Cluster Bomb and Gun Facts; SNAP Snapped

Cluster Bomb Stats
In November, the Pentagon announced that it would reverse a 2008 policy prohibiting the use of cluster bombs, which release deadly submunitions that scatter indiscriminately across a target area.

119 - Number of countries that have signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a global ban on the weapons' use; the United States is not among them.

270M - Approximate number of submunitions dropped by the U.S on Laos during the Vietnam War; about 80 million remain unexploded.

20,000 - Estimated number of civilians killed or maimed by unexploded ordinance since the end of the Vietnam War.

44 - Civilians killed the last time the U.S. used cluster bombs, in a 2009 cruise-missile strike in Yemen. (Source: The Nation, January 1/8, 2018.)

Gun Stats
93 - Average number of Americans killed with guns every day.

50 - Women shot dead by an intimate partner in the U.S. in a typical month.

12M - Estimated number of AR-15 assault rifles in the U.S.

50% - Percentage of the world's guns owned by Americans, who make up 5 percent of the world's population.

$8B - Size of the U.S. firearms industry. (Source: The Nation, October 23, 2017.)

SNAP in Trump's Crosshairs
"The Trump administration appears to be taking aim at a food aid program that helps keep one in four U.S. children and millions of disabled people adequately fed. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, has been in President Donald Trump's crosshairs since May, when his administration released a budget proposal calling for a 25 percent spending cut."

"Rather than serving as a substitute for work, the food stamps program 'increasingly serves the working poor,' as the USDA itself noted in a March release. More than half of SNAP families with children include an adult who works, the report states. A 2015 study by the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that among working-age adults receiving SNAP benefits, 57 percent are 'either working or are unemployed and looking for work,' and 22 percent are 'exempt from work due to disability.' "

"The USDA's presser also implies that many people take advantage of food stamps: 'We will not tolerate waste, fraud,or abuse from those who seek to undermine our mission or who do not take their responsibility seriously,' it reads, echoing overheated accounts of hustlers getting rich off of SNAP fraud. In reality, SNAP fraud is pretty rare -- affecting just 1.5 percent of benefits, according to the USDA." (Source: Tom Philpott, "Reading Between the Lines of the USDA's Bizarre Food Stamps Memo," Mother Jones, December 20, 2017.)

President Trump has said that when he and his Congressional allies succeed in slashing taxes, they'll pivot to "welfare reform" -- which seems to be code for SNAP cuts.