Should we send in UN troops!?
TO AMERICA!
More people have been shot dead within the borders of the
USA than in any armed conflict overseas since the sixties!. We might be
forgiven for expecting America’s adversaries to be rolling around helpless with
laughter as the self appointed ‘global policeman’ is responsible for killing more of its own people than by any other
means, terrorist or otherwise! I have a reputation for expounding the figures
of those killed by our main means of transport (more people have been killed by
the automobile that in all the world wars put together) this is about to change
in the grimmest way imaginable as America has begun challenging it’s road
safety in recent years and the number dead from handgun crime is for the first
time about to exceed those killed by their means of getting to the shopping
mall![1]
This from Henry Porter and The Guardian newspaper in
recent weeks:
“Guns do not make a nation safer, say US doctors who have
compared the rate of firearms-related deaths in countries where many people own
guns with the death rate in countries where gun ownership is rare.
Their findings, published Wednesday in the prestigious
American Journal of Medicine, debunk the historic belief among many people in
the United States that guns make a country safer, they say. On the contrary, the
US, with the most guns per head in the world, has the highest rate of deaths
from firearms, while Japan, which has the lowest rate of gun ownership, has the
least.
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.
The annual toll from firearms in the US is running at 32,000
deaths and climbing, even though the general crime rate is on a downward path
(it is 40% lower than in 1980). If this perennial slaughter doesn't qualify for
intercession by the UN and all relevant NGOs, it is hard to know what does.
One more figure. There have been fewer than 20
terror-related deaths on American soil since 9/11 and about 364,000
deaths caused by privately owned firearms.
If any European nation had such a record and persisted in addressing only the
first figure, while ignoring the second, you can bet your last pound that the
State Department would be warning against travel to that country and no
American would set foot in it without body armour”
No comments:
Post a Comment