U.S. President Barack Obama wipes a tear as he talks about reducing gun violence this week.Mandel Ngan/AFP / Getty Images
Barack Obama spoke eloquently this week about the calamity of daily mass murders and endemic gun crime in the United States, and the measures he announced to enforce background checks and licensing for all arms sellers will no doubt slightly reduce the killings. "We know we can't stop every act of violence, every act of evil in the world. But maybe we could try to stop one act of evil, one act of violence," he said.
It's telling, however, that his goals are so modest in comparison to the problem. Yes, his executive actions may prevent the odd shooting. But Mr. Obama cannot significantly reduce the number of people killed by guns in his country. He couldn't do it even if he had the co-operation of a Congress beholden to gun-rights lobbyists.
The reason is simple: America is saturated with guns. It is now commonly accepted that there are more civilian firearms in the U.S. than there are people. The Washington Post estimated, based on government statistics, that there are 357 million privately owned guns in a country of 322 million people, with millions more guns being purchased every year.
There are so many guns, in fact, that they have trickled down into the hands of toddlers. Children are now beginning to shoot each other, always by accident, with startling frequency. Last year, at least 30 toddlers injured or killed themselves or another person.
But gun ownership is sacrosanct in the U.S. Mr. Obama knows better than to question Americans' constitutional right to bear arms. So neither he nor any other politician is going to propose a buy-back scheme or amnesty aimed at reducing the sheer tonnage of the weaponry out there – the same kinds of schemes that successfully reduced the gun-crime rate in Australia two decades ago.
That means that no matter what rules are tightened or enforced, there will still be millions upon millions of handguns and semi-automatic assault rifles floating around and available for anyone determined to get their hands on one. The United States may have passed the point of no return on gun violence, even if it could end the culture war that has prevented a solution to date.
"We do not have to accept this carnage as the price of freedom," the President said in his speech, but the tragedy is that America can now only hope to mitigate the carnage, and can never stop it.