I did a review on this blog years ago, perhaps even a decade ago, comparing the approach to gun violence and safety in other countries vs. the USA. The dynamic I spoke to then is the same today. Where the NRA has promoted gun ownership based on "fear of the other" there is an increase in gun deaths.
By Bill Hutchinson
At least four major U.S. cities were reeling from an onslaught of mass shootings (click here) over the weekend that left at least 39 people wounded, five dead and police officials alarmed that the surge in gun violence is a prelude to a bloody summer as the nation emerges from the pandemic.
Police in Austin, Cleveland, Chicago and Savannah were all investigating on Sunday mass shootings that erupted over a six-hour streak that began around 9 p.m. on Friday and spilled over into Saturday morning....
Police in Austin, Cleveland, Chicago and Savannah were all investigating on Sunday mass shootings that erupted over a six-hour streak that began around 9 p.m. on Friday and spilled over into Saturday morning....
There isn't any deep-seated social problem. Where there is guns in abundance, there is a politician pushing it because his wealthy donor wants a quid pro quo. That is exactly what the NRA counts on, no different than the petroleum industry, when they give money away to politicians they expect quid pro quo. In the case of guns, there is a culture of guns and death that becomes part of the social dialogue.
When it comes to guns, (click here) Brazil and the U.S. have a few things in common. They rank first and second, respectively, in the number of citizens shot to death each year among the 195 countries that the American Medical Association tracks. The political dialogue in each country is dominated by a charismatic leader who says the answer to rampant violence is fewer gun laws and more guns. And both of those leaders—newly sworn-in President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and U.S. President Donald Trump—are big fans of America’s National Rifle Association.
Bolsonaro made gun rights one of the main planks in his campaign platform, liberally salting his speeches with NRA talking points: “Guns are our guarantee of freedom,” he said during an event in the southern city of Curitiba last March. “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” his son Carlos posted on Facebook.
His victory shows that a core NRA principle—that armed citizens are safe citizens—is gaining political and popular traction far beyond America’s shores. Founded 148 years ago in New York by two Union Army vets to promote marksmanship, the group describes itself as the “oldest civil rights organization in America.” Its public events and messaging are often draped in the Stars and Stripes. Yet for all the patriotic symbolism, many of the forces shaping the NRA these days are distinctly non-American....
The terror that ran through the hearts of the American people during the global pandemic drove gun sales that are absolutely ridiculous. The graph below only goes up to 2016 for the USA.
Latin America boasts just 8% of the world’s population, (click here) but it accounts for 38% of its murders. The number of criminal killings in the region came to around 140,000 people last year, more than have been lost in wars around the world in almost all of the years this century. And the crime is becoming ever more common.
Yet the continent also has some of the biggest improvers. In many Colombian cities murder used to be the leading cause of death. The rate in Cali in 1994 was 124 per 100,000, four times worse than New York at its most lethal. The mayor was a surgeon who realised that murder was like a disease. Following an approach pioneered in New York and copied across the rich world, he set up “violence observatories” to study precisely how people, places and behaviour led to killings. They found that, even amid a raging drugs war, most murders resulted from drunken brawls. Restrictions on alcohol and guns helped cut murders by 35%. Other Colombian cities tweaked Cali’s evidence-based policing to suit their own needs—Medellín, for example, targeted drug cartels. Police and judicial reform, and aid from the United States, were crucial, too. In 2017 Colombia’s murder rate was 24 per 100,000, the lowest for 42 years....
