By P.K.Balachandran/Daily Mirror
Colombo, September 23 – America is a everybody’s dream destination. The allure is in its cutting-edge technology, the opportunities it gives to anyone wanting to work hard and excel, and its welcoming approach to foreigners.
But, as in the case of other societies, the US has a dark side too. The reputation of the world’s oldest democracy is marred by the gun culture. Despite its obvious destructiveness, the gun has acquired a cult status, deeply embedded in the national psyche. Its backing by the Second Amendment of the US constitution makes it sacrosanct.
The killing of Charlie Kirk, a White American Right Wing campaigner and MAGA propagandist, by another White man, Tyler Robinson, at a University Campus in Utah, is the latest example of gun culture in the US. And, as in previous cases, Kirk’s killing has not triggered a debate on gun culture, let alone banning the use of guns by all and sundry.
According to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (2018), the US, with less than 5% of the world’s population, has 46% of the world’s civilian-owned guns.
In 2017, the US had 120.5 guns per 100 people and had a gun homicide rate of 4.1 per 100 people. The comparative figures for Canada were 3.7 guns per 100 people and a 0.5 gun homicide rate per 100 people. For the UK, the figures were 4.6 and 0.04 respectively.
Experts say that gun violence is one of the most pressing “public health” issues facing the US in 2025. According to the latest data from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the US experiences one firearm-related death every 11 minutes, making it a leading cause of death among multiple age groups.
The 2023 CDC provisional data indicates that 46,728 people died from firearms, representing the third-highest number of gun-related deaths ever recorded in US history.
According to www.americanprogress.org every day, 327 people are shot in the US. Of those, an estimated 117 die, while the other 210 suffer lifelong injuries.
False Beliefs
Despite the harsh realities of gun violence, roughly half of Americans believe firearms increase safety “by allowing law-abiding citizens to protect themselves.” The conviction is so widespread that 2023 survey data found that 72% of gun owners cite personal protection as a “major reason” for gun ownership, notwithstanding overwhelming evidence demonstrating that firearms are not an effective means of self-defence.
According to Alison Jordan, a researcher on gun violence, it is the firearms industry that reinforces the narrative that guns make society safer. This is done through the manufacture of fear, perversion of self-defence, and falsified statistics, weakening the public’s ability to properly inform themselves of the risks associated with gun ownership.
Sociology of Gun Culture
According to a PEW survey, the gun appears to be a man’s weapon principally. 40% of men said they owned a gun, versus 25% of women. 47% of adults living in rural areas reported owning a firearm as against 30% of those who lived in suburbs (30%) or urban areas (20%). Gun ownership is largely a rural phnenomenon.
Race-wise, 38% of White Americans owned a gun, compared with smaller shares of Blacks (24%), Hispanic (20%) and Asians (10%). This is perhaps why the gun in the US is associated with White racists.
Republicans and Democrats differed widely on this question: 81% of Republicans said gun ownership did more to increase safety, while 74% of Democrats said it did more to reduce safety. The political Right Wing is more associated with gun culture than the political Left Wing.
Suicide accounts for 58% of deaths due to the gun. In other words, gun use is related to mental health. 38% of murders involve gun use. Thus the gun has a significant role in interpersonal violence. 86% of the victims of the gun are males, pointing to a gender pattern in murders with the gun. Firearms figure in the death of children and teens aged from I to 19, demonstrating the vulnerability of young Americans to gun violence.
It is estimated that violence using guns causes an annual economic loss of more than US$ 280 billion.
Prevalence of Violence
Although America is a democratic country where the ballot is more powerful than the bullet, violence against its leaders have not been uncommon. In an article in New York Times, Ezra Klein listed incidents involving the use of guns against political leaders.
In 2024, Donald Trump was nearly assassinated when shots were fired at him. Melissa Hortman, the former Speaker of the House in Minnesota, and her husband, were murdered, and State Senator John Hoffman and his wife severely injured by a gunman.
Four sitting US Presidents were killed. They were, Abraham Lincoln (1865), James A. Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963). Theodore Roosevelt (1912) and Donald Trump (2024) were injured in an assassination attempt while they were campaigning for re-election.
The 1960s saw the assassination of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy. In the 1970s, George Wallace was shot by a would-be assassin but survived, and Gerald Ford faced two assassination attempts in one month. In 1981 Ronald Reagan survived after John Hinckley Jr.’s bullet ricocheted off his rib and punctured his lung.
Attempts at Gun Control
It is not as if the US has made no attempt to control the use of guns. The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibited individuals under eighteen years of age, convicted criminals, the mentally disabled, dishonourably discharged military personnel, and others from purchasing firearms. In 1993, the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act mandated background checks for all unlicensed individuals purchasing a firearm from a federally authorized dealer.
Federal law provides the basis for firearms regulation in the US, but States and cities can impose further restrictions.
According to Council for Foreign Relations, some gun laws have not survived judicial review. For instance, in 2008, the Supreme Court struck down a Washington, DC, law that banned handguns, the court’s first ruling on the Second Amendment in nearly seventy years.
Some studies have indicated that States with more restrictive gun laws, such as California or Hawaii, have lower incidences of gun deaths, although researchers say more analysis is needed to substantiate any finding.
In recent years, Congress has debated changes to existing gun laws, typically in the immediate aftermath of a high-profile mass shooting, such as that in Las Vegas in 2017 (sixty people killed), or in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 (seventeen killed).
But according to www.cfr.org in almost every case, legislation has failed to garner enough support political support. Ill-fated bills have proposed measures including an assault weapons ban, expanded background checks, and a prohibition on firearm sales to people on federal terrorism watch lists.
As of mid-2022, there were no federal laws banning semiautomatic assault weapons, military-style .50 calibre rifles, handguns, or large-capacity magazines. There was also no federal requirement for those purchasing a gun to have any firearm safety training.
There was a federal prohibition on assault weapons and on large-capacity magazines between 1994 and 2004, but Congress allowed these restrictions to expire.
Meanwhile, gun violence surged amid the COVID-19 pandemic. As of June 2022, guns had killed some 19,000 people in the US, the majority of those were in acts of suicide. Mass shootings—those with at least four victims—also occurred.
In fact, research overwhelmingly suggests that owning a gun can put loved ones at greater risk of injury than not owning a gun, CFR says. A 2022 study found adults who lived with handgun owners, but were not gun owners themselves, were twice as likely to die by homicide in general and three times more likely to die by homicide in the home than those who lived in a gun-free household.
The same study found people living with handgun owners were also seven times more likely to be shot by their spouse or intimate partner, indicating that instead of being protective, the household gun was more often used as an instrument of abuse. Similarly, a study from 2000 found that a gun in the home was over six times more likely to be used to intimidate a family member than be used in a defensive capacity.
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