Out of bullets

Some years ago, my estranged grandmother – a psychologically unstable resident of Florida and a devout believer in the right to bear arms – threatened my aunt, i.e. her own daughter, with a handgun.

The weapon was confiscated from my grandmother’s possession by authorities, only to be returned at a later date – such being life in a country that is, for all intents and purposes, mentally ill.

As the Washington Post reported back in 2018, there were already “more guns than people” in the United States, not even counting the gobs of guns belonging to trigger-happy law enforcement agencies or the military.

According to a study by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, the Post summarised, Americans comprised 4 percent of the world’s population in 2017 but “owned about 46 percent of the entire global stock” of civilian firearms. This meant that, in the US, there were enough civilian-owned firearms “for every man, woman and child to own one and still have 67 million guns left over”.

In 2019, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a US government agency, tallied approximately 109 daily deaths by firearm-related injuries. Six out of 10 deaths were suicides.

Now, as the coronavirus pandemic and other phenomena have propelled Americans to arm themselves even more maniacally, it seems my grandmother was ahead of the trend.

A recent Guardian article on America’s present ammunition shortage – as manufacturers fail to keep up with an apparently insatiable demand for bullets – quotes manager Joe O’Healy at Good Guys Guns & Ammo in Nanuet, New York: “We see things we’ve never seen before, like single moms with strollers and grandmas buying shotguns”.

Per O’Healy’s calculations, ammunition sales at the shop have shot up by a factor of 10, and the general panorama has been “great for business” – as if there were any doubt that one of the points of capitalism is to make a killing off of, well, killing.

While 2020 saw a massive spike in gun purchases in the US – with millions of new gun owners joining the ranks of the self-militarised and triggering the start of a national ammunition famine – 2021 is on track to reach new peaks.

The New York Post observes that ammunition is “flying off of shelves across the country as anxious Americans – who purchased a record number of firearms during the pandemic – lock and load up in response to social unrest and an increase in violence”. For its part, Fox Business bemoans the ammunition shortage that constitutes a ‘plague’ on the ‘industry’ – which is cast as somehow more worrisome than the current literal plague or the fact that it is not normal for individuals to stockpile military-style assault rifles in response to, you know, a virus.

Excerpted: ‘The great US ammunition famine of 2021’

Aljazeera.com