ABSTRACT: The rise in the number of violent crimes and deaths caused by firearms, especially among minors, will ultimately call for drastic measures. It is estimated that some 200 million firearms, i.e. one per inhabitant, circulate in the United States. The same could happen for firearms as for smoke, which was first produced and then demonized.

("HANDS OFF CAIN", 1 February 1994)

And so finally the U.S. has decided to break the taboo, and has adopted restrictions on the sale of firearms. Clearly, it is irrelevant compared to the restrictions in force in other countries (where five days must elapse between the order and the delivery of the weapon, and the dealer must gather information on the buyer), but is nonetheless an historical initiative of President Clinton, considering the untouchability the Rifle association and the other American producers have always enjoyed. But the initiative will also be effective as well as rhetoric, if it will really mark a change in trend, and the replacement of the old taboo with a new one: from the right to carry weapons ruled by the Constitution (in an article of two hundred years ago) to the official condemnation of firearms as such. We realize that hoping for this is the equivalent, in the United States, of hoping in a revolution: but the statistics on violent crime and on the deaths caused by firearms, especially among minors, can no longer be u

nderestimated, and in the end drastic measures will have to be adopted. On the other hand, even if not a single more firearm were bought, the number of weapons that already circulate in the United States is placed at two hundred million, i.e. one per inhabitant, and the effects of the Brady bill for the restriction on sales would be scarce unless this tremendous arsenal is disbanded. The culture must obviously change, but also the attitude of cinema and television with respect to weapons. An alternative model must be developed, offering compensating values both in social and industrial terms. This would be the equivalent of a revolution, true, but there is an encouraging precedent, regarding smoke: in fifteen years' time, the United States has first produced and then started to export a model of anti-smoke life that is the exact opposite of the one that was produced and exported after World War I, and on which the tobacco lobbies built their fortune. Despite those lobbies and their interests, smoking today i

n the United States has come to represent something dirty, stupid and foul, whereas in the past is was magnified by the mythology. So Clinton's initiative (which had always been opposed by his predecessor, until Bush) should be given great attention. But on this point it is necessary to demand a global, transverse commitment on the part of all forces that really concern themselves with development and progress: so that the citizens of the United States will cease shooting at each other and relinquish the funereal myth of the gun as the symbol of freedom.