Gun-lies

di Andrea Fasolini

Since I was born, I have been told that guns are bad things. Surely they are. Why do people keep shooting each other since everyone lives only once? The humankind is definitely the most unintelligible race on earth. However, I have also been told that nations that have a high number of guns per capita are, in some way, “worst” than the European ones.

People keep saying that these societies are violent and that if we allowed our citizen to own guns , the democracy would be in danger. I have never been that sure about this. Now I am going to explain why. First, a clarification is necessary. I do not own guns; neither do I think that we should turn the world in some kind of Old West. I am just trying to understand with you if there are evidences of a connection between a high number of guns in a country, and the explosion of violence in its society.

Surely, we agree that the easiest country to talk about is the United States: this country has the highest number of guns per 100 residents of the world. Almost ninety guns every one-hundred citizens. Almost every month our media report on a shooting somewhere in the Us, and every time the message is “See what happen if you allow people to own guns?”

If we looked at this graph, we would agree with this interpretation. Although the number of deaths by firearms has decreased during the last decade, the figure is still alarming. The conclusion? Americans are only individualist who try to solve their problems shooting each other.

Actually, the current situation is highly more complicate. I would like you to take a look at this graph. As you can see, the number of suicides in the Us represents the 60% of the total deaths by firearms.

This graph shows that Americans use their guns mostly to shoot themselves rather than kill each other.

I am not saying neither that America has not a high homicides rate, nor that Us has not a huge problem in controlling the black market of illegal guns.

I am just saying that American social-problems are bigger than we image.

The consumption of antidepressants has considerable increased during the last years. There is, in this way, a strict connection between the increasing of the number of suicides and the increasing of the consumption of these medicines.

Furthermore, I would say something about the so-called connection between the number of firearms per capita and the number of homicides.

This graph shows the first five countries by firearms per capita.

As you can see, the fourth, Switzerland, and the fifth, Finland, are well-known for being extremely pacific and cooperative.

Despite this, these countries have almost a gun every two citizens.

So it becomes clear that there is not a straight connection between a high firearms deaths rate and the number of guns in a country. The problem, in conclusion, is not the number of guns per capita but the education that people receive: in spite of a mere fight against guns-owner, Us government should understand that its citizen need formation programs.

This paper tries to encourage everybody to be a little more humble. Judging a society without understand its problem is not wise.