Yup. August, a slow news week.
So we read this headline: US most armed country, with 90 guns for 100 people.
U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.
Well, yes. That sounds about right.
Like many Americans, I am actually in favor of gun control. My grandfather was a policeman, and he saw children accidentally killed playing with their father’s gun, so we had no guns in our house.
But when I married and had boys, my own house had four people and five guns: My husband (a doctor who took narcotics on house calls) had a pistol. But the main reason for the guns was hunting. In our area of Pennsylvania it was one mile to the state Game lands, and hunting was a religion. School was closed for the first day of deer season. So we had a deer rifle, a shot gun, and a 22 rifle.
Yum. Venison Kielbasa…
In Europe, hunting is for rich people. Farmers might have guns for small pesty animals, but poor people don’t hunt.
In the US, hunting is part of the way of life, not just in the “good old boys” of the south, but among Polish coal miners of rural Pennsylvania or the Native Americans of Minnesota.
And in the US, Rural people eat what they catch (and their neighbors look the other way when they have three deer carcasses, two of which are “illegal”, hanging up in their garage).
But the article doesn’t distinguish hunting guns from those used for self defense.
I’ll leave it to the NRA to argue about the need of handguns for self defense in the USA.
But the clue to the problem of guns elsewhere can be found in the observation that only 12 percent of the guns are estimated to be registered. Translation: It’s the criminals stupid.
But guns are also being sought by middle class businessmen for protection, and as globalization increases prosperity unequally in traditionally poor regions the demand for guns will increase:
“Weapons ownership may be correlated with rising levels of wealth, and that means we need to think about future demand in parts of the world where economic growth is giving people larger disposable income,” he told a Geneva news conference.
And herein lies a tale.
Many third world countries forbid private ownership of guns, but if someone robs your business or breaks into your home, you are defenseless. That is why in many third world countries, you see security guards everywhere, often carrying semi automatic rifles.
Here in the Philippines, private guns are forbidden. Marcos passed a law making handguns by private citizens illegal.
As a result, every store has at least one security guard with an MK47, M16 or shotgun sitting outside, and every politician has his own private army of security guards (who sometimes shoot it out with the private security guards of other politicians).
But the dirty little secret is that many middle class people have guns hidden away for protection (and the poor rely on machetes).
Because of the threat of crime, the growing middle class here in the Philippines are moving into gated communities with armed security guards.
But we live in the downtown business area, and since we gave away our illegal guns when my husband had his stroke, our main means of protection are six large dogs that are kept chained during the day and let loose at night to wander around our buildings inside the fence.
But I bet we are then only ones in the neighborhood who doesn’t have a pistol or rifle locked away for protection.
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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the rural Philippines. her website is Finest Kind Clinic and FishmarketÂ
10 users commented in " Europe shocked: Americans own guns. well, Duh "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackThere may be many citizens in the US that favor gun control but there is not a single American that does! Americans uphold the entire Constitution , not just bits they like. Gun control laws are repugnant to the Constitution and therefore void. Also, not a single gun control law has prevented or solved a crime. In the United States, according to the Supreme Court, law enforcement is under no obligation to protect individual citizens. However , don’t let the facts stop you from pushing your uninformed socialist agenda though.
Sincerely,
Tony Heaton
(I’m a french teenager so forgive my english error).
I don’t agree, and I actualy don’t understand your point of view, remember Virginia Tech remember Columbine. It couldn’t happen in France and in other western european country, because here you can’t own a gun, it’s forbidden and nobody have gun hidden away because it’s almost impossible to find some.
In my whole life (short that’s true) I never seen someone who have a gun and who was not a policeman (or serviceman) or a hunter (to have a gun when you are a hunter who have to succes a special test, and you are limited in the choice of the gun). Do I feel in insecurity ? Of course not because criminal also haven’t got some gun.
I understand that it’s a different culture but would you say the same think when your children whould die by playing with his friends’ guns ?
Do you find reassuring the fact that even a mentally ill can buy weapon ?
See you, Sami
ps : “In Europe, hunting is for rich people.” => What ? In europe hunting is for hunter.
Dear Sami:
You said “…..remember Virginia Tech remember Columbine. It couldn’t happen in France and in other western european country, because here you can’t own a gun, it’s forbidden and nobody have gun hidden away because it’s almost impossible to find some.”
Please don’t fool yourself. It could happen in France and other western European countries…high-profiles shootings and other killings are certainly not limited to those countries that allow their citizens to keep arms.
Hey Sami:
“It couldn’t happen in France or other western European country…”???
Seems you have forgotten the incident in Erfurt, Germany in April 2002: “13 teachers, two students, and one policeman killed, ten wounded by Robert Steinhaeuser, 19, at the Johann Gutenberg secondary school.”
Or, to directly address your country: “Eight people were killed and 19 wounded yesterday in a mass handgun shooting in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, France. The alleged shooter in the French massacre, Richard Durn…” This also ocurred in 2002.
And contrary to popular perception, compared to other European nations France has a relatively high rate of firearms ownership. Approximately 23 percent of French households have guns.
I have a question for Sami:
What do Columbine and Virginia Tech have in common??
Time’s up!
They are both gun-free zones!
If the evil and depraved people who committed these crimes had tried to do so in a gun store or a shooting range here in the USA, they would have fired one or two shots before the return fire from armed Americans stopped their attack.
The laws and institutional policies that render peaceful American defenseless are as much to blame as the vermin that pulled the triggers.
Check out this review of “The Day Reality Hit Home” at the UK’s Observer:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2151530,00.html
A girl was attacked by a mob using fists and a broken bottle. They may well have beaten her to death (not just permanently mutilated her face) if the author had not intervened (and fortunately for him, they left instead of attacking him). The same series also includes references to several murders with knives in the UK, sometimes for reasons as trivial as someone asking the killer to stop throwing potato chips at someone else. (I believe the UK is in western Europe.)
It is foolish to think that if guns are unavailable (and they never are to criminals), you don’t need to worry about defending yourself. If someone attacks me with a bottle or a knife, I would not hesistate to shoot him (and I have that ability, since I can legally carry my handgun concealed in this part of the US). The gun is the only tool that gives one person a chance against several, or that gives a woman or elderly man a chance against a young male attacker.
It is a grave error to think that only gun violence is worth worrying about. Moscow, Russia has strong gun control, and yet the murder rate there is very, very high. Closer to my home, Mexico also has stringent gun control, and their murder rate is several times that of the US.
Even if you could craft a gun ban that actually were to make guns disappear as if by magic, the real effect would be to give power to the physically strongest people– young males, who happen also to be the ones making up most of the attackers.
What are you going to do to defend against a strong young male attacking you with a large knife (knowing that you, as a lawful person, carry no self defense tools)? Even a strong male victim (unarmed) is no match for another strong male with a knife. There is no realistic way to ban knives… even if a government were to try it somehow (good luck cutting your food), edged weapons can easily be crafted from everyday items.
If a person wants to kill someone, no law is going to prevent him from finding a weapon with which to do it. Going after the weapons, and not the criminals themselves, is a strategy which can only do harm by disallowing victims to defend themselves. In safe areas, it is not the lack of guns that makes it so. Such areas are safe despite the ban on guns for lawful citizens, not because of it.
Owning a gun is a god given right of a free people. No one ever said that freedom was free or easy, it always comes at a price; unfortunately sometimes horrible things happen. You cannot ban crazy people. Who’s to say if it wasn’t a gun a Columbine or Virginia Tech that those people wouldn’t have constructed a suicide vest. Banning guns doesn’t stop gun crimes, it’s been proven over and over again. What it does do is make criminals more armed and law abiding citizens who would refuse to give up their guns criminals and those that do give them up; DEFENSELESS. A gun doesn’t pull its own trigger, the person holding it does. People that want gun control are socialist and communist and want to depend on the government to control every aspect of their lives, even their own self defense. The last time I checked it usually takes 911 a minimum of 4 minutes or more to respond. Need I say more.
Leading up to and since the Obama administration has taken office, I have bought 4 guns. I have friends and know numerous people who have purchased guns. I own guns not only because it’s my right, but rather my duty; I own firearms because I can. We can all thank Obama, one of the most liberal anti-gun politicians for being the #1 biggest seller for the firearm industry. Guns are part of our culture, because of them we are who we are, a free nation- the United States of America. And because of them, we’ll remain a free nation. The day we are disarmed of our guns, is the day we become slaves, defenseless in nature and stripped of our liberties. For those who want to take my guns away from me, I say come and get them, for you’ll only receive the ammunition! Part of being a man is owning a weapon. As a boy, we were taught to hunt and protect our family, as well as our country. We are a nation of gun owning Americans who under the constitution of the U.S. and our forefathers gave us that right. We are the militia and we are our nations first line of defense, we are the original homeland security and we were designated to keep the all powerful government in check. We own guns because personal safety is our GOD given right.
“I don’t agree, and I actualy don’t understand your point of view, remember Virginia Tech remember Columbine. It couldn’t happen in France and in other western european country”
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Even if what you were saying were actually true, do you know what else CANT and WONT happen in France?
The day two men grab you and drag you off screaming to rape and murder you its plain enough to see that you CANT do a damned thing about it and WONT be able to stop them from doing any thing that comes into their sick heads.
My wife?
She’ll blow there arses out the front door with one of the 4 guns we have here in the house.
So you go ahead and feel slightly comforted with your delusion that france is safe.
The rest of the world that reads the news about your country knows better.
Youre nothing but a helpless sheep, just as your masters want you to be.
Women kills her returning rapist with shotgun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_NJQK2BscIg
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