President Obama should use this week’s Summit of the Americas to take practical steps to reduce armed violence in the continent,  IANSA members demanded this week. The meeting, to discuss political, economic and social issues, in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago from 17-19 April, will be attended by governments from 34 member states, many of which are blighted by gun crime.

Countries in Central and Southern America top the league for gun homicides, with Colombia suffering from a mortality rate of 50 deaths for every 100,000 people, according to United Nations figures. The statistics for gun deaths in Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil, Venezuela, Guatemala, Jamaica and Ecuador are only marginally less bleak.

The meeting’s agenda will be dominated by the economic crisis, but the summit’s broader aim – to improve the lives of people living throughout the Americas – should make coordinated action on reducing armed violence. The problem is not local. A recent report by the Brady Center To Prevent Gun Violence illustrated how the increasing problem of gun violence in Mexico was exacerbated by weak gun laws in the border states of the US, allowing drug cartels to buy weapons in bulk, including military-style assault weapons and assault rifles.

When guns recovered from drug cartels were traced, over 90% were found to originate from US sellers. By some estimates, around 2000 weapons per day are flowing South from the US to Mexico. During her visit to Mexico in March, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted that the US shared the blame for the violence in Mexico, through its failure to stop weapons’ smuggling, fuelled by US demand for illegal drugs.

The danger to the US of weak gun laws has been illustrated in recent weeks by a spate of domestic mass shootings. On 3 April, a gunman attacked a roomful of immigrants taking a citizenship exam in Binghampton, New York, killing 13 people before committing suicide.  On 29 March, 8 people were killed by a gunman at a nursing home in Carthage, North Carolina. And on 10 March, 10 people were murdered by a gunman wielding two assault rifles and a handgun. 

These shootings came days before the second anniversary of the worst mass shooting by a single gunman in US history, when 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia on 16 April, 2007; and the 10th anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado,on 20 April 1999 in which 13 people were murdered. 

Though President Obama talked during campaigning about reinstating the ban on assault weapons which lapsed under President Bush in 2004, no firm policy has been announced.