After Vegas, why do we still treat the US as a civilised state? | Catherine Bennett

In the wake of last week’s slaughter, it’s time to damn America as a rogue state when it comes to armsFor a body of people with manifestly indefensible views, the US gun fraternity continues to enjoy a deferential hearing in Britain, at least on the regular occasions when its principles result in a massacre. The routine attrition, of a mass murder (that is, four or more people) a day, is now so unremarkable, such an entirely expected aspect of American culture, that it can no more warrant sustained foreign coverage than does the violence that afflicts civilians in, say, day-to-day Afghanistan or the lashings allegedly critical to a harmonious Saudi Arabia.But, as with those countries, when the loss of life in America is big enough to shock, the gun-averse world pauses. In the case of the US, however, our news organisations go further and invite those who facilitate the savagery – firearms enthusiasts – to put the case for more. If this approach ever catches on, we might yet hear, when a car bomb goes off in a crowded market or the Saudis complete a mass execution, impassioned justifications from the implicated terrorists, politicians or clerics. A supporter of the Taliban, or advocate of cutting off adolescents’ heads, would be invited to remind us that a lot more people are killed by unstable fridges and that we should respect, in any case, that such bloodshed necessarily proceeds from his country’s founding principles. Continue reading…

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