Guns and Violence

We often here about gun ownership and violence.  If we go to Wikipedia we can see the US has a higher gun ownership rate than any other nation.  On top of that our rate of homicides, compared with Europe, seems high. However, when looking across the world, or within our own hemisphere, our homocide rate is not as high as it might be, as this chart from The Washington Post (26 December 2011) shows.  The chart comes from an article on drug violence in Honduras, in Central America.

My take-away from this chart and the Wikipedia article on gun ownership is that gun ownership is not the issue, but other factors, to include the level of corruption in Government and in the conduct of business.  As we recall from our own history, Prohibition resulted in a lot of gun violence.

This should all be a cautionary tale for us, in that the drug cartels are moving north and bringing their more violent approach to business with them.  This note was regarding a case of violence in a human trafficking case, in Bethany, Oklahoma.♠  As the cartels expand their area of operations, they will be expanding into the human trafficking business, which is often intermixed with the drug trade.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Bethany, Oklahoma is a small city of 20,307, dead in the center of Oklahoma and about 230 miles south of the geographic center of the United States.  That would be about 370 kilometers for those of you with a European fetish.