Why I love America, Part 1
I am sure I am not reading this article the way it was intended, but I am proud to see that we are Number 1 in the world for small arms ownership.
U.S. most armed country with 90 guns per 100 people
GENEVA (Reuters) – The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.
U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.
About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said.
“There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people,” it said.
It is interesting to note that during the American Revolution, less than 10% of the population actually contributed actively to the fight for freedom against the British. Maybe there is something to this number?
“Weapons ownership may be correlated with rising levels of wealth, and that means we need to think about future demand in parts of the world where economic growth is giving people larger disposable income,” [Small Arms Survey director Keith Krause] told a Geneva news conference.
Hmm – guns mean wealth? Does that means there should be a measure of firearms, per person to determine how well a country is doing? 🙂
The report, which relied on government data, surveys and media reports to estimate the size of world arsenals, estimated there were 650 million civilian firearms worldwide, and 225 million held by law enforcement and military forces.
It’s actually part of the national culture of America and free societies that power should tilt towards citizens and not governments. Isn’t more might with the government rather than the citizenry one of the basic tenants of totalitarianism? Oh wait – isn’t most of the world totalitarian?
I am seeing a pattern here . . .
Five years ago, the Small Arms Survey had estimated there were a total of just 640 million firearms globally.
Only about 12 percent of civilian weapons are thought to be registered with authorities.
More here.
I am sure the actual point of this article was to point out how bad America is for having guns. And how unfortunate it is that all of these world governments don’t have tabs on all of their armed citizens. I think that is a great point – if you are coming from a “hey, how can we best oppress the populations of our countries?” perspective.
The main idea to keep in mind here is that we live in a free country that is unlike any other country in the rest of the world. Europe is filled with countries that for the past 1000 years or so have hovered somewhere between fascism and a semi-socialist-based-democracy hybrid – depending on their uneasy relationship between warring ethnic factions and how well their economies are doing at the time.
Africa is a post-Colonialist nightmare where their countries have been depleted of all natural resources and then left to their own limited devices. The Middle East is a vast sandbox where some of the kids have won the lottery live like medieval kings and all the other serfs are forced into post-tribalist ‘countries’ based on British, French, and Belgian-inspired boundaries, rather than the true tribal and/or ethnic make-up of their people.
Most of Asia is based on failed Stalinist promises and a general fear and mistrust of all things Chinese.
Extreme viewpoint?
Sure.
My point is that America is the litmus test for how free people can self-govern without a monarch or tyrant and still be successful stewards of the world.
Maybe these are all unfair generalizations, but I am not one to jump on the ‘everything in America stinks’ bandwagon. Sure we have our problems – we use too much toilet paper, have too many traffic cameras, and too many people wanting others to be unhappy/poor/vegan because they are unhappy/poor/vegan, but I still think there is a reason we are the number one country in the world.
– We are also the only country that actively contributes money and materials to help the rest of the world with their natural disasters and economic problems (can’t remember many countries giving us help with Katrina and/or donating to help the homeless)
– We are the only country that adopts unwanted children from other countries (without regard to the racial and caste lines that other countries are constantly bombing and maiming with machetes over – just ask someone living in Pakistan if they’d like to adopt an Indian orphan)
– We are warlike and we are aggressive, but in all of our battles we take all casualties off of the battlefield and give them the same level of care – friend or foe. Do you think the Islamafacists think enough of the Golden Rule to render medical care to our soldiers? Don’t believe me? I sat in a medical conference with a recently returned Naval field surgeon who showed us pictures of US Marines and Iraqi guerrillas sitting in a waiting room for their turn at the operating table.
America is successful because people living in a free society have more reason to excel.
If that means we have more guns – then so be it.
Maybe this is why we haven’t been invaded by a foreign power since The War of 1812 . . .