America paying a high price for lax gun laws

AMERICA is in the deadly grip of a self-inflicted epidemic. Already this year, in just nine months, 9,940 people — more or less the population of Dungarvan — have been killed in assault incidents involving guns. Of those, 550 were children, and 1,962 were teenagers. This drip, drip of terrible violence can hardly be surprising as almost half of all guns in civilian ownership on the planet are held by Americans.

Firearms are the tools that led to the death of more than 33,000 people — more than twice the population of Killarney — in America every year, according to the Center for Disease Control. This larger figure includes both accidental discharge, murder and suicides, which are on the increase, especially where gun-control laws are less than robust, according to the New England Journal of Medicine. That means more people are killed by gun holders in America every six hours than terrorist attacks did in all of 2014. On top of that, in 2010 more than 73,000 Americans were treated in hospitals for firearm-related injuries, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The statistics are irrefutable and depressing as is the great, almost insurmountable cultural divide highlighted time and time again by this terrible issue.