drankin said:
Van, the deal is that you are not familiar with guns. They are not common to you. They are common here. Guns are everywhere here. It's really not a big deal to own pistols and rifles in the US. It's common.
Yes, this is what I meant with a "cultural thing". Visibly it is important to many American citizens, as a principle, to have a gun. But to most Europeans, for instance, this sounds very bizarre (as most cultural differences do, I understand that). It must be some "liberty feeling" or something, which is totally absent in most European populations. I'm just guessing here, but I would think that most of my fellow citizens would bluntly *refuse* to have a gun even if one offered them one legally. Just as a matter of principle.
Of course, weaponry can be job-related, and police and security functions might require one to have a gun available, and can even provide for some real protection. Also, as I said, sometimes one can feel quite insecure, like when one is alone in a remote place, and having a weapon can, in certain cases, provide for extra (true or imagined) security.
But these are normally rare cases. Most of the time, there is no objective need for a gun. Personally, I prefer not having a gun, and knowing that my rather bizarre neighbour also doesn't have a gun. I tend to think that most of my fellow citizens think about the same, although this is guessing.
Noone is under "constant attack" from their fellow citizens. There are wacko here as there are among all human populations. We just refuse to let wackos determine whether the rest of the law abiding public can maintain rightful ownership of firearms. To disarm the common people is to simply leave them defensless against the lawless. Even though it is rarely necessary for someone to ever need a firearm in their lifetime for self-defense.
So this argument is rather: guns have only in rare occasions a *real* use, but we adhere to our right in principle to carry one. Ok, this is the cultural thing I talked about. Here it would rather be: I prefer not to have a gun, but if it is really necessary for my security, then I will, if I really have to, take one.
In order to "invest" in more police as you suggest would require us to deputize a large fraction of our population. Which would require more government, which requires more burauecacy, which requires more regulation, which requires more money, which requires more taxes. And so on...
Personally, I'd prefer to pay a bit more taxes, and walk around in security, rather than pay a bit less taxes, and having to walk around armed, with the genuine risk of being shot every minute...
But we are mixing here apparently two totally different topics. One is a cultural thing, and is "we Americans, enjoy the right to carry guns, and we don't like to give it up, we feel naked without".
The other point, not much related to this, is: "there's a lot of insecurity, and police protection isn't adequate to protect me and my relatives ; I need to be armed to protect them, for real".
I would say, if I were in the second case, I would also carry, reluctantly, a gun, but I would prefer the situation to normalize, and to delegate physical protection to police forces, rather than do it myself. I am totally strange to the first case, but I can understand that this is different in the US.
However, if the insecurity is real, then I'd say for a rich country such as the US, it is high time to invest a bit more in police protection ! This is on the verge of craziness: you are spending fortunes to capture the bearded lunatic who might eventually plan a terrorist attack half a planet away, but you are under *constant attack* from your fellow citizen without doing anything about it.
