Blood Gun Money

Ioan Grillo Bloomsbury £14.99 ★★★★★

You may remember that back in 2018 President Trump made a speech referencing an unnamed London hospital which, he claimed, was filled with stabbing victims and had so much blood on the floors that it was ‘as bad as a military war zone hospital’. As it happens, 2018 did witness a 13-year high for murders in London, bringing the capital’s homicide rate up to 1.5 per 100,000.

But compare that to the murder rate in the American city of Baltimore, which in the same year stood at 50 per 100,000, a figure 33 times higher. The difference, of course, is that most of those killings were carried out with guns, not knives, but that’s something the American gun lobby would prefer us not to think about.

Trump’s speech was delivered to the National Rifle Association (NRA) which, as Ioan Grillo suggests in this powerful and chilling book about the firearms pandemic, may be the most influential lobbying group in the world. The right to bear arms is hard-wired into the American psyche, but since the 1970s the NRA has been agitating tirelessly against any legislation that aims to restrict the ability of Americans to buy as many and as lethal weapons as they wish.

The NRA’s stance is steeped in the rhetoric of liberty, but as Grillo explains in grim detail, the main beneficiaries are criminals south of the border. Mexican cartels flood the

United States with drugs, and they use some of their profits to purchase an ‘iron river’ of guns, which in turn fuels escalating cycles of violence. These guns are easily acquired, the nominal paperwork can be skipped by using a third party, or ‘straw’ purchaser, and if you buy from a private seller no questions are asked.

There are signs that the NRA is losing traction in Washington, and the situation may improve in the future. But as Grillo warns, ‘perhaps there is worse to come first’.