POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY PHIL SLOCOMBE IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
The simple truth is that the societies which insist on gun ownership are the most violent in the first place.
The United States, where gun ownership is viewed as the equivalent to having food in the pantry, is the most violent advanced nation in the world.
The violence can be measured dozens of ways. Numbers of violent crimes. Numbers of people in prison. Number of cases of police brutality. Number of wars started in the last fifty years. Number of high-level political assassinations. Number of angry and insane people on the streets.
America is unlikely to join the ranks of civilized nations for a good century or so.
And, of course, we have the bitter irony that the American Constitution really doesn't give the right to gun ownership. It talks only about this in terms of a 'well ordered militia.'
Americans who make the ridiculous claim that guns defend their freedom have only to look at the gigantic, Frankenstein-monster military state they have created to see how pathetic that argument is.
Detroit or LA not many years ago looked a lot like Fallujah when blacks revolted, and few of them even had guns. The American military shot something like 44 people dead just in Detroit.
Americans have also only to look at the many instances in their history where rights and freedoms have been openly ignored or deliberately suppressed, from the Alien and Sedition Acts under Adams to Bush and Cheney.
200,000,000 private guns never did a thing and never will.
