We're a nation of gun fanatics in the United States -- that's no secret. My foreign friends think we Americans are nuts, allowing even psychotic time bombs like Cho Seung Hui the right to buy a gun. The tragic killings at Virginia Tech have sparked renewed debate about gun control, but few here in Washington expect much to change, given this country's stubborn attachment to firearms and the political strength of the gun lobby.

Still, whatever you think about the right to bear arms, it's worth considering the price that mass gun ownership brings to an industrial society. In firearms violence of every type-- homicides, suicides, and unintentional deaths -- the United States leads the modernized world. Consider the state of murder in America, drawn from statistics gathered by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program (below):

Source: Crime in the United States 2005, FBI