issues that required appropriate public policies … and societal changes as a result!