Today's News

Gun crimes are rampant in the United States.

A criminal in his twenties armed with three kinds of weapons shot at students at a school in Minnesota in late August, killing two of them who were reportedly eight and ten years old respectively. Seventeen others were seriously wounded.

In the US gun crimes are committed by people regardless of age, sex, social stratum and place. The sound of gunfire continues to ring out even at schools as well as public places including dwelling houses, shops, bus stops, and theatres.

Reportedly, if a man does any inadvertent error in this country such as opening the door of other’s house, entering the wrong road and riding the wrong car, he will be shot dead.

In a little over a month recently alone numerous gun crimes have been committed.

A deadly shooting in a park of Pennsylvania killed two persons and injured eight others. A quarrel between people led to a gunfight in the suburbs of a city in Utah, killing and injuring several people including an eight-month-old baby. In Idaho an unidentified man shot a gun at firefighters who were engaged in putting out a forest fire, killing two of them.

A law was enacted in the country in the late 18th century to acknowledge the right to private possession of weapons for the reason that it was urgent for the militiamen to possess weapons in order to win the war against the UK.

The law is still in force until today though hundreds of years have passed since then.

Therefore, the US is known as a country with the largest number of firearms in the world and with more firearms than its population and the number of gunshot victims far surpasses the death toll of traffic accidents or wars. According to statistics, the death toll of gunshots in peacetime in the US numbers much more than the people who were dead in many wars including the American Civil War and the US-Spanish War recorded in the US history, and the First and Second World Wars.

As shooting incidents grow, an increasing number of people buy weapons, resulting in that much rise in shooting incidents.

Recently, the US has lifted the ban on arms sale to young people at the age of 18 to 20. It is reportedly unpredictable how this measure would affect the whole of the US.

Now in the US bulletproof satchels for protecting personal safety are popular with students and their parents. Parents teach their children how to use bulletproof satchels when they hide themselves in the corner of the classrooms or under their desks in case shooting incidents occur and it has become a craze that schools buy and install bulletproof walls for the safety of students.

American publications carried an appealing article, which said: “We do not expect freedom and equality. We only want to live free from fears that we might be shot to death at any moment.”

American society, where everyone can get weapons easily if he or she has money and pistols have become wedding belongings and where funeral music continues to be played due to bloody gun crimes, is a human rights desert with gloomy future and a living hell.