Sunday, October 14, 2007

PEACETIME KILLING

Most people are aware of the terrible loss of life occasioned by war but what is not so well known is the carnage during "peacetime".
"An average of almost eight people under 19 is shot dead in America everyday. In 2006 there were more than 14,000 gun murders in the US - with 400 of the victims children. There are 16,000 suicides by firearm and 650 fatal accidents in an average year. Since the killing of John F Kennedy in 1963, more Americans have died by American gunfire than perished on foreign battlefields in the whole of the 20th century." (Observer, 14 October)
Capitalism is such a competitive and stressful society that citizens are shooting themselves and others in so-called peacetime. RD

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