MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US has more civilian guns than people: 120,5 for every 100 Americans

United States is one of the only three countries where its citizens have a constitutional right to carry or have a gun

United States is the only country in the world where civilian guns outnumber people, according to the Swiss base Small Arms Survey (SAS), and is also the country where at least one mass shooting takes place every year, as has tragically happened in Texas, where 19 school children and two teachers were killed by some mentally ill teenager.

SAS points out there are 120.5 guns for every 100 Americans. In other words Americans own 393 million of 857 million civilian guns globally available. A survey done in October 2020 showed that around 44% of the US adults live in a house with a gun, and about one-third possess one personally.

United States is one of the only three countries where its citizens have a constitutional right to carry or have a gun, in Mexico and Guatemala the rate of gun ownership is almost one-tenth of that of the US.

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” reads the second amendment of the United States Constitution, the legal interpretation for Americans love for arms.

While many countries in the world take legal measures and fight against armed violence, and the loss of thousands of lives, only about half of the US adults support stricter gun laws and political reforms, which allegedly leads to a deadly “cycle of violence” in society.

Of the 80 million adult gun owners in the US, some 20,7 million carry a handgun in public under a “concealed carry” regime. Likewise almost half of all U.S. gun owners have magazines that hold over 10 rounds and about a third own an AR-15 or similarly styled.

A recent report draws attention to the matter that the regular mass shootings are “a uniquely American phenomenon.” A mass shooting is defined as an event in which at least four people were killed, excluding the perpetrator and that definition does not include profit-driven criminal activity, family incidents, and state-sponsored violence.

An independent report noted that four out of every 100,000 people in the US were victims of gun violence in 2019, which is 18 times the average rate in other developed countries. While the US population corresponded to 4% of the world population, the suicides by firearms in the US add up to 44% of global suicides by firearm in 2019, it said.

Over the last 22 years, more than 100 mass shootings occurred in the US and over 2,000 people became the victims of these shootings.

The SAS list points out that Falkland Islands comes after the US with an estimated 62 guns per 100 people, and war-weary Yemen has the third highest gun ownership rate with 53 guns per 100 people. On the contrary, in some countries, such as South Korea and Japan, this rate hovered around 0.2, near zero, it reported.