We have lots of guns.

Do you own a gun? I do, but it's a family heirloom. A muzzle-loading shotgun that belonged to my namesake grandfather. Not the kind of thing you use in a crime of passion, except as a club.

Anyway, this article says that us Americans own lots and lots of guns. We're skewing the worldwide average something awful.

"There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people," it said.

The really sad part is that the American fascination with firearms is irreversible. There are just too damned many of them. If we made them illegal tomorrow, it wouldn't matter. There's no way to clean up this mess.