[credit: Steve Benson]
No wonder Obamados chose to route his official reaction to the Newtown massacre of innocents through the Vice President and executive action! Trying to push gun control legislation in a sullen, fundamentally dysfunctional Congress would indeed be an unpleasant way to begin a second term. Irrational reaction against attempts to control the availability of military style weapons is not only motivated by profit, but also by citizens suffering basic insecurity from living in a society that still accepts economic "survival of the most fortunate" as its dominant mode of social organization and refuses to alter the psychology of a violent, militaristic heritage engrained in popular culture and founding 18th Century jurisprudence:
[credit: Cameron Cardow,Ottawa Citizen]
An elucidating example is Switzerland. It definitely has a militia culture because the country does not have a standing army. The vast majority of males participate in compulsory military training and militia weapons are kept in the home. Ammunition for the Sig 500 assault rifle or the Sig-Sauer P220 pistol is retained by the government only since 2007. Militiamen have the option of buying their personal weapon when they muster out, but the automatic function is removed to convert the rifle to semi-automatic operation, and of course a federal license is issued for that weapon. Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world, third or fourth behind the United States depending on the data set to which one refers. Yet it has much fewer per capita deaths due to shooting: