A recent Gallup survey indicates 47 percent of American adults keep guns -- the most since 1993
When James Holmes carried out the latest in a series of grisly American mass murders by killing 12 people and injuring 59 others during a shooting rampage in a Denver movie theater last July, he used an AR-15 assault rifle and also carried two Glock pistols and a Remington shotgun — all American-made.
The United States produces the vast majority of firearms in this country. It’s also the world’s leading weapons exporter by far.
America exported $336.5 million worth of firearms in 2011, according to customs data compiled by the Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers, NISAT. That’s $200 million more than Italy, the next leading exporter.
Value is the only commonality in an increasingly complex, challenging and interdependent world.