Falmouth Packet: Packet Skipper

Hard to believe, but I was actually quite good at maths when I was at school and I’ve always had a love of numbers.

Last week’s dramatic events in Boston have had me doodling with the arithmetic:

  • Number of US citizens killed by the Boston marathon bomb – 3
  • Number of US citizens killed on the same day by “routine” gun violence - 11.
  • Number of US citizens killed by “terrorism” last year – 17.
  • Number of US citizens killed last year by “routine” gun violence – 30,000.

It’s only a few months since some nutter murdered 20 pre-school children at Newtown, Connecticut, and yet last week the US Senate rejected even the mildest reforms to their gun laws - reforms which would simply have required background checks on people wanting to purchase weapons on the internet.

The speed and professionalism with which the US law enforcement agencies identified the Boston bombers can only be admired.

The manhunt was a moment-in-time, drawing the whole country together, united by live television.

If only there was a similar sense of urgency behind the gun control debate. But it is perhaps too easy to sit this side of the Atlantic and look at our bonkers American cousins and shake our heads at their depressing sense of priorities, where Kinder Eggs are banned but automatic weapons are fine.

Here are some more numbers, supplied by the ever-helpful Freedom of Information office at the Devon and Cornwall police:

  • Total number of shotgun certificates issued in Devon and Cornwall in past three years – 1,272.
  • Total number of firearms certificates issued in Devon and Cornwall in past three years – 853.
  • Number issued to children aged 14 in the past three years – four.
  • Number of shotgun certificates issued to children aged ten in the past three years – two

I suppose that if ten-year-olds are going to have shotguns at all, it is a good thing that they are licensed and (presumably) taught how to shoot.

But these numbers nevertheless give Devon and Cornwall the slightly dubious distinction of being the region with the most weapons-per-head-of-population in the UK.