The Oil Drum

Just a note - the article about gun density in the US is very misleading. There are two primary drivers of gun ownership in the US. The first is private gun owners, of course. According to the NRA there are about 70 million privately held firearms in the US. So what about that other 200 million firearms? Those are in the hands of governments at all levels.

The US has increasingly become a police state. Thus far it has been a relatively benign police state but a police state nonetheless. Every federal agency has its own "SWAT" type paramilitary teams that are armed to the teeth. Every small town has a "SWAT" team type structure attached with dozens of firearms of various types held by the local sheriff, constable, or police chief. Armed raids are common. The FDA terrorizes doctors who use homeopathic medical treatments by raiding their offices with paramilitary teams, detaining all the patients (in order to frighten them from ever returning) and harassing the physicians. The IRS has such paramilitary police teams. So does the BLS, INS, HUD, etc., etc., etc. Every state government has such paramilitary police units. Every major city has them as well as most smaller cities and even towns.

And this is where all those other guns are held. Not in private hands, but in the hands of the police state. What's funny here is that the US Army has a density of about 1.1 firearms per service member. Most enlisted servicemembers have only a battle rifle assigned to them. Junior officers have rifles and often a pistol assigned. A few specialist enlisted servicemembers will carry pistols but often then not carry a rifle. So the density of weapons in the US Army (arguably the most heavily armed of the military branches is about 1.1 weapons per person.

But these paramilitary police units are some kind of absurd Hollywood frankenstein. Often they have 5-10 weapons per member of the team, consisting of pistols, submachineguns, battle rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles. Since the vast majority of humans can only accurately fire one weapon at a time, I've never figured out the purpose of all those other guns aside from being available to scare the bejesus out of someone at the right time via a show of force.

So yes, US private citizens do own lots of guns. But their government owns lots more than they do.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone