Big Shots in America

This blog is about guns, and mostly the guns that are kept by the civilian population and not the police or the military. The results have been compiled (based on numerous sources) on ChaCha.com and reported in the December 9^th FastCompany.com. The headline? Americans are really, really well-armed, vastly better-armed than any other nation on earth.

Let’s start with the order of the highest “small firearm” nations on earth, based on the number of guns per hundred people: U.S. – 90, Yemen – 61, Finland – 56, Switzerland – 56 (no wonder they believe in “neutrality”), Iraq – 39, Serbia – 38, France – 30, Canada – 30, Sweden -30, Austria – 30, Germany- 30. We’ve got double what folks in Iraq have?! Wow! Almost one gun for every American? Want a staggering alternative vision of these numbers? While there is roughly one such gun for every seven people on earth, if you take the U.S. (which is about 5% of the world’s population) out of the mix, the number drops to one in ten!

When you think that someone is killed with such weapons every minute and that $1 billion of additional black market weapons enter the global market annually, you might choose to stay at home tonight. While we don’t have precise statistics, the total number is somewhere between 300,000 to 500,000 deaths per year. 90 percent of gun-related casualties are caused by small arms. Remember that as much as we fear the Mexican drug cartels trafficking narcotics into the U.S., Mexico fears the shipment of illegal guns from the U.S. back down to them.

The split between government (law enforcement and military) and civilian possession of small firearms: governments – 225 million; civilians – 650 million (it is estimated that only about 12% of civilian small arms are registered). The big three in annual small arms sales? No surprise: U.S. – $10.3 billion, Russia – $8.1 billion, the U.K. – $3.1 billion, but it seems that the Brits and the Russians sell them to “others,” since their populations are not on the top of the list of those possessing guns. I guess since most British cops don’t carry firearms, that does suggest there aren’t too many such weapons in the hands of the general public.

Let’s just look at the good old U.S.A. Generally, half of all households have small arms, but since there is almost one gun for every person here, there are some pretty well-armed households out there! We’ve got 270 million of the planet’s 875 million small arms, and of the 8 million new such firearms we manufacture every year, 4.5 million of ‘em stay right here.

But when it comes to bargain-hunting in buying weapons, the place to go is one of the poorest countries in the world: Yemen. Here’s what you can expect in that market: hand grenades - $4 each, anti-tank mine - $22, a used Uzi - $170, a machine pistol with a silencer - $350, a new AK-47 assault rifle - $400, and folks, if you really want to take out that nasty old neighbor, might I suggest a rocket-propelled grenade launcher for $500? I wonder if they have holiday sales back there. Hey gangbangers and terrorist, how about that? Oh, you already know, and gangbangers can “buy American” right here. If the world seems out of control, perhaps this is a huge part of the reason. “I’m right and you’re wrong” is an entirely different visual when guns are added to the scene, and for those lobbying for a crackdown on the surfeit of American guns, where in hell would you even start? And as people have been slammed by the collapse of the global economy, how will such weapons availability impact the desperation and frustration they feel… especially when they have nothing left to lose.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am seeing a series of thousands of stadiums packed with people with anger management issues… who have guns.