Quote Originally Posted by sfa437 View Post
Bright-

I think the reason that Europe has less of a per-capita homicide rate than the US is due to social reasons rather than the availability of firearms.

There are countries absolutely swimming in firearms that have murder rates lower than the US (Macedonia, Albania et. al for example not to mention Finland).

Americans have come to view violence as acceptable, even entertaining. News networks have a saying "If it bleeds, it leads". This corrosion of the normal Western societal response to violence (shock and horror) leads to individuals thinking it is acceptable to kill someone because they have something they want. Couple that with a culture that glorifies greed above all else and instant gratification then add in single parent families with (necessarily) unsupervised children and you get the mess we have in our major cities.

As I've said before, civilian gun ownership is a moot point for me. Does not affect me one way or the other. As a retired law enforcement officer, I may carry any handgun I qualify with anywhere in the United States. Whether or not I choose to do so is something I believe should be MY choice and not someone else's.

If someone wishes to wait 30-45 minutes for police response in a rural county rather than defend themselves against the depradations of some of our more aggressive citizens, have at it. In the US the police have no responsibility to keep the population safe. NONE. We take a report after the crime has been committed. Of course, as officers, the police do their best but remember- when seconds count the police are only minutes away.

Overly simplistic but it still holds true.
Yes I'm sure you're right about social factors, particularly given that we have, certainly in the UK, never had a gun culture, but I also think availability must play a part. Finland is a special case in this regard and the number of firearms there have a lot to do with being next door to the USSR during the cold war but the figures I have show the US on 5.9 homicides per 100,000 population and Finland 2.75 (I know this covers more than gun homicides) and Albania slightly below the US at 5.68! Jamaica is top of the list with 46.59. What a holiday destination that must be!

It's not necessarily the owning of guns I'm against, I appreciate that there are sometimes reasons for having them like the coyote or the rural isolation arguments, it's the gun culture aspect where people who do not need guns and probably throughout their lives will never fire them in anger, feel the need to own them nonetheless, that worries me. If I lived in the US I would probably feel the need to own a gun and that in itself worries me.