The gun was not born in America. But it became an American as quickly as it could.

Since then, shooting has become an American routine. In recent months, it has become an American epidemic.

Someone, usually a male, gets mad, gets some guns, goes after his family or his friends or his workplace or his perceived enemies or random targets. He mows down as many as he can. Then he takes his own live.

Nobody knows how many people are shot in the United States everyday. It is a scary statistics. When it happened again in New York yesterday, the Newspapers only reported that it was the worst mass shooting since April 16, 2007 when 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech University campus. Some papers who bordered to keep any count said 25 people had been killed in three mass shootings in the last month.

As it stands now, those who wish to make the news need to kill more than ten. Anything less is not a breaking news. No news media will interrupt the coverage of President Obama in Europe because you killed 4 people. No. Not in today’s America. You have to aim higher.

It is crazy. But that is if you have the privilege of having a different perspective. For most Americans, it is a way of life. The vast majority of Americans are in denial. Nobody want to count how many are killed everyday in all the cities and small towns of America. That number can cause a riot.

But this is what we know. According to the CDC, in 1998, about 30,000 people were killed by guns in the United States. In 1998, it fell to about 29,000. In 2002, it went up to about 30,000. The figure for 2005 was 21,000. More Americans people die every two years from gunshots than all the Americans killed in Vietnam. And America lost over 57,000 people in that war.

About 3000 Americans died on September 11, 2001 when Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda group attacked America. For that, we went to a war in two countries where we have spent close to a trillion dollars. But ten times that number dies each year in the hands of other Americans who choose to use their guns to kill other Americans. You think there will be a sense of outrage over that? Not at all.

In fact, if 30,000 Americans die in a plane crash each year, FAA will ground all American planes until they figure out what is wrong with the planes. But from gunshots, well, guns do not kill people, we are told. So, there really is nothing that we can do.

After the last plane crash in upstate New York, Governor David Patterson of New York offered scholarship to children of the victims. Commentators in the state wondered why such a generous offer. They wondered why the same kind of treatment would not be extended to those who died in road accidents.

What about the 30, 000 gunshot victims each year?

Some 100 years ago, in London, then the most civilized and sophisticated city in the world, doctors drilled holes with nails into the heads of some mentally ill patients to let out the evil spirits in their heads.

Some 100 year from now, those who will occupy these United States will look at how we allowed ourselves to be enslaved by guns and wonder if we were not as foolish as doctors in London at the beginning of the 20th century.

Each year comes more and more sophisticated weapons. With the election of Barack Obama as president, purchase of guns doubled. There are now more guns in America than people. The rights to bear arms will soon become the right to wipe out your hometown. The gun lovers, the gun makers and the National Rifle Association bear no responsibility other than to remind us that guns do not kill people.

Indeed!