What do you think about Americans and their right to bear arms, their gun culture etc

[RATTER15]

As above really!

So many guns in the USA and a gun happy culture, I don't think its a good thing, I have been brought up around guns and used them all my life until recently, I am quite shocked at the gun culture in the USA.

[douglas9401]

I just wonder what they do with the rest of the bear.

[Zacs-Master]

It worked whilst they were a developing nation. But, pardon the pun, it seems to have backfired.

[thenry]

Why are you shocked ? You need guns for squirrells and such !

[RATTER15]

thenry, the problem is all the people they shoot not the squirrels!!

[Zacs-Master]

Generally the same intelligence level in the US tho.

[thenry]

well. I only ever shot squirrells. But they ain't the red ones you all like ! We call em varmint !

[jomifl]

You don't need an assault rifle to shoot sqirrels, an airgun will do the job, or a 9mm shotgun.

[ELVIS68]

I'm more concerned about gun crime over here.

[FredPuli43]

Their Supreme Court had to interpret 'the right to bear arms' recently. The relevant part of the Constitution has this 'right' prefaced by the need to have militias, which seems restrictive as a reason for having guns. But it held that the 'right' was, in principal, universal. It really had to, as a matter of practicality; it could hardly say that the millions of Americans who own guns already had no right to do so, whatever the sense of the argument against.

So America will continue to have inadequate or barely existent gun control and 12,000 homicides (not suicides) by firearm, a year . We have about 40, out of about 600 reported homicides (last figure was 41 from 612, previous year 38).

It's astonishing that so many Americans regard carrying or just having a gun as perfectly natural. The culture is completely different to ours; we think just the opposite.

[woofgang]

When we lived in NJ, we used to see hunters going out in the autumn. They wore hi viz, not cammo because so many of them get shot by other hunters! The bloke who lived next door to us used to fire off his shotgun to amuse his grandchildren on a sunday afternoon.

[wolf63]

Guns are okay, some of them are impressive and would look good on a wall above a fire.

People who need[i to carry and use guns are trained and, hopefully, psychologically tested before being let loose with a powerful weapon.

Alas many people [i]want] to carry guns (probably the same guys who have a couple of tough looking dogs) that are the problem. They tend to be a bit trigger-happy.

I know that the US is a huge country - but there seem to be an awful lot of nutters and extremists. Add a dash of paranoia into the mix and maybe a second-hand AK47 then you have trouble.

Phasers would be better. Zat guns on Stargate had three settings (1) stun, (2) kill (3) kill and disintegrate the body.