Must read from Henry Porter. Just insanity. This isn’t about rights, it is about the wholesale slaughter of individuals. My emphasis.
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.
That 212,994 more Americans lost their lives from firearms in the last 45 years than in all wars involving the US is a staggering fact, particularly when you place it in the context of the safety-conscious, “secondary smoke” obsessions that characterise so much of American life.
Link:Â http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/21/american-gun-out-control-porter
And if you also count in the fact that estimates of total private gun ownership in the US run at 270-310 million, we are indeed beginning to face up to a choice: retaining a civil society under the rule of law, or giving up, town by town, county by county, to non-state weapons-bearers.