America’s Self Inflicted Wounds (#181)

The shooting at the Republican team baseball practice shocked the United States of America. The rest of the World was stunned by the incident but probably not that surprised, because internal ‘shootings’ have become an American thing, in the eyes of the developed World at least.

Yes, far more gun related violence takes place in some of the Latin/South America countries, war torn countries of Middle East and North Africa, a few Eastern European countries, and in Asian countries (like the Philippines).

But when compared to the advanced countries of all of Western Europe (including Great Britain), Canada, Australia, and the rest of the Countries of the World throughout Asia and Africa, the United States is by far the most gun violent country, with 3.5 deaths out of 1000 people, as compared to 0.5 deaths per 1000 for these countries, on average.

According to a news article on CNN (on-line) by Nancy Coleman and Sergio Hernandez, mass shootings with multiple victims (at least 4 people killed, including the killer), are an almost daily occurrence in America. According to them, since January 1, to June 14, 2017, there have been 154 such shootings, which averages an astonishing 6.7 per week.

No other developed country comes even remotely close to such self inflicted violence.

And that's why the rest of the World wonders: what is it with America that they should feel so paranoid? Unlike other people in Western countries with similar wealth and quality of life (some with better), Americans feel so threatened within their own Country, that they have this need to be so radically armed and pose a greater threat to themselves than any outside terrorist group in the World.

More Americans, men, women and children die at the point of a gun from other Americans, than from foreign terrorists or adversaries, year after year after year. So the question is, if Americans can’t protect themselves by owning more and more guns (already there are more guns in the U.S. than people), then what is going to save them from these almost daily self inflicted massacres.