To me, the statistic that 316,545 people have been shot to death in the US in the last decade is staggering. I&#x27;m sure that includes things like police shootings as well, but that&#x27;s still an <i>enormous</i> number. In the UK, the figure for the same period appears to be about 3600 (going by a few parliament reports over that decade - haven&#x27;t added them all up but it averages 300 a year or so and I&#x27;m being pessimistic).<p>64M in the UK, 320M in the US, 316,545&#x2F;5 = 63,309. 63,309&#x2F;3600 = 17.6. So - you&#x27;re 17.6 times more likely to be shot in the US than in the UK, where firearms are banned for most purposes, and gun deaths actually seem to have risen proportionally over the last few years - perhaps as police are more frequently armed in supposed response to the supposed ongoing terror threat, criminals more frequently feel the need to be armed in response...<p>I haven&#x27;t considered things like knife crime etc., but the US approach to gun ownership is anachronistic at the very best, and is out of step with what is viewed as civilised elsewhere in the world. I suppose there&#x27;s a sort of duality of mind in the US, where people wish it were still frontier times, a brave young nation, the wild west, where you need to personally defend your self and property, but also want to live in a modern civilised society where the function of gun ownership and law enforcement is carried out by, well, law enforcement, and can&#x27;t quite resolve their dichotomy. Would US law enforcement be as hostile and trigger happy as it is if they weren&#x27;t so worried about getting shot, as seems to be their principle justification for &quot;shoot first&quot; tactics?<p>Sorry, this has ended up a bit of a ramble, but I can&#x27;t understand how it can be viewed as sane to allow gun ownership as it stands to go on. It&#x27;s a pandemic.