A Violent Nation

American Vice-President Joe Biden has been a busy man of late. Doing the urgent bidding of his president, to arrive at the beginning of a solution to firearms availability and responsible gun ownership regulations leading to a hoped-for amelioration of the dread statistics of deaths in that country due to guns. 

Mr. Biden has been tasked to hand a proposed solution to President Barack Obama by January 15.

President Obama is scheduled to be sworn in to office for his second term on January 21. 

This high priority issue is one he would like to miraculously have semi-solved at that juncture. At least, proposal-wise, if not in implementation.  For implementation will require a sea-change in social attitudes and legislation.  A huge segment of the population is loathe to surrender their Second Amendment right to gun ownership.

The most weapons-owning society in the world is also the most deadly society in the world. The correlation is clear enough and always has been.

Recent research concludes that the United States sees more violent deaths from possession of firearms and their careless storage than anywhere else on Earth. This is a wealthy, technologically advanced, socially aware nation for whom such statistics are  downright disgraceful.

Life expectancy in the United States is impacted by the wide availability of firearms. The country can boast six violent deaths per 100,000 residents. Of the other 16 advanced countries which were part of a research review, none came even remotely close to that ratio.

Researchers estimate homicide and suicide together represent a quarter of years of life lost for American men compared to peer countries.

Among adolescents and young adults between the ages of 15 and 24, homicide is the second-leading cause of death. Of those homicides the large majority involve firearms. Life expectancy for men in America ranked the lowest among the countries reviewed, at 75.6 years; women, second-lowest at 80.7 years.

Among peer countries the United States has the highest rate of ownership of firearms; 89-civilian-owned guns for every 100 Americans. Amazingly, the country has roughly 35 to 60 percent of the world's civilian-owned firearms. 

Those statistics come from a report released by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.

The National Rifle Association has a solution and they have stated it: arming more "good guys", placing armed security guards in every school.