A shocking crime of mass killing has just been reported from Las Vegas. America is one of the most powerful nations in the world but is extremely vulnerable to attacks at home. Not many people will correlate the fact that the killing in Las Vegas took place at the very place which holds the worlds largest gun trade exhibition-the SHOT show. This show is a celebration of gun culture and capitalism, where over an area of 630,000 square feet with 65000 visitors an exhibition of the most lethal handguns and carbines is displayed. Many will say this is a coincidence and maybe it is.
But a deeper look will show that the organizer of the trade fair is the NSSF( National shooting sports foundation) which has its headquarters in Newtown. This is the place where Adam Lanza in 2012 murdered 28 people including 20 children. Many again will say this is a coincidence. But it does bring out that America is a country, where there are minimal laws to control and limit guns and their sales. This has been commented upon by Al Jazeera News Channel.
Gun culture
One wonders whether these incidents are coincidences or bring out the fact that gun culture is a dominating factor in the United States. This is not an American problem but one that concerns the world. America manufactures the largest number of handguns in the world and hundreds of thousands of them find their way into Latin America, Mexico and other parts of the world.
Al Jazeera news channel has mentioned that Americans have given hundreds and thousands of guns to the Iraqi and Afghan forces and the US military admits that almost 40% of them cannot be accounted for now.
The disease
One can't escape from the conclusion that the recent shooting incident is part of a general trend and not an isolated incident.
According to the data from Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, over one and a half million Americans have been killed or injured by guns between 2001 and 2015. Keeping these statistics in mind it looks that Paddock had the means to access a wide variety of firearms because the laws are so framed that he could get what he wanted.
He had 41 of them in his collection. It appears this disease is part of the American culture that glorifies guns.The news of the killing was reported by CNN international and far away channels in China and Nigeria.
Eternal question
Despite the killing Congress has done nothing and Trump has gone on record and said that at some point in time there will be some Gun Control but it is not going to happen now.One has a lurking feeling that the Military -industrial complex with the NRRA will not allow any gun control and America will continue as it is and hundreds of more Americans will die. That is the sad truth.
