US President Donald Trump is immersed in spy conspiracy probes and sex scandals while his Republican Party is busy covering up his continuing boorish behaviour but America, its people and its mighty business empires, are acting on their own on the urgent issue of gun controls. Yesterday tens of thousands of Americans across the country were demonstrating in protest against the currently lax gun ownership and purchase laws that makes their country the gun-bearing nation in the world by far.
And some of America’s largest retail store chains that sell firearms have announced various tightened controls from upping the customer minimum age to 21 years to some giving up sales of assault rifle type weapons entirely. Meanwhile the Citi Group which is one of the world’s largest corporates, has also announced restrictions on its subsidiaries involved in arms sales to civilians.
Elsewhere in the world, France is recovering from yet another terrorist act on Friday by a lone gunman claiming to affinity to the so-called ‘Islamic State’ group in which two people died. And the head of security in Egypt’s port city of Alexandria narrowly escaped a car-bomb attack yesterday in which two others died. In Kabul, Afghanistan, 31 people died in a car bomb blast on Wednesday claimed by IS while on Friday another 13 people died at a football match venue in Helmand at the hands of a lone suicide bomber whose group affiliation is yet unknown.
As if all this human violence is not enough, dozens of beached whales are reported dying on beaches in Western Australia even as rescue workers attempt to drag the animals back into deep water.
In the US, Donald Trump faces fresh controversy after nominating one of America’s most ‘gun-happy’ foreign policy experts, John Bolton, to succeed General H.R.McMaster whom the US leader summarily sacked last week by announcing his dismissal from post on Twitter. Bolton is described by American analysts as a most ‘hawkish of hawks’ and is best known as a serving official of the George W. Bush administration who led the Western charge in to Iraq with all the devastating consequences to the entire West Asian region and the world as whole. As one of the key liars about Iraq’s so-called ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (there were any at all) and a strong advocate of the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes everywhere, Bolton is seen as suitable by the US hawks and an unsuitable maniacal war-monger by the rest of the world (including myself).
It remains to be seen how an ‘expert’ who is known to strongly advocate a ‘first strike’ military aggression against North Korea will agree to his President’s current posture of accepting an invitation for summit talks with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un due in May this year. I also wonder how much Israel will like such a war-monger who could easily take that heavily armed but tiny nuclear power closer to a near-suicidal war with its Arab neighbours than anyone has done since Ariel Sharon did when he unsuccessfully invaded Lebanon in 1982.
Even as the White House packs itself with all these gun-toting cowboys, much of the rest of America is not waiting for their politicians in the Washington ‘swamp’ (as Trump called it) to act on gun ownership and sales controls. The mass protest movement launched by the Florida high schoolers last month following the tragic shooting massacre of students in their school, culminated yesterday in mass protests calling for stricter gun controls across the country.
In the US, if you are a citizen and, in many states, above the age of 18 years, you can easily buy firearms ranging from a handgun to a hunting rifle to a military-style assault rifle (minus automatic fire). A pistol sells on average for a few hundred dollars while a non-automatic, but easily convertible, assault rifle, including the latest such weapons like the AR 15 (which is military standard weapon the world over), can be bought for the price of laptop, that is, about 1,500 dollars. And you just need to step into the nearest gun shop or big department store or supermarket to do so.
According to a recent BBC report, there are over 56,000 gun stores in America serving its 300 million population. And how many guns to US civilians currently possess? About 270 MILLION, says the BBC quoting official data!
The good news is that, despite the bizarre refusal of US politicians to legislate gun controls, despite their own President’s unscrupulous pretensions on the subject, a number of major US businesses have already launched their own gun controls.
Much to the National Rifle Association’s chargin, America’s biggest retail chains which sell guns (along with groceries, medicines, home appliances, cutlery and other harmless goods) such as Walmart and Dicks have announced new restrctions on gun sales.
Gun control activists have long been asking how many more ordinary Americans, including children, must get killed in gun violence before their government moves to limit the civilian access to firearms. The politicians are yet silent on this.