We usually have an uphill climb trying to combat the media's disinformation regarding guns, gun rights, and gun control. There's a lot of wrong takes being published and pushed as if they're beyond contestation, despite there being serious flaws with the data and arguments being presented.

What's especially problematic is that people outside of the US have a tendency to listen to these reports and accept them at face value, developing some incredibly wrongheaded ideas of what guns do here in the United States.

For example, I came across a piece from Modern Diplomacy, written by someone who is a graduate student in international relations with a focus on US policy, who decided to write about guns here.

In just the first paragraph, we have so much going on that I could write an entire book disputing the claims.

One basic question that is brought to light by the debate over gun regulation in the US is: who is accountable when gun ownership comes along with power? The legalization of gun possession in the United States has brought mostly atrocity to its citizens. The United States government  is  under  an  immediate  and  obvious  duty  to safeguard its citizens from gun violence.  However,  the  United  States  has  not  taken  all  the  required  steps  to avoid gun violence  and  instead  has a  preference  for  ineffective  both  state  and federal gun control legislation. The gun laws mostly profited the gun business, which is valued at around $9 billion every year while gun violence is accountable to over 40,000 Americans and injures twice as many, while the yearly financial burden of gun violence is estimated to be $557 billion (Everytown Research & Policy, 2022).

Now, there's a lot more to this piece than just this, obviously, but I don't have time to sit here and fisk the entire thing. I also want to note that the writer is clearly not someone who has English as a first language, so I'm not going to beat her up too badly over things like grammar, etc. I mean, the only language I speak other than English is Pig Latin, so who am I to judge someone too harshly over what is a second language at best?

But everything else is fair game, so let's get to work.

"One basic question that is brought to light by the debate over gun regulation in the US is: who is accountable when gun ownership comes along with power?"

I honestly don't know what the hell this is supposed to mean. Maybe this is a language thing and she mistranslated a word that doesn't perfectly translate into English. 

However, taken at face value, it should be noted that anyone who owns a gun is accountable for their actions. There is no free pass to misuse a firearm. Acting in self-defense is one thing, but going beyond that is criminal and we've seen numerous people claim self-defense only to be prosecuted and convicted for misusing a gun.

So there's accountability.

"The legalization of gun possession in the United States has brought mostly atrocity to its citizens."

First, it's a right. There is no "legalization" because the right to keep and bear arms has always been legal here to some degree or another.

Then we have the claim that gun possession in the United states has "brought mostly atrocity to its citizens."

No, it hasn't.

Depending on which estimate you favor, there are at least hundreds of thousands to millions of people who defend their lives with a firearm each and every year here. Is that an atrocity, too? I'd personally say it's not. Especially as the estimates of defensive gun uses far outstrips the number of people whose lives are taken with a firearm.

"The United States government  is  under  an  immediate  and  obvious  duty  to safeguard its citizens from gun violence."

There is no such duty. Moreover, such a duty would be impossible to fulfill. It's not fulfilled by literally any nation on the planet. They all have some degree of gun violence. Some have way more than the United States despite incredibly strict gun control laws that have been on the books for decades.

The courts here have repeatedly noted that there is no duty to protect people on the part of the government. That's not going to change because a foreign policy grad student halfway around the world simply declares that it not only exists but is obvious.

It's not even that obvious simply because it's impossible.

"However,  the  United  States  has  not  taken  all  the  required  steps  to avoid gun violence  and  instead  has a  preference  for  ineffective  both  state  and federal gun control legislation."

Required by who? 

She does acknowledge that what did get passed was largely ineffective, but it's deluded to simply assume that more gun control would suddenly change that. 

"The gun laws mostly profited the gun business, which is valued at around $9 billion every year..."

I'm breaking this one up because there are two different things to address here. The first is that the author seeks to argue that profit is why gun control won't pass here, but let's look at $9 billion in the scope of the American economy.

This claim is for the entire firearm industry. If we assume it's just companies that make and sell guns rather than those that make accessories, ammunition, etc, that's still not a massive industry overall.

To give you some comparison, Procter & Gamble--the company that makes things like Charmin toilet paper--is valued at over $18 billion. It's the 220th largest company in the United States by revenue.

If you want to make the argument that money is the problem, you'll have to do better when we have companies like Amazon with revenue 60 times larger than the firearm industry as a whole.

I get that in a lot of places, a $9 billion industry is a big deal, but here it's barely above a collection of small businesses. 

Profit plays no role at all in this for the simple fact that if profit could simply dictate US policy that easily, there are a lot of regulated companies that wouldn't be regulated at all.

"...while gun violence is accountable to over 40,000 Americans and injures twice as many, while the yearly financial burden of gun violence is estimated to be $557 billion (Everytown Research & Policy, 2022)."

First, more than half of those 40,000 people are suicides. That's a completely different issue with different root causes, but since the media beats this particular drum, the author here has picked it up and not differentiated anything.

Finally, anyone who cites Everytown uncritically without acknowledging that this is a gun control group with a vested interest in overstating the impact is hoping her readers are too stupid to know any better. They aren't an unbiased source of information. I know the media likes to cite their people as "experts," but they're not.

Now, let's take a moment, look over this whole thing, and recognize the fact that I've burned over 1,000 words just by taking down the first paragraph.

One. Freaking. Paragraph.

And yes, I could have delved into a whole lot more detail by debunking this fiasco masquerading as a policy analysis. However, I don't want to crash the entire internet by trying to put it all in one post. 

Much of this is derived from a combination of anti-gun academia and the anti-gun media presenting a heavily biased view of guns and gun rights in the United States. While it may not make much difference with regard to policies here, stupidity shouldn't be allowed to flourish without a challenge anywhere in the world.