Dear America,

The United States of America, self proclaimed the greatest country on Earth. Guess what, after living here for the last few months I must agree, yes, the United States of America is the greatest country on Earth.

I come from a tiny island in the middle of the Mediterranean sea called Malta. Many of you might not have even heard about it. Yet I’m pretty sure that if you google Malta you will quickly come to the realisation that you consider us as a paradise island, and you might not be too wrong in saying so! I love Malta, literally my thoughts and every fibre of my body thinks about Malta all day long. Might I add that if only Malta was as big as Sicily (the soccer ball that the Italian boot is kicking!), we would be so much more powerful!

As I said, for the last few months I had the amazing opportunity to live in the United States. My wife and I drove over 3,000 miles in the last few months and we visited various states. One thing that we always come to conclusion is that this country have everything that it needs. Land in abundance, all the services that you might ever need at an arms reach, perfect road network that can take you from New York all the way to California without looking at a map once, infrastructure that is second to none and many other things that we can only ever dream of having.

Yet, there’s one thing that I can never quite understand. Over the last months I had the opportunity to spend time in New York on two different occasions. The first time was in New Year’s Eve. My God, that was a cold night wasn’t it? The second time was in the beginning of this month were I had the opportunity to spend a lovely week living in a Manhattan apartment.

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What I realised is that New York, with all it’s greatness and all it has to offer, is a city that unfortunately lives in fear. Police cars, fire trucks, ambulances and other vehicles are constantly going around with their sirens at full blast. You will see a police car, sometimes even ten, in every corner. The heightened security is creating fear and the fear is pushing people are constantly on edge. You can see it in the way people react whenever they hear a sound. Everyone looks franticly around him to see if it was something unimaginable.

I had the opportunity to visit and spend a few days in the word’s largest cities. Milan, Paris, London, Tokyo, Manchester, Beijing and Shanghai. All these cities are very important, busy cities; yet the feeling you get when you walk in these cities is different than the feeling you get when you walk in New York. New York is a city engulfed in fear while the other large cities are more at ease in their own safety.

My point of view of all this is that this all comes down to the availability of guns. In the United States of America it’s very easy to buy a weapon such as an assault rifle. I will never understand how a 19 year old kid can go out and buy an assault rifle, yet he can’t buy a beer.

By making weapons easily accessible to everyone the country built a mentality of fear. The person walking next to you might be carrying a gun. That guy that you couldn’t help at work? He might have a rifle in his car.

I understand the age old excuse that gun activist use that “guns don’t kill people but people kill people”. Trust me I do, however if you provide guns to people easily you’re making it much more easy for someone to use them.

Look allover the world and you’ll realise that in all societies guns aren’t as easy to purchase as they’re in the United Sates. Now compare the number of massacres by lunatics that happen in the US to other developed countries and you’ll easily realise that the US outnumber these countries by tenfold.

Another argument that might be used by the gun activists is that if everyone had a weapon, the lunatics wouldn’t have had time to kill as many people because he would have been shot. Ok, I might give you that, however if the lunatic didn’t have the possibility to buy an assault weapon than no one would have died in the very first place!

How many more children must die before you take decisive action and ban guns altogether? How many more horrible massacres we have to witness before the politicians come to their senses and realise that guns DO KILL people?

Save yourselves the heartbreak, the pain and stop sacrificing your loved ones in order to protect the gun lobby.

Ban guns and save lives!

Kindest regards,

Alan