With all the violence in the world today, one wonders what this place would be like if firearms had never been invented. Or if they were somehow wiped from the face of the earth today. It would certainly be a safer place, and there would be many living people who were taken from us too soon and too violently.

The latest totally unnecessary death was of a 29-year-old Idaho woman who was shopping with her two-year-old son in the shopping cart. This little lad quite innocently reached into her handbag, took out a loaded handgun and shot his mother in the head. Relatives said she was a responsible gun user who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. How responsible was it to have it loaded, and in a place where a 2-year-old could find it? Is there such a thing as responsible handgun ownership? Apparently not.

It never ceases to amaze me that so many of our American neighbours are still convinced that it is their right to have and carry a loaded firearm. Even automatic assault weapons that are made specifically for killing people – not for hunting or protection – are considered to be part of their “right to bear arms.” It doesn’t occurs to them that when the Fathers of their country put this clause into their constitution, those early settlers really needed a weapon to hunt for food and to take down wolves and other predators that were a danger to their livestock and their families. It wasn’t meant as a licence to take out your anger at the world by killing people you didn’t even know and who had done you no harm.

I hoped that Americans had reached a crossroads of understanding in 2012 when 27 people, including 18 children, were shot and killed by a mentally ill person at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

There certainly was a groundswell of Americans asking for stronger gun control at that time, but sadly the National Rifle Association (NRA) squelched it. In 2012, there were 16 mass shootings in the USA. In 2014, there were 278, so obviously things aren’t getting any better.

President Obama, not wishing to rile up the dangerous NRA, has said he would support “some moderate forms of gun control.” There are three moderate bills on gun control that have been presented to Congress but can’t get passed because of the reactionary Republican majority which does everything it can to thwart any progressive moves the president would like to make. Obviously they love their guns more than they do their children and the peace of their country.

Some of this love of guns has carried over into Canada. While it is still not legal to carry a concealed weapon here, it is done, not by housewives shopping with their children but by people who really do have evil intent.

It’s an issue we need to think about very seriously, and support our politicians in dealing with it so that our country does not become a carbon copy of the lawless one to the south.