In not tackling gun violence, are Americans the crazy ones?

But the rate of gun deaths is 40 times higher. America does have about 15 times as many guns as Britain on per capita basis, and far fewer restrictions on their ownership and use.

That’s the obvious correlation staring us in the face, as we insist on talking about every other possible issue.

And this is not simply a case of America being different than the rest of the developed world. Data that look carefully at gun violence across America find a similarly tight correlation.

States that have some of the highest percentages of gun ownership have some of the highest gun-related death rates (Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Arkansas), and those with some of the lowest rates of gun ownership generally have the lowest gun-related death rates (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island).

Then there are what almost look like social science experiments.

On the one hand, Connecticut passed a law in 1995 that made it harder to buy guns. In the following decade, the gun-related homicide rate was 40 per cent lower than projected had the law not been passed, according to Johns Hopkins researchers.

On the other hand, Missouri in 2007 made it much easier to buy a gun. Over the next five years, the gun-related homicide rate was 25 per cent higher than projected.

How to tackle this issue is a more complex problem, made particularly difficult by the fact that we refuse to study it.

One of the main government agencies that sponsors research on public health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has been virtually forbidden by law from doing any research on gun violence and public policy for two decades.

Buried in a 1996 law is a provision, championed by the National Rifle Association, that prohibits the CDC from funding research that might “advocate or promote gun control”.

In America, in 2017, we essentially have a ban on scientific research that might lead to inconvenient conclusions.

Given the Second Amendment, America’s gun culture, and the influence of the gun lobby, there isn’t any simple answer.

But there are many small fixes that would make a big difference: universal background checks, restrictions on military-style weaponry (of which banning bump stocks would be a tiny first step) and a ban on selling to people with a history of domestic violence or substance abuse.

But first, we have to stop the dodges and the diversions. When you consider America’s stubborn inaction in the face of this continuing and preventable epidemic of gun violence — I sometimes wonder if it is all of us Americans who are crazy.