Don’t Miss It: ‘The USA: The Country that Arms Its Children’

Some 310 million firearms are in circulation in the United States; that is one per inhabitant, including children. Some 18,000 of these children are shot dead every year. Attempts to restrict carrying firearms have failed.

How can a developed democracy almost willingly put its children in danger? This is what is happening in the United States. Under the pretext that it is abiding by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution — in other words, a few lines dating back to the 18th century which guarantee all citizens the right to carry a weapon in self-defense — 310 million shotguns, pistols or assault rifles circulate in the country. That is to say, one per inhabitant, children included.

Every year, 30,000 people are killed with guns, among them, 18,000 young people. The shootings that make the headlines have an important role to play in this bleak record. But there are also a huge number of domestic accidents. Seven thousand children are hospitalized every year due to gunshot wounds.

According to Leah Gunn Barrett, executive director of the organization New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, “Every half hour, a child is killed or injured in the United States with a gun. Guns are the second leading cause of death for American youth. They are the leading cause of death for African-American youth. This is insane!”

This fascinating French documentary [“USA: The Country That Arms Its Children”] shows, alas, that despite these frightening figures, the American public remains convinced that possessing a gun is a guarantee of security. Faced with the growing number of accidents, associations which oppose respect for the Second Amendment are mobilizing carrying out a succession of campaigns highlighting the danger of possessing a gun at home.

Daniel Gross is president of the Brady Campaign, one of the most prominent anti-gun lobby organizations on the scene. The organization collaborates with Barack Obama’s administration in order to restrict the circulation of firearms in society.

“In the United States, kids are shot unintentionally, accidentally every single day. Hundreds take their own lives every year. We see school shootings happen increasingly frequently. The overwhelming majority of all of those tragedies – because every one of those is a tragedy, whether they are accidental or premeditated – happen with parents’ guns. Guns that parents bring into the home, harboring the idea that it makes a home safer,” Gross said.

A Shotgun for His Daughter’s Third Birthday

For example, Anthony Cole is the owner of six pharmacies in the stricken city of Detroit, Michigan, the ex-capital of the auto industry, and now one of the largest hotbeds of crime in the country. The man is constantly armed. His employees serve clients through hatches cut into bulletproof glass. Inside, the guns are hidden among the shelves of drugs.

Anthony gave his daughter Dalia a shotgun for her birthday. The little girl, now two years older, takes shooting lessons, like many children in the United States. “I don’t see the issue with that,” says the pharmacist, “but there are a lot of people that do.”

In his opinion, as well as that of the all-powerful National Rifle Association, which presents itself as the longest-standing civil rights organization, teaching very young children to use a gun can help avoid accidents.

On December 2012, in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, a teenager with psychiatric problems killed 20 children and eight teachers in a school, using a machine gun that his mother had given him for his birthday.

It was a massacre that shocked the entire country. A year later, supported by 73 percent of the population, Obama attempted to pass a law to make criminal and psychiatric record checks obligatory for anyone seeking to buy a gun. The bill was blocked in Congress by the lobby of arms manufacturers.

In 2015, 300 shootings like that in Sandy Hook took place across the country. In response to these tragedies, the NRA suggested bullet-proofing the walls and doors of schools, and arming each child with a shield capable of protecting them in the event of an attack…

With a turnover of $7 billion dollars, the firearm market has never looked better. All attempts to monitor gun owners have failed, and the Second Amendment remains untouchable.