What do we expect when we sell bullets by the bucketload, no questions asked
VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE: 6 SHOT DEAD
The Mirror - UK

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/02/16/what-do-we-expect-when-we-sell-bullets-by-the-bucketload-no-questions-asked-89520-20321050/

By Rebecca Peters Us Anti-Gun Campaigner 16/02/2008

My friend Tom Vanden Berk's son Tommy was 15 when he was killed in a crossfire at a house party in Chicago. As you'd expect, another high-profile shooting brings back difficult memories.

Speaking on the phone yesterday, Tom observed that when America reacts to a mass shooting, the focus is often on how "deranged" the perpetrator must have been.

But the real problem is a refusal to acknowledge the astonishingly easy access to deadly weapons.

To people in the UK, the availability of handguns in the US seems sheer madness.

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 After the Dunblane massacre in 1996, the British Government banned handguns.

That's because they are not hunting weapons; they are designed to kill humans and are the criminal's weapon of choice.

Handguns were also chosen by the Illinois gunman this week and by the Virginia Tech killer.

A few years ago I was in a suburban Walmart store, where among the firearms attractively displayed for sale was a Ruger Mini-23 semi-automatic rifle.

It was the same model that killed the daughter of a friend of mine.

Ammunition is sold in petrol stations and corner shops, no regulation and no questions asked.

Bullets are displayed in buckets like nails in a hardware store. Checking the Walmart website yesterday, I was invited to "fill in your firearm collection with one of these highprecision semiautomatic rifles" - starting at around £100.

At least Walmart, as a commercial vendor, is required under Federal Law to check the criminal record of buyers. But if you don't fancy having your background checked, you can buy your guns at a car boot sale, a gun show or from a newspaper ad.

It is important to note that the federal gun law is very limited - most gun laws in the USA are state or local laws. This produces a patchwork quilt of legislation.

In Illinois, for example, background checks are compulsory if you buy your gun at gun show.

But travel 100 miles east to Indiana and there is no state law requiring background checks.

Yet nearly 80 per cent of gun homicides in the US involve handguns. If they were banned in the US as they are in Britain, you would see a big reduction in gun deaths.

Thirty-two people die by gunshot every day in the US - equivalent there being a Virginia Tech massacre every day.

Despite the UK's current concern about gun crime, it is important to realise gun homicide rates per population are extremely low on a global scale.

But you are 34 times more likely to die by gunshot in the US than you are in the UK. The availability of handguns is a major reason.