“One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings since Columbine and no change in our regulation of guns.”
~John Oliver
I don’t think there’s a better example of how policy is shaped by lobbying, rather than rational thought.
And on that topic, those who claim that gun regulations have no correlation with gun violence have some explaining to do about the character of the American people. If it’s not your lax gun laws that account for the disproportionate number of gun deaths in the United States, what is it? Your propensity toward violence, or the rampant inequality in your society? I do not ask this as a rhetorical question: why then so many gun deaths? You’ll have a hard time coming up with an answer you’re proud of, patriots.
To pre-empt gun zealots who may complain that the latter meme does not represent per capita statistics, I will point to Christopher Majka’s excellent blog entry: http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/christophermajka/2012/12/death-innocents-murder-and-guns-usa. To quote: “The per capita mortality from handguns in the USA is 4.6 times that of its closest contender, Israel; 23 times that of Canada, and 265 times that of Great Britain.”