Not long ago, an appalling case occurred in Texas, the US, in which a 3-year-old girl shot dead her 4-year-old sister playing beside her while fiddling with a fully loaded pistol.

But what’s more appalling is that such a case is regarded as commonplace in the US, whereas other countries take it as a “shocking case” and “top news”.

Only in recent years, tens of cases occurred one after another in almost all states of the US including California, Alabama, Texas and Minnesota where children aged under 5 shot their own relatives to death while toying with guns.

According to official data available, over 6 000 minors under 17 were killed or injured owing to gun-related incidents in the US in 2022 alone.

Among the 1 629 killed, a quarter of them were children aged under 11.

The situation was so serious that an institute under an American university deplored gun-related accidents saying that it has become number-one cause of child death, overtaking traffic accidents.

This is a natural outcome of the American decadent way of life which has legalized the purchase and possession of arms through state policy and law.

Being swayed by misgivings about the continuous massive demonstrations blaming the government for the gun-related incidents, Biden gave a Presidential Executive Order to prevent gun-related crimes and the Congress adopted a so-called “act” to protect the children. But gun-related child deaths continue to rise, far from falling.

Given that the right of its people to keep and bear arms is written down in black and white in the US constitution, such “measures” are simply insignificant and meaningless.

No wonder.

The US politicians have close political and economic relations with the National Rifle Association (NRA) which is representing the interests of the arms production and sales enterprises. And they are more interested in relations with the NRA rather than the life safety of common people.

Former US presidents, vice-presidents, former chiefs of justice of the United States Supreme Court, MPs and government officials are the important NRA members. This fact alone suffices to show the extent of nexus between the political circles and arms manufacturers in the US.

This has led to the exponential growth of the US arms production enterprises. And the arms sellers made a windfall of US$ 63.5 billion in 2020 when many enterprises went belly up or suffered a huge loss.

Profits raked by the arms sales enterprises find their way into the pockets of chief members of the government and the parliament through the NRA, and the official amount alone reaches US$ 2-5 million on an annual basis.

We are witnessing a miserable sight where children become innocent victims of gun-related crimes every day even before they come into bloom. But, at the other end of the scale, the US politicians are accumulating their wealth on a daily basis getting benefits from arms sales. Such a contrasting reality clearly shows the anti-popular nature of the American-style plutocracy.

The US would be well-advised to strain every nerve to find the way to provide the children with the basic rights to existence before criticizing other countries over the “human rights issue”.