A recent TIME magazine cover story by jolly noble do-gooder Joe klein reports on HOW GUNS WON. But the title, though enjoyably witty in its personification, is a misnomer. Guns didn't win. Money won. As with all things human or historical, save events beyond our control such as so-called acts of God, money is at the heart of America's loss in the battle against more civilized gun laws.

Nowhere else on planet earth is there more unadulterated barbarism in the form of mass public murders, gun deaths and citizens killing fellow citizens than in the U.S. excepting maybe Mexico or Colombia because of their ongoing drug wars. [an important note: it would be irresponsible to not make mention after this last sentence that the main cause of both those countries' drug-war problems is the high demand for the drugs by the people of the United States. The major drug cartels who are waging war against themselves in both countries and killing each other in the streets en masse to seize control of the big business that drug dealing has become are not fighting over a demand for drugs in their own countries, where the use of street drugs is relatively low; the big business that drug dealing has become is entirely due to the high demand for drugs in America.]

This tells us several interesting things. Number one, if the United States government was serious about the war on drugs they would use the technology they surely have access to (and the ridiculous amount of money in their annual budgets) to make it impossible for Mexico and Colombia to import drugs into the United States so easily. But there is too much money to be made in it, at many levels -- from greedy border patrol agents to crooked cops to the average street corner drug dealer in every city USA. As long as the major violence of the drug lords' wars stays put in these other countries the American governmental agencies in charge of the alleged war on drugs is perfectly content to allow the drugs to continue to flow in.

Secondly, it is telling that there is still such a high demand of near epidemic proportions for street and recreational drugs in the U.S. after over thirty years since the so-called war on drugs first began. Thirdly, and perhaps most disturbing, is the irony that in the only other countries whose gun violence over shadows that of America's is being caused by legitimate causes created out of economic need and greed, i.e. control over a thriving multi-billion dollar industry -- the drug trade into the United States. But in America, the rampant increase in gun violence and murder is not being created by anything economically motivated whatsoever. It isn't for the control over a thriving industry, nor is it being caused by mob wars, or because economic woes have led people to become more desperate so crime is on the rise as one might guess.

Instead Americans have just become more and more accustomed to, interested in and fascinated with killing each other. It's not drug lords or mob hitmen who are killing us. It's us who is killing us. Common folk killing common folk. Killing sprees and public mass murders is a competitive sport in the United States now. Each month a new anti-hero rears his ugly head as the newest famous psycho to kill a bunch of innocent people for no apparent reason, the more violent and creative the more attention he garners for himself and the more likely he'll get a book deal to tell his story in the future.

Every other civilized country in the world today has control of their populace in regards to guns and gun violence. Mass random public murders of innocent people is an almost exclusively American phenomenon. A dubious distinction that for all intents and purposes most Americans do not feel proud of. But it's ours to own nonetheless.

The first question is not what kind of gun control laws do we need to put into place or which country's system should we follow, but rather what the hell is causing this new found obsession we have for killing each other? Of course in the meantime, until we ascertain what some of the root causes of this collective mental illness might be, putting into place a few tighter gun control laws wouldn't be such a bad idea. And just to be clear, this in no way implies that we need to reverse or restrict our blessed second amendment right for every citizen to have a gun or two or even ten in their home.

New York City has some of the most restrictive gun laws in America, and although it's done wonders in making the citizens safer -- New York is now and has been for several years consistently been rated one of the safest cities or towns in the United States, most well thought out people in the State know damn well that their rights as American citizens have been seriously violated. Anyone who understands the reasons for and the value of our sacred second amendment rights knows the benefit of them and wishes the local government would return these rights to the citizenry.

No this isn't about restricting second amendment rights and it's not about disarming the American people. But it is about starting to pass laws that would make it difficult for just anyone to go online or to a gun show and arm themselves with enough ammo and protective gear to fight a small war with a neighboring country. The situation has gotten way out of hand and any right thinking person can see that.

But selling guns and ammo for a living is big business and like anything that generates millions of dollars a year that end goal has become more important than anything else, even saving human lives. The people who are fighting to keep a gun in the hands of every American aren't gun owners. They're businessmen. And no matter how many people who are killed each year, or each month as the case is today, from this business, making that money is going to take precedent over everything else.

That's American capitalism at its finest. And at it's worst. And we see it playing out in everything from the arms sales industry that leads us into false flag wars in foreign nations, to the irreparable damage and destruction of our environment so giant corporations can reap huge profits. Money is most certainly not the root of all evil and whoever made that statement first was a fool. But there's something to be said about a country whose every law is being created for the benefit of pure profit rather than for the benefit of its survival.