American Gun Culture

Recently the Florida School shooting incident caused the death of 17 people. Its one of the top ten highest school killing incident in the world. All of it include the use of Firearms. Of the top ten death toll in school shooting massacre, 5 of them occurs in USA.

According to Wikipedia, the number of guns in USA per capita (every 100) is 101 the highest in the world outstripping Serbia the number 2 which has 58.2. Obviously it does not means that every US citizen has at least one one. It just means that the number of guns owned is 300 million.

Every time there is a mass killing, there is always a flurry of articles from Pro-Gun and Anti-Gun activists cashing in on the incident. Pro-Gun will insists that guns are necessary to prevent such incident. Anti-Gun will insists that guns should be controlled or banned altogether.

To understand the whole picture, it is necessary to understand the gun culture of USA. USA started with British colonial occupation of the area. The natives or Red Indians opposed them. Thus there is a constant fighting between them. Obviously, there is a need for every person to have guns to protect themselves from attacks. Thus guns were easily available. This culture continues till today.

Now, to win gun fights, it is necessary to have high fire power. Hand trigger guns becomes ineffective against many opponents. Rapid fire guns were thus favored over the rest. It is thus not unusual for people to acquire arms used by the army which can fire automatically like sub-machine guns.

As USA progresses, the rise of gangsters with guns grow. The most notorious is Al Cappone. The use of automatic firing weapons like the Tommy Gun is used by gangsters during the period. There are still gangsters in USA today that uses guns to commit crimes.  It is obvious that pro-gun people who insists to protect themselves from these criminals.

With the arrival of AR-15, it becomes the most common riffle in USA. AR-15 is the crippled version of M16. The former can only fire in semi-auto mode. The latter can go into auto mode. Basically, the structure of both are similar except the firing mode. Auto firing riffles was banned in USA. However, it is not uncommon and is easy to convert AR-15 to near auto fire mode.Converting semiautomatic rifles to near full-auto done with ease in online videos has an article about the conversion. It also states that the conversion is perfectly legal.

If the story stopped here, then there is just the need of protection against criminals with guns. At this point, I cannot disagree with pro-gun proponents regardless of whether it is semi-auto or full auto guns. However, guns of this type ends up with people with unsound minds which makes the situation very different.

Criminals basically wants your valuables. They don't go on killing spree unless provoked or during gun fights with other criminals. Guns in the hands of people whose sole intention is to kill lots of people is becoming more frequent. A number of mass massacre in a non warring country like USA is becoming a big issue. Terrorist killing is not as often as compared to those with unsound mind in USA.

I must stress that people of unsound mind exists through the ages. The difference is between those who kill with guns that is manually triggered or rapid fire guns that could kill many within seconds. How fast can a man fire a manual triggered gun? Bushmaster XM15 manual lists the maximum effective rate of fire at 45 rounds per minute (AR-15). An assault riffle can fire 600-800 rounds per minute. A modified AR-15 can fire close to the assault riffle rate. Even without modification, the AR-15 is still a formidable weapon at 45 rounds per minute with a clip that ranged from 20 to 100 rounds.

The question then is between protecting self while allowing the wrong use of guns of the type described above. Now protecting self can be done using hand guns. This is especially effective in close quarters. Riffles are long guns which is less flexible in close quarters. This is evident in videos of elite troops and others. In a more open unobstructed area, the rapid fire riffle can kill many at a distance even before they could react.

Riffles cannot be concealed. The first one targeted will be those carrying riffles. At home, it is basically a close quarter encounter. Riffle is a disadvantage unless alarms are set off prior to reaching your.  You dare to leave a loaded riffle around with kids?

Now, how many ordinary US citizen carry riffles every day in public in non gun controlled states? You can't tell if a person carrying riffles walking into a public area is sound minded or not. It is better to let known security officers carry riffle and stationed in strategic defensible points.

Due to rampant ownership and criminals, it is quite impossible to have full gun control. It is better to control guns that have high bullet loading capacity. You can argue all you want on having such riffles to protect yourself. Unless there is a way of stopping unsound minded people from acquiring such weapons, it is better off not having it. The blood of innocent people died due to such mindless mass killing is on your hand.

Pro gun proponents will argue that the worse shooting occurs in high gun controlled states. Gun control at state level or even city level is doomed to be ineffective. People can just go to another state and bring in guns. There is nothing to stop them from crossing the border with guns. Only when gun control is implemented country wide will it be more effective.

Some people commented that riffles like AR-15 are manufactured in USA. Obviously, they will canvas for no gun control. Lots of money at stake. Also NRA also plays an important part in preventing gun-control. So life take second place to guns.

Pro-gun activists always quote the 2nd amendments.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

People tends to just look at "the right of the People to keep and bear arms" and ignore "A well regulated militia" and "necessary to the security of a free state". It should not be taken out of context. The phrase is a complete sentence not two different sentence. If the comma is a full stop then it is an entirely different story.

The bearing of arms is for the security of a free state and should be "well regulated". "Militia" is a sort of organization no free for individuals to use arms to kill innocent people.