US gun violence is a preventable health crisis

The US is familiar in many ways. I grew up with its television shows, music, and movies. The language is the same, and the culture, at first, resembles the UK. Yet, as the BBC’s former North America correspondent Jon Sopel observes in his book If Only They Didn’t Speak English , a shared language can be deceptive, hiding political, social, and cultural divides beneath a surface of apparent familiarity. 1

Nowhere is the illusion of familiarity more jarring than in the US’s relationship with guns. I’ve lived in several countries outside the UK, including Kiribati, a remote Pacific island country of around 130 000 people. Yet nowhere have I felt as far from home as when I find myself wondering: is anyone here carrying a gun? It surfaces in unexpected moments: stopping at a highway gas sta