The American Dream #5: Freedom to be shot

In the US, people murder each other with guns at about 20 times the rate in other nations - amounting to about 1 firearms-death per hour. Despite this intriguing fact, the US National Rifle Association (NRA) - through proxies in Congress - has been able to push for language that prohibits governmental agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH, the US largest funding agency) from spending any money "to advocate or promote gun control". In other words, to assure the profit of a few NRA-associated gun-dealers, Congress has been made it impossible to obtain government funding for research that would evaluate the huge human cost resulting from the current easy access to guns, and, for example, uncover that guns do not protect gun owners from being shot in an assault. (see Branas et al.  Am J. Public Health, 2009). The most astonishing thing is that a big part of the US population truly thinks that owning guns is an expression of their personal freedom - rather than of the freedom to be shot by some random madman for the profit of a few.

If you think that obviously gun control does not work, watch this.