A Culture of Violent Intolerance

On December 18^th, I presented a blog entitled "Big Shots in America" which I will repeat below in a moment. The events of January 8^th in Tucson, six killed (including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl) and fourteen injured (including a Congresswoman in critical condition) have been viewed around the world as evidence of America's gun culture, which seems to so many how we are much out of step with any other country on earth, and as the statistics of that earlier blog point out, we are the gun-toting-est country on earth. Arizona has become the international poster-boy for contemporary violent bigotry. Recent legislation giving AZ police officers the duty of checking immigration status of suspicious individuals combined with the August-passed statute allowing locals over 21 to purchase guns without background checks or training and then carry them as unpermitted concealed weapons, have been repeated around the world as clear evidence of this violent bigotry.

Indeed the foreign press is at once fascinated and appalled at the seemingly routine statements by on-air personalities and even political candidates, that political candidates and their supporters deserve to be shot and killed. The poster above, a mid-term election statement from Sarah Palin which lists fallen Congresswoman Cliffords as one of the targets, uses crosshairs to designate those politicians need to be eliminated.

The Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald (Jan. 10^th) describes Arizona to its readers: "BEAUTIFUL, vast, rugged and unforgiving, Arizona's postcard landscape is matched by the frontier mentality of many of its populace: not so much lawless, but deeply conservative, and wedded to the idea that happiness truly is a warm gun." Previously, the state had an "open carry" law, allowing licensed gun owners to publicly carry their weapons. This led to a scene outside a convention centre in Phoenix in August 2009, where a dozen firearm-carrying protesters gathered, including one with a semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, as Barack Obama spoke inside. The hostility to the President is more than symbolic. That same month, Steven Anderson, a Baptist pastor in suburban Tempe, was revealed to be leading his congregation in prayers for Mr Obama's death.

Mark Mardell, the BBC's North American Editor, noted (Jan. 8): "It is just too soon to say if this shooting will have any lasting impact, although there will no doubt be new calls for a more moderate, less emotional discourse... But there is an irony... The rhetoric and debate that instantly sprang up around this crime show the volatile, febrile [feverish] nature of American politics and those passions are unlikely to disappear overnight." Canada's CTV (Jan. 9) observed: "Washington and the nation have experienced a year or more of raw politics, with anger spilling over on both sides and gun-related metaphors coming loosely from the lips of some candidates and activists. Giffords, who had been a figurative target of the right, warned months ago that the verbal assaults were beyond the pale and could have dire results." For more headlines, take a look at the reaction of newspapers around the world courtesy of the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/gallery/2011/01/09/GA2011010904602.html?hpid=artslot#photo=6

No one is seriously saying that journalist-jocks and politicians on the campaign trail really mean the violent allusion of "elimination" as murder, but clearly, making Americans angry, angry enough to kill, it seems appears to be good business and good politics (if money and winning are your only goals). Whether it is liberal commentator Bill Maher “even in jest“ suggesting that it is better if rightwing commentator Rush Limbaugh "croaked" or Tea Party spokesperson, Sarah Palin, using gun metaphors against those who oppose her vision, the need to fill news networks with stuff 24/7/365 has made outrageous and inflammatory rhetoric a good ratings policy and has inflamed those on the edge to thinking that violent solutions are acceptable and that those who oppose one view or the other should be removed.

In a nation with more guns floating around than anywhere else on earth, fomenting extreme anger has obvious consequences, even though it does take a lunatic to pull the trigger like the mentally unbalanced 21-year-old Tucson killer, Jared Loughner, who legitimately bought his gun last November at Arizona gun shop. Now for the numbers¦ and my December 18^th blog, 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... beginning in Tucson .