The Malaise of Fear, Parnoia, Insecurity

Where could this be occurring, where social insecurity is at so high a level that an independent-minded country confirmed by its history as a free democracy, dedicated to equality among its citizens, has yet maintained a garrison mentality?

In the historical taming of a wide, wild landscape when the inconvenience of its aboriginal population sitting on the land as though they owned it, and not the white folk who arrived with a view to unobstructed ownership, firearms spoke of settlers' aspirations, determination and tough attitudes toward their personal survival.

Written directly into the Constitution of the United States of America is the uninterrupted status of the firearm as a requisite to citizenship, an honourable nod to the past, and a right to bear arms, enshrined and spoken of as a necessity to the security of a free State. "The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

This is the fabled Second Amendment right. For at one time, in the wild, wild west - and even in the east - citizens were deputized to uphold the law. As such they could become part of a citizen-militia unit, requiring to be armed to fulfill their duties and obligations. That Second Amendment protects individual rights to ownership, possession and transportation of firearms.

The ferocious lobbying efforts of the National Rifle Association ensures that Members of Congress remember who votes them into office. And a majority of Americans, as it happens, support the right to gun ownership, while a smaller number support gun control. It has now become legal to carry concealed weapons, ostensibly for protection, into wildlife areas of national parks.

When Congress gave approval to legislation on credit-card abuses, there was a little add-on allowing visitors to national parks to carry loaded, concealed weapons. And although President Obama expressed his grave reservations before he even came to the President's office, he understood well that to pass his own legislation he would also have to pass the guns-in-parks law. Quid pro quo.

Advocates for gun control legislation are in despair, seeing the level of their public support steadily eroding.

And in the current state of the economic downturn in the United States - even while unemployment is growing, real estate values still plummeting, retail sales struggling and the country facing an enormous deficit and an immensely crippling debt, the interest on which will put its financial feet to the fire - the public has gone berserk over firearms purchases.

More than the purchases of firearms; the stockpiling of ammunition. Manufacturers are unable to supply enough ammunition to gun shops, to meet the demand. Gun owners have purchased roughly 12 billion rounds of ammunition in the year past, up considerably from previous years' sales. People are even frantically buying up ammunition meant for firearms they don't yet own.

The fears seem to stem from the potential for gun-control legislation under the Obama administration.

With the scarcity of enough stock, prices have tripled, but still gun owners are buying up what they can, and hoarding it against the possibility they may one day not be able to access ammunition.

And the true irony in all of this is that the most recent FBI statistics for crime in the country, indicate that violent crime is at its lowest in twenty years.