By Iain Overton

Los Angeles Times
Americans love guns. And Americans hate anyone who dares to criticize their infatuation.

The first truth is rooted in America’s almost unique constitutional right to bear arms — a legal and cultural paradigm that allows its citizens to own more than 300 million guns.

This is roughly twice as many firearms per capita than there were in 1968, so it’s a growing love affair.

It’s also a painful love affair — according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 1.4 million Americans were killed or injured by guns between 2001 and 2013.

The second truth is, perhaps, best proved by the outcry after British journalist Piers Morgan condemned America’s gun culture. More than 100,000 people signed a petition in 2012 called “Deport British Citizen Piers Morgan for Attacking 2nd Amendment.”

But more foreigners should be speaking out about America’s deadly relationship with the gun. The right to bear arms, and the sheer number of firearms bought and sold in this country every year as a result, has undeniable global implications.

For a start, Americans in effect support the world’s gun economy. In addition to the 8.6 million guns made in the U.S.

in 2012, 4.8 million more were imported from overseas. The U.S. import volume of foreign guns more than tripled between 2003 and 2012.

Latin American impact

More insidious, though, is how the licit American gun industry affects the illicit Latin American gun market. The ease with which guns can be purchased in the U.S., and the fact that many sales may be conducted without background checks, has deep consequences. The majority of guns found in Mexico and Central America are from the United States.

It is estimated that more than 250,000 guns flow south of the border into Mexico — a country with just one official gun retailer — every year.

Roughly 45 percent of U.S. firearms licensees are believed to rely on Mexican trade for their survival.

In 2014, El Salvador had almost 4,000 killings, a rate of about 62 homicides per 100,000 (in the U.S. it is about 4 per 100,000). Most of these slayings were committed with guns — and about 50 percent of guns traced in El Salvador that year came from the United States.

The lifting of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in the U.S.

in 2004 resulted in more than 2,600 estimated additional homicides in Mexico.

Even as the 2nd Amendment contributes to rising crime in nearby countries, it also validates the concept of governing with guns, both at home and abroad. The U.S. government has, in one decade — between 2006 and 2016 — spent more than $6 billion on small arms alone. That figure reflects a wider trigger-happy reality in which about 250,000 bullets were fired by U.S. troops in Iraq for every rebel killed.

Lost in Iraq

Such governmental largesse has consequences. The Pentagon acknowledges that it has lost track of about 190,000 rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces. And 43 percent of the 747,000 weapons given to the Afghan National Army could not be accounted for.

Without question, U.S. government- funded arms have ended up in the hands of Islamic State militants. And ammunition magazines identical to those given to Afghan government forces by the U.S. military have
been found on dead Taliban fighters.