Gun Law

Sahil Kapur writes in the Guardian about the US Supreme Court's decision to strike down gun control laws. The statistics stack up the cost of America's 2nd Amendment. About 100,000 people in America are shot ever year and more than 30,000 die. On average, 85 people in America die every day from gun violence, nine of whom are teenagers and children.

A 2009 study in the American Journal of Public Health also found that gun owners are more than four times as likely to get shot in an assault as individuals without a gun. But most Americans won't let the truth get in the way of their right to bear arms. Nor will American politicians, scared of a gun lobby which last year even defeated attempts in Congress to preclude terror suspects from buying guns. The same individuals that are deemed too dangerous to get on a plane can freely purchase firearms.

Wikipedia notes the origin of the right to bear arms in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which put it like this:
"That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law. ”