Bloody America

America must restrict the availability of weapons. But the arguments about gun legislation are just as ideological as everything else in this hopelessly divided country.

Ritually, not to say routinely, the same arguments are rolled out after every public shooting in the United States. Gun advocates hold psychological or social factors responsible for the mass murder of school children, students, concert-goers or whoever it is this time. The president also spoke in this vein after the recent bloodbath in Florida.

Opponents of guns, on the other hand, point to the availability of firearms and call for more legislation to restrict them. The statistics show that the latter are correct.

Americans don’t just own far more weapons than any other nation, there are also a particularly large number of fatal shootings. Without doubt, America stands out among comparable Western countries as extremely violent, which, for such an old democracy, really is a damning indictment. The reason nothing changes is because the arguments about gun legislation are just as ideological as everything else in this hopelessly divided country.