At the heart of the most pernicious myth of the gun lobby – Alternet.org

We do not have more cars than Americans in the United States. We do not have more TVs than people. We do not have more radios than people. We do not have more mobile phones than people.

What we have is more guns than people.

A recent report by the Small Arms Survey in Geneva, Switzerland, revealed that there were more than 393 million guns held by civilians in this country. We have a population of 326 million inhabitants. This means that there are 120.5 guns per 100 US citizens, according to the Washington Post. It's a fact. If every person in the United States had a firearm, including babies, old people and infirm people, even those hospitalized and on their deathbed, there would still be 67 million guns. Sixty-seven million.

The number of guns owned by civilians is a scandal, a blasphemy, a sign that this country has lost the collective spirit. But this is not the case for the National Rifle Association. Not to US arms owners, another major pressure group with over two million members, who often criticizes the role of the NRA too soft on the rights of firearms. These well-funded lobby groups for arms manufacturers and gun owners have long been convinced that we need more weapons, not fewer. According to them, more firearms equate to fewer crimes, despite FBI statistics that conclusively demonstrate that violent crime, especially crimes committed with a firearm, are higher per capita in the United States. areas of the country where the number of firearms is higher.

You need guns to defend yourself and defend your property, tell us these groups. If more people had more guns, criminals would be less inclined to commit crimes because they would not know who is armed and ready to defend themselves.

"The only way to stop a villain with a gun is with a good one with a gun," said ANR executive director, Wayne LaPierre, as a result the massacre of the Sandy Hook School in Connecticut, which killed 20 children and six school staff. He repeated the same after the massacre at the Parkland School in Florida, which left 17 students and professors dead. It has become the favorite myth of the NRA.

The theory of "good guy with a gun" is their reason to be arming teachers. This is the argument they have for all so-called "open door" laws that have been adopted. At this point, 31 states allow citizens to openly carry firearms in public without a license. Fifteen others allow open transfers with some form of government license. The 50 states allow citizens to carry concealed firearms with various forms of restrictions and licenses. The idea is that the more there are "good guys with a gun", the better.

According to ABC News, "there have been at least 19 deadly mass shootings in the United States up to now in 2019." There were two mass shootings the same month, August 3. at a Walmart. Twenty-two people were killed and 24 wounded. That night in Dayton, Ohio, 10 people were killed and 17 others were injured in a shootout that occurred in less than 30 seconds. On August 31, a gunman in Odessa, Texas, killed seven people and injured 25 others, including three police officers.

None of this year's 19 mass shootings were stopped by a "good guy with a gun", an armed civilian. Police shot "bad guys with a rifle" in Dayton and Odessa. In Dayton, it took 66 shots to shoot the killer. They fired 40 0.45-caliber cartridges, 16 0.233-millimeter cartridges and a shotgun. The killer only had 40 rounds to kill seven and wounded 17 with his AR-15 weapon. The alleged gunman in El Paso somehow evaded dozens of policemen before surrendering.

Texas and Ohio allow unauthorized hand-held firearms, yet in neither country was there a "good guy with a rifle" to stop the carnage in the midst of panic and chaos. An armed American soldier with a hidden porter's license in El Paso drew his weapon before deciding to safely take the children out of the mall.

You've probably heard most of the arguments against these open-door laws. How will cops responding to an active shooter incident know who the shooter is and who is just a passerby carrying a gun? What will happen in an overcrowded store like Walmart when there is finally a shooting between a murderer and "good people with guns?" Will not many innocent people be killed? If a well-trained and heavily armed police can not kill an active shooter with less than 66 bullets, how can we expect an armed primary school teacher to do so?

It's madness. Every mass shot proves how crazy he is. Can you imagine what it must have been in Walmart El Paso, in front of the bar in Dayton or on the street in Odessa? Firearms were leaving. Everyone around you has been touched, hurt, dying, bleeding. Even if you were carrying a handgun, what would you have done?

Hide. Behind something. Run. That's what I would do. That's what people did in El Paso, Dayton and Odessa.

These mass shots are acts of terror. People are terrified, scared to death. They are trying to stay alive.

In a country with more guns than locals, the myth of "good guy with a gun" is an obscenity. It's a lie. Firearms do not save us. They kill us.