Cuban Foreign Minister denounces US double standards on human rights

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez on Thursday described the United States double standard on human rights when the production, possession and indiscriminate trade of firearms is common in that country.

The head of Cuban diplomacy noted on his X account that the country where the right to life is worth less than the right to produce, possess and indiscriminately trade firearms should not establish human rights standards.

According to an analysis recently published by CNN, the United States is the only nation in the world where there are more guns than civilians.

There are 120 firearms per every 100 US citizens; in addition, some 44 percent of adults in the US live in a household with a gun, and approximately one-third of them own one gun personally, according to surveys quoted by local media.

The US TV network pointed out that gun violence is pervasive in the United States and has left few places unscathed over the decades.

Still, many US citizens consider their constitutionally enshrined right to bear guns is sacrosanct, and critics of the Second Amendment say that this right threatens another, the right to life.

In 2018, gun manufacturers produced nine million firearms in the US, twice the production in 2008, and January 2021 marked the largest annual increase since 2013 in federal background check applications required to purchase a gun, up nearly 60 percent from January 2020.

Similarly, in 2019, the number of deaths in the United States due to gun violence was approximately four per every 100,000 citizens, which is 18 times the average rate in any other developed countries.

Multiple studies show that easy access to firearms contributes to higher homicide rates.

Another phenomenon is self-harm, as more than 23,000 US citizens died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds in 2019.