As a non-American, the thing that strikes me most strongly in gun control threads is how many American posters need a gun for home and personal defense. I don’t know any Canadians in my own life who have ever expressed any desire for a firearm for personal defense, and I’ve seen precious little of such sentiment written in the press or generally online. And that’s not because I come from a part of Canada with no guns. I grew up on a farm on the prairies. Everyone had guns. But they were for shooting gophers and coyotes, not people.
So far as I know, rates of burglary and the like are very similar between our countries. Actually I think our property crime rate is slightly higher.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of those differences.
It’s difficult to precisely pin a stat on this, and yet it really seems that way to me, a (mostly) foreigner. Americans are a very frightened people - they’re brave and industrious and smart and wonderful in a thousand ways, and yet you seem to be inherently, culturally scared. I don’t think it’s always been that way, but it is now. I always remark to myself when I travel in the USA how much fearmongering there is in the media; every news show is about things that will kill you, people out to get you, foreigners planning dirty deeds. The U.S. cycles through bogeymen; right now it’s sort of Iran but also sort of China, depending on what happened this news cycle. (The underlying terror with which China is viewed is, frankly, baffling; look at how people lost their shit when China managed to land one jet on an aircraft carrier.)
The guns thing is part of it, I guess; the idea of having guns all around your house, so that there’s one at hand if an intruder storms in, seems comically silly to me and yet several Americans here on the SDMB have said they do precisely that - and this is a left-leaning, granola-munching sample of Americans. But that’s really just one thing among many.
Again, this is just my impression, but it’s a very strong one. YMMV.
Really? Any political thread people are on about how liberal the board is, so in that sense I’d agree it isn’t entirely representative. But that would suggest that most Americans are even more in need of firearms for personal defense, wouldn’t it?
What you need to understand is that for many, “home and personal defense” is a euphemism for “I want to be prepared to shoot the police if necessary.” I doubt that attitude is very widespread in Canada, or anywhere else in the industrialized world. It’s the basis for what is known as the “insurrectionary theory” of the Second Amendment, the idea that the “militia” is meant to be, not an arm of the state, but a countervailing popular force against it. If you ever see an NRA poster saying “All agree gun control is a good idea!” and showing the faces of famous dictators, that’s what they mean by it.
Just as a point of order, it’s not really that difficult to get a handgun in Canada. There’s a bunch of nuisance paperwork, but it’s not actually hard to do. There are also a bunch of rules about storage and transportation. But pretty much anyone who really wants one can legally obtain a handgun.
And I might add that our hand gun murder rates in Canada would be similar to the UK, except for all the illegal hand guns smuggled over the boarder into Canada from the US.
We are a fairly libertarian leaning left. Also, gun control threads are boring and repetitive, its a lot like the abortion argument, or the theism thing. And there isn’t any reason to pop into a thread to say “gee, I don’t have guns and really don’t feel the loss of not having guns in my house.” Or “I do have guns, but its a shotgun for shooting grouse and a deer rifle.” So gun control threads tend to be an echo chamber of people who really want their guns. Which leaves the impression to non-Americans that we are armed to the teeth.
Most western countries don’t allow gay marriage anywhere in their countries while it is legal in many states for gays to get married.
As for “racial integration”, well, talk to Muslims in Europe and ask them what they think.
The US certainly has problems with racism and I’ve been very critical of it, but it’s utterly asinine to assume that France, Italy, Germany, the UK, Israel and other western nations don’t have comparable if not worse problems.
I would certainly love it if the UK had a ethnic Pakistani Prime Minister, France had an Algerian Premier, and Germany had a Turkish Prime Minister, but I doubt we’ll see any such thing anytime soon.
Please identify a country with greater racial integration than the USA.
Gay Marriage? More Americans are able to enter into same sex marriages than Canadians.
Marijuana? More Americans can freely obtain medical marijuana than Canadians. More Americans can grow their own marijuana and keep an ounce or less on them without fear of prosecution than Canadians.
Health Care? Everyone will have health insurance after 2014. The USA is responsible for most of the world’s medical advances.
