Guns in America more deadly than smog

From the safety of my polluted perch in Beijing, I was thinking how much difference one year could make to gun control in the United States. In this short interval, Americans have stopped mourning in America and gone back to business as usual.

After the tragedy of Newtown, Connecticut, in which 20-year-old Adam Lanza gunned down 26 elementary school students and adults, there was nationwide grief, shock and anger, with many people calling for more gun control measures. The gun lobby, however, led by the National Rifle Association, called not for more controls but for more guns in schools in the hands of armed security guards. They claimed that gun control was the problem, not the guns.

In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama devoted no less than five paragraphs to addressing the epidemic of gun-related deaths in the US. He did so while former House of Representatives member Gabriel Giffords, a near fatality in a shooting at a shopping center, was sitting with First Lady Michelle Obama and with other victims of gun violence. Obama called for a ban on both high-capacity ammunition clips and assault weapons, and for background checks on the buyer of any weapon. The result of all the angst and grieving: even a much weakened version of the president's call for background checks was killed by a Senate filibuster.