In popular usage, American exceptionalism refers to the idea that this nation combines democratic institutions, free markets, self-reliance and personal liberty in a way that qualifies it to play a unique role in the world. Today we propose to discuss a different doctrine of American exceptionalism, one written in the blood of innocents by a society that elevates an abstraction over the safety and well-being of its individual members.

It is truly exceptional that a highly developed nation allows itself to be held hostage to a cult of firearms ownership and an absolutist reading of the Second Amendment that defies law, logic and common sense. Just how exceptional this national decision is — because it is, after all, a decision — can be inferred from comparisons with other developed countries drawn recently by The New York Times. It reported that the death rate from gun homicides in the United States is about 31 per million people. In England and Poland, it is about one per million — about as often as an American dies from falling off a ladder. Being murdered with a gun is about as likely in Germany as is being killed by a falling object here. The likelihood of dying in a gun homicide in Japan is roughly one in 10 million, about the same as an American’s chance of dying in a lightning strike. And so on, literally ad nauseam.

We also find it exceptional that, in the words of the Government Accountability Office, “Membership in a terrorist organization does not prohibit a person from possessing firearms or explosives under current federal law.” And it is exceptional that Congress cannot summon the political will to prevent people on the terrorist watch list from lawfully purchasing guns — as such suspects were able to do 223 times last year, in 244 attempts. Even after revelations that the shooter in the mass slaying at an Orlando nightclub earlier this month had been on the federal terror watch list as recently as 2014 and had legally purchased the weapon he used a few days later to murder 49 people, the Senate was unable to agree this week on any of four proposals intended to address this absurdity.

And at a more basic level, it is exceptionally stupid that private citizens in America are allowed to own semiautomatic rifles that are basically civilian versions of a weapon designed for use on the battlefield. Whether they are called “assault weapons” or “modern sporting rifles” or “AR-15s,” their accuracy, reliability, ease of use and firepower render them uniquely qualified to do what they were designed to do — kill large numbers of human beings quickly. The Second Amendment confers no right to private ownership of such deadly firearms, as the U.S. Supreme Court again recognized earlier this week in declining to hear a challenge to a Connecticut law that bans many semiautomatic rifles. The civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are, and always have been, subject to some reasonable exception or limitation. The right to peacefully assemble, to cite but one of many examples, can be curbed in the interests of public safety; so could the right to bear arms be subject to reasonable restriction.

But not only are such lethal weapons not subject to reasonable restriction in many jurisdictions, they can be purchased almost casually, in a matter of minutes, as Seven Days reporter Paul Heintz did last week a couple of days after the Orlando massacre. After an exchange of email messages earlier in the day with a seller he found on the internet, Heintz paid $500 in cash for an AR-15 to an unknown young man whom he had arranged to meet in a parking lot off Interstate 89 in South Burlington: No background check, no paperwork, no questions asked or answered, all perfectly legal.

We fervently wish this were exceptional, but we are pretty sure it’s not. Which is why, when it comes to guns, the land of the free and the home of the brave is neither.