Its Still The Wild West Shootout In the USA

[Fred Steeves]

Overall, our results show that the U.S., which has the most firearms per capita in the world, suffers disproportionately from firearms compared with other high-income countries," noted Dr. Grinshteyn. "These results are consistent with the hypothesis that our firearms are killing us rather than protecting us."

Hi Peter,

The above quoted highlight sounds to me like something more in line with the views of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Were it to continue on, I can just see the old "something must be done" meme emerging yet again.

Switzerland has the highest rate of guns per household [I believe even higher than the USA], but the lowest homicide rate.

Now that's quite interesting, and not at all surprising. I wonder why we don't explore more why that is, and look for ways to mimic that, rather than the world's largest distributor of war and war weaponry over turning every stone looking for new ways to keep guns out of the hands of it's own citizenry.

Nowhere in Europe are there open carry laws nor 'stand your ground insane laws', except for hunting with a license and permit with a hunting rifle.

I see words like "insane" used all the time in reference to anything pro self defense. I lived in Florida when that bill was first introduced, and people were screaming from the mountain tops that Florida's city streets would be ever flowing with blood as a result, a full time O.K. Corral was in the works. Well, that never happened.

Before "stand your ground", the law was "duty to retreat". That meant there was *never* a justifiable reason to shoot someone coming after you with a gun, until you had retreated either all the way home, or found yourself cornered somewhere. Not very practical...

All stand your ground means is that if you are armed and in a grocery store when the crazed gunman comes in, you can do something about it besides running away and hiding while people are being murdered. Imagine how much different the Paris attacks may have gone had a few people began firing back? There's a reason why attackers tend to go to "safe" gun free zones. Safe in this instance means relative safety for the attacker, not for the people they are hunting.

Americans are killing one another with firearms at alarming rates!!!!! and those rates are increasing rapidly!... especially in communities of color and poverty...which have always had to bear the greatest death rates from guns.

This truly is where the heart of the problem lays, as I am 49 years old and have never seen a gun brandished in public. This is of course entering a briar patch that I'm not going to enter, but I think most here would agree the problems run much deeper in these areas than just that they have access to guns.

As an aside, interestingly enough the major U.S. cities with the highest gun murder rates, also tend to have the strictest zero tolerance gun laws on the books.

As much as it offends so many people, there's a reason the 2nd Amendment was placed right after the 1st Amendment. As similar as Americans are to our European counterparts, we are also still a bit of a different breed. We just are, that's how we roll. Except for certain intensely violent areas where stricter gun laws do nothing anyway, the streets are actually pretty safe here despite the created illusion that they aren't.

The world never hears about when a responsible gun owner puts down a home invasion, or stops some other violent crime in progress using their firearm. But, they sure do hear the drum beat from the other side of the story.


Anyway, there's one opinion from a typical American.

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