Posted August 23, 2015 9:00 pm by Comments

By Robert Farago

El Salvador (courtesy america.aljazeera.com)

theguardian.com‘s post One murder every hour: how El Salvador became the homicide capital of the world lays the blame for the country’s record-setting carnage at the feet of “weak government, dire inequality and a historical national tendency towards violence both in institutions and households.” To be fair, writer Jonathan Watts highlights the recently escalated conflict between El Salvador’s two major drug gangs and the police but his analysis somehow completely misses the impact of El Salvador’s gun control regime. In fact . . .

gunpolicy.org pegs the country’s private gun ownership rate at 9.7 firearms per 100 people. That puts El Salvador at number 92 out of 178 ranked countries for private firearms ownership. In contrast, America is number one [with a bullet], with 101.5 firearms per 100 citizens. Is that a factor? The Guardian doesn’t seem to think so, even though . . .

Even before the latest surge, fear permeated daily life, particularly in poor communities where the gangs stake out most of their territories. Residents who cross the invisible line between them – usually an innocuous-looking bridge, road or park – risk beatings or even death. Taxi drivers dread wrong turns that …read more

Source:: Truth About Guns

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