Recently, BBC exposed the situation and cause of gun-related crimes rampant in the U.S in its comment entitled “How many U.S. mass shootings have there been in 2023?”

It commented that gun violence is a fixture in American life – but the issue is a highly political one, pitting gun control advocates against people who are fiercely protective of their right to bear arms.

There have been more than 200 mass shootings across the U.S. so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed. Their figures include shootings that happen in homes and in public places.

Quite recently, in Texas, five killed at a home and eight at a shopping mall due to random gunfire.

In each of the last three years, there have been more than 600 mass shootings, almost two a day on average.

The deadliest such attack, in Las Vegas in 2017, killed more than 50 people and left 500 wounded.

Furthermore, shooting incidents of various scale that result in more or less 10 death toll remain unabated in the U.S.

48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S. during 2021, according to the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That's nearly an 8% increase from 2020, which was a record-breaking year for firearm deaths.

This rate is much higher than the ones in Canada, Australia, England, Wales and many other countries or regions.

Then, how many guns are in private hands in the U.S.?

According to the latest figures from Small Arms Survey – a Swiss-based research project – the number of guns in circulation in the U.S. was estimated to be more than 390 million in 2018.

This means that the ratio of residents to firearms greatly increased from 88 per 100 in 2011 to 120.5 per 100 in 2018 in the U.S.

This far surpasses the statistic figures of most countries around the world.

A study, published by the Annals of Internal Medicine in February 2023, found that 7.5 million U.S. adults became new gun owners between January 2019 and April 2021.

This, in turn, exposed 11 million people to firearms in their homes, including 5 million children.

Half of the new gun owners are female while 40% are either black or Hispanic.

Above facts show that rate of gun ownership in the U.S. has largely increased during the last few years.

Many Americans are insisting that gun control should be stricter. On the other hand, the National Rifle Association remains the most powerful gun lobby in the U.S., with a substantial budget to influence members of U.S. Congress on gun policy.

57% of Americans wanted a stricter gun laws – although this fell in the year 2022 -according to Gallup, a survey agency. 32% said the laws should remain the same, while 10% said they should be “made less strict”.

However, over the last several election cycles, the National Rifle Association and other organizations have consistently spent more on the backstage negotiation for gun issue.

In June 2021, the Texas governor signed into law a “permitless carry bill” that allows the state’s residents to carry handguns without a license or training, and other states enacted laws in favor of the gun ownership and largely eliminated restrictions on who can carry a gun. These are the typical examples.

California and other state governments have introduced rifle control regulation including the ban on ownership of assault weapons and the restriction governing the sale of guns to people who are mentally ill or on “watch” lists. However, many states are yet selling rifles freely.

Interminable gun-related crimes and the corresponding increase of gun owners in the U.S. vividly illustrates the corruptness and dangerousness of the U.S.-style “freedom and prosperity”.