Uncle Sam's Deadly Love Affair with Guns
Published in The Universe
(November 24, 2002)
The 25 year old woman, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera was cleaning her car in
Washing DC last October 3 when the single gunshot pierced her back and
killed her on the spot. She was the mother of a three-year-old little girl.
The killers were a former military man, a marksman with a love of guns and a
teenager accomplice. They killed ten people.
Despite the biggest police and military defense budget that the earth
has ever known few Americans feel really safe from the assassins bullet. An
average of 1,600 people are shot dead every 20 days. There are as many as
200 million guns in circulation in the United States uncontrolled by
government. The gun lobby is so powerful that a politician dare not oppose
it and hope to be re-elected.
The eleventh most popular film showing in the United States these days
is called ‘Bowling with Columbine’. It won an award at the Cannes
film festival recently. Columbine refers to the school where teenagers went
on a shooting rampage killing many students and teachers with guns they
easily acquired for a pittance. The picture is deadly and chilling satire on
the gun culture plaguing the American people.
In Ireland and England the kill rate from guns is a fraction in
comparison, nevertheless the proliferation of guns because of paramilitary
organizations has left a bloody trail of murder and misery especially in
Northern Ireland. Yet the implementation of stricter gun regulation in
Britain and Australia, after random shootings of school children, has saved
hundreds of lives.
The United Nations is trying to control small arms weapons that kill an
estimated 300,000 every year around the world. In areas of conflict their
availability encourages violent responses to political and social problems.
The easy availability of weapons prolong such conflicts and creates a
vicious cycle of retribution and revenge which increases the demand for such
weapons.
Many countries have signed up to an international agreement to control
the trafficking of arms and prosecute those in possession of illegal
weapons.
Russia, Britain, Belgium, Israel, China and the United States are the
main producers and distributors. It is multi billion dollar business trading
in the instruments of death and destruction. They have a huge moral
responsibility they must be accountable for many of those 300,000 deaths
every year.
The world’s biggest, the United States, has opposed UN measures that
would forbid the sale of military assault weapons to civilians or to
paramilitary military groups. We wonder why. The O.S. has a habit of arming
paramilitary groups with small arms to further it’s foreign policy . A
policy that seems to backfire. They armed the Taliban and Sama Bin Laden.
The gun mentality gives rise to a belligerence that President George
Bush relishes as he strike the poise of the tough Texan gun slinger with a
sheriff’s badge and steps out to take on any nation that he believes to be a
threat to O.S. economic interests. His love of a shoot out can also threaten
the rest of the world.
His party’s majority in government will only increase his patriotic
bravado and encourage him to continue backing out of treaties and agreements
that restrict Big business. Since taking office his administration has
rejected the International Criminal court, the Kyoto climate, failed to
ratify the UN convention in the rights of the child, walked away from the
Biological weapons review convention, ignored the International convention
on Land Mines, pulled out of the ballistic missiles treaty, boycotted the
Johannesburg conference on sustainable development, and the Comprehensive
Test Ban treaty review. He is rolling back environmental protection laws and
has abandoned the peace process in the Middle East. Now he wants to go to
war with Iraq.
People Kill people, with guns and violence begets violence. Peace will never come from such polices and that is why the Nobel Peace Prize was given to Former President Jimmy Carter.
