Americans ARE exceptional.

[pnwmom]

We own an exceptional number of guns -- more per capita than anywhere else in the world. And we have 48,000 gun deaths annually to show for it.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/where-i-stand/whos-protecting-whom-what-whos-protecting-what-whom


Here's an American statistic for you about "American exceptionalism" that seems to get lost under the headlines about a slowly recovering economy and a growing number of billionaires. This figure -- at least between attempted massacres like in Austin, Texas, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Aurora and the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, to name a few -- rarely surfaces. The fact that we lose 48,000 people a year in this country to the attacks of private people using privately owned guns seldom makes headlines. Only the atrocities they leave behind them sell newspapers.

There is not another country in the world with that much gun violence on their streets. In the United States, there are 88 guns for every 100 people. That means we already have a privately owned gun for almost every man, woman and child in the country. Only the Arabian Peninsula nation* of Yemen comes anywhere close to that kind of civilian firepower, with a ratio of 54 guns to every 100 Yemeni. So does democracy work or doesn't it? Clearly, "the land of the free and the home of the brave" is fast threatening to become the land of the gun and the home of the dead.

SNIP

And in the midst of it all, in response to the second question about the kinds of controls possible, the Supreme Court has ruled that though U.S. citizens have the right to bear arms, the Second Amendment is liable to "reasonable restrictions."

We also, then, must have a right to be protected from the wanton, uncontrolled, unbalanced, dangerous use of guns in the public arena. We have a right to be protected from Wild West gunfights masking as personal or public defense in our public life. We have a right to protect people who are in no mental state to protect either themselves or someone else from the demons with which they struggle but have no little or no control over themselves. We have a right to be protected from the rise of private arsenals in a country that claims to be a nation of law and order.

SNIP

[NutmegYankee]

1. I think the 48,000 was over four years (Demand a Plan)

The CDC reports about 12,000 homicides a year.