Land of the free

IN MOST of the developed world, guns are the province of policemen, hunters, marksmen and certain criminals. They are seldom seen; they are used mainly by experts; they do relatively little damage. In America, guns are found in roughly half the nation’s households. They are in the bedside drawer, the glove compartment, the hall cupboard, the school lunchbox. More even than in the days of the frontier, Americans believe they need firearms and are not safe without them. Guns—particularly handguns—have become a national obsession, a social prop, a consumer item as addictive as cigarettes and as common as cars.Cigarettes, however, have been so closely and definitively associated with death that their use is falling steeply. Cars are subject to rigorous safety standards, licensing, registration and codes for safe use. Not so with guns. An alarmingly casual aura surrounds them, from manufacture onwards (see . Through gaping holes in the legal network for the supply of guns, firearms flow steadily to criminal users on the streets. Almost all the illegality starts legally. The answer to those who say that gun controls do not work, because only the law-abiding obey them, is simple. There are so few controls that, when the law-abiding obey them, it makes no difference.