What Do Brazil, the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Guatemala Have in Common?

Las Vegas the Day After the 2017 Mass Shooting that Left 59 dead and 500 injured

Together these countries have about 10% of the earth’s population. But these six nations also account for over half the world’s gun deaths by civilians. Of the one million firearms in civilian hands around the world, the United States, with under 5% of the planet’s population, accounts for almost a third of those weapons, including more than a fair of legal, military-grade assault rifles.

According to a recently-released study from the American Medical Association, in 2016, firearms in civilian hands “ended the lives of about 251,000 people in 195 countries and territories that kept reasonably detailed death records. Those deaths included homicides, suicides and accidents… [that would be the equivalent of the] death of every man, woman and child in the city of Glendale, Ariz., America’s 87th largest city.” Los Angeles Times, August 28^th. Death from Islamic terrorism was just a tiny drop in that carnage bucket.

The issues surrounding non-combat-related firearm deaths fall all over the map, but the devastation is not limited to the individual victims. There are families, businesses, even political systems that are placed in jeopardy. Sometimes, gun trafficking is the product of easy gun access in a neighboring country, and the United States is clearly the biggest offender in this category. “[But civilian firearms] kill people — men overwhelmingly — who are in the prime of life, between the ages of 15 and 40. In 2016, they killed 7,220 children before they reached their 14th birthday. Boys in this age group died at two-and-a-half times the rate of girls.

“Guns cut short the lives of women too, with homicides vastly outnumbering suicides. Unintentional deaths involving women and guns are vanishingly rare.

“Other research has found a link between firearms ownership and fatal ‘nonstranger’ violence in the United States. The authors of the new report noted that ‘although men are most often the targets of firearm violence, they are also the most likely perpetrators, often in the context of domestic and relationship violence.’

“The study also makes clear that the United States has played a key role in setting the stage for gun-related deaths across the Americas, both by supplying the weapons and sustaining the drug trade that drives the mostly illegal use of guns in these countries. In many of these countries, few guns appear to be in the hands of legal owners.

“By creating national baselines of gun deaths and showing trends over time, the new tally lays the foundation for cross-cultural comparisons. That could allow future researchers to explore why gun deaths have dropped so dramatically in some countries while rising in others, and to ask whether government policies played a role. It will permit them to study whether and how the circumstances of nearby states — such as gun behemoth the United States — subvert or promote a country’s efforts to drive down gun deaths.” Los Angeles Times.

In most countries, the right to own a gun is either completely outlawed (bans can just be limited to handguns and assault weapons), limited to certified hunters after a very long and detailed background checks or subject to a severe permitting process. But in some countries, there is also a constitutional right to bear arms. You might be surprised that despite hundreds of thousands of firearms floating all over Mexico, virtually all of them illegal and smuggled from the United States, the country has a constitutional version of our Second Amendment. But with one gun store (government run) in the entire country (in Mexico City; you have to go there in person to apply for a gun) and one of the most exhaustive sets of testing and training, Mexico probably has no more than 20,000 legal civilian firearms.

So for all the dead Americans, too many of them children, obliterated by privately-owned guns, even knowing that a maniac can kill so many more people with an automatic weapon than with a knife and further knowing how easy it is to buy or obtain a gun no matter who you are, masses of Americans swear that their right to gun ownership is absolute, sacred and without serious constitutional restrictions.

As a practicing lawyer for over four decades, I can affirm that the Constitution most definitely does not prevent any American government, state or federal, from passing reasonable gun control. Yet Americans are over 100 times more likely to get killed with a gun than an average Singaporean, living in that tiny island democracy with free healthcare, free high-quality education and one of the lowest crime rates on earth. There is no justification I have ever heard for the rather open and uncontrolled pervasive presence of guns in our society. For every justifiable gun homicide in this country, there are thirty gun homicides that aren’t.

I’m Peter Dekom, and our ultra-violent, gun-obsessed culture continues to be an unfathomable proclivity that not one single other country on earth understands.