Time for Trump to address the deadly issue of US gun control - Steve Cardownie

Thankfully, having been in Scotland two months ago, there are no plans in place for him to cross the border, so would-be demonstrators can have a lie in.

A police officer walks past a makeshift memorial for the shooting victims at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on June 7, 2022, after an 18-year-old gunman slaughtered 19 children and two teachers

Trump does not have his troubles to seek, what with his birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein, on his 50th birthday now being made public.

It wisnae me, cried Trump, uttering the now all too depressingly familiar refrain that it is all a Democrat hoax.

So, what of the other burning issue, that of gun control, back in the USA and Trump’s refusal to effectively deal with the matter.

Instead, all we hear are his condolences, extended to families that have lost a loved one in yet another mass shooting.

Here are some alarming statistics.

From 1994 to 2023-gun ownership increased by 28 per cent in America. In 2023, approximately 16.7 million firearms were sold and in the first four months of 2024 nearly 5.5 million firearms were sold, averaging around 1.3 million per month.

It is estimated that in the US there are about 393 million firearms, that is 120.5 firearms for every 100 American residents.

About 32 per cent of Americans say that they own a gun, with 66 per cent of gun owners having more than one and 29 per cent of gun owners having more than five.

Federal law does not limit the number of guns a person may buy in any given time period, making it easy for some individuals to build up their own personal arsenal which has, unfortunately, been evidenced in many mass shootings.

The Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions, reported that gun suicides account for more than half of all total gun deaths in the US.

Their analysis found that 46,728 people, the third highest on record, died from firearms in the United States in 2023 – an average of one death every 11 minutes, including 27,300 suicides, an all-time high for the country.

The organisation stated that also in 2023, as well as the gun suicides, “17,927 died by firearm homicide, 463 by unintentional gun injury and an estimated 604 were shot by law enforcement.

"In addition, an average of more than 200 Americans visit the emergency department for non-fatal firearm injuries each day.”

There were more than 488 mass shootings across the Unitedd States last year where four or more people are killed; and over the last four years there have been more than 600 which is, on average, more than two per day.

According to a Gallup Poll conducted in November 2022, 57 per cent of those surveyed wanted stricter gun laws.

I wrote this piece yesterday morning, by the time you read this it is likely that yet another mass shooting has taken place.

What say you, Donald!