What if it were Ebola?

It’s safer to be a Marine in Kabul than an eighth grader in Granite Falls...

Or that’s what the numbers seem to tell us.

So far this year, American forces deployed in combat zones overseas have suffered 13 killed. In American schools, 27 children are dead from gunfire.

How do we process that?

Here in Winona members of a citizens’ committee talk of “hardening” our school buildings – adding secure vestibules – sort of like air-locks for firearms – to keep bloody minded individuals from gunning down the kindergarten story circle.

Other folks have suggested armed guards patrolling the halls, bullet-proof glass, and teachers packing heat on the playground.

Maybe school uniforms that feature Kevlar helmets and bullet-proof vests?

As we tally the deaths du jour the sense of desperation is growing apace.

So we’re looking for something, somebody to blame… How about crazy people – or in polite parlance, mentally ill? Trouble is, studies show that more than three quarters of mass shooters wouldn’t have had a clinical diagnosis, and further, that less than 5 percent of fatal shootings involve a person with a diagnosed mental illness.

Then, look at all the kids playing violent video games. Look at all the empty church pews on any Sunday morning. What about the general loss of respect for what used to be considered good and decent? Back in Grandpa’s day this stuff just didn’t happen…

Maybe so, but it still doesn’t happen in the unchurched, video game saturated, disrespectful, socially degenerate countries elsewhere in the world.  Whole countries that will go weeks and months without a single shooting while year after year more than 30,000 Americans die and another 70,0000 are wounded at the hands of their gun-wielding compatriots.

How do we process that?

Like the legendary ostrich… The answer is as plain as the sporting goods store ads in this newspaper.

Guns.

In this country there are a lot of  ‘em.

You say that back in Grandpa’s day this stuff just didn’t happen? Could the fact that there are more than twice as many guns at large in the United States now than there were 50 years ago have something to do with that?  It’s estimated that there are well over 300 million firearms stashed in our closets, rec rooms, garages and basements – enough for every American man, woman and child, sane and looney, law abiding and felonious, each to have their own weapon and a fractional weapon more. And in spite of Remington’s recent bankruptcy, we’re adding around 11 million weapons to that arsenal every year.

When it comes to civilian-owned firepower, we’re #1 – by a convincing margin.

How convincing? Well a Swiss study pegged the U.S. gun ownership rate at 101 guns per 100 residents. The runner-up in the domestic arms race was Serbia, with 58 per 100 residents and Yemen – where a civil war is still being fought – took the bronze with 54.

By contrast, 1 in 100 Poles is a gun owner; and there are about six privately owned guns per 1,000 Japanese.

In fact, of the estimated 650 million firearms in civilian hands worldwide, 48 percent are in the hands of the 4.4 percent of the world’s people who live in the United States.

D’ya think that might have something to do with more than 100,000 Americans getting shot every year?

Think for a moment how we’d be reacting to that number if the cause was Ebola rather than bullets…

The most recent health-scare headlines have mothers worried about the possible deadly effect of third-hand smoke on their youngsters, oblivious to the threat posed by the .45 stashed in Grandpa’s dresser drawer – 1,300 kids die and nearly 6,000 are injured by accidental gunfire every year.

That doesn’t count the kids shot on purpose…

By the way, legal civilian gun ownership in Afghanistan is reported at less than 5 per 100.

And we wonder why our schools are more dangerous than a combat zone?