# Why exactly did gun culture blossom in the US and, seemingly, not in most other Western countries? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 14, 2019, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090 "2019-07-14T23:14:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2019, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/121 "2019-07-17T23:01:23Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Nothing you posted in any way contradicts what I said, including the fact that most of the Northern states had **not** abolished slavery by the time that gun rights were enshrined in the Constitution. > :rolleyes: If you are trying to claim that early American society, even in the Northern states, was not fundamentally influenced by white racism, you are absolutely deluding yourself. It’s not “playing the ‘racist’ card” to honestly acknowledge the historical role of racism in America. Umm, yes it does. The Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791, by which time all but two of the northern states has outlawed slavery, and those two had measures being worked on . The North was anti-slavery from 1776 on, altho yes, it took a decade to get laws in place. Other than the fact they had to compromise with the South, that is exactly what I am claiming. The North was quite liberal for that day and age. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2019, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/122 "2019-07-17T23:03:19Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > Guns don’t kill people, the media does? No. But there’s a reason for the big increase in mass and school shootings, and sociologists have published studies which show that it’s media attention and glorification of the shooters. We have had thise debate before, and the proof is solid. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2019, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/123 "2019-07-17T23:04:56Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > This is a completely foreign concept to me. Feeling safe is a completely foreign concept to you? or is it that you feel less safe when around guns? That’s fairly common. Everyone has things that make them feel safer, that to others make them nervous. A big dog for example. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2019, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/124 "2019-07-17T23:34:58Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The rise in Mass shootings is caused by media attention, not gun availability. So, other countries where these things almost never happen don’t have media? Not only do they have media, their media covers the stories much like US media does, and furthermore, those countries have access to global US media like CNN and access to all their websites. So, all the same media exposures, yet mass shootings rarely happen outside the US. In the US mass shootings are so routine that, in fact, as profit-seeking enterprises, media tends not to cover them in any significant way at all unless they’re truly spectacular – a bar that is getting higher and higher. Want to try again to guess what the major difference is between the US and those other countries? I’ll give you a hint. Look at the title of the thread. Notice that it’s not specifically about the massive proliferation of guns in the US, which certainly doesn’t help the situation of gun violence, but it’s about gun _ **culture** _, which includes the glorification of the gun as an instrument of empowerment. Want to guess how that particular culture affects those who perceive themselves as powerless and downtrodden, who may be mentally unstable, and who may have suffered recent stressful events? Go ahead, guess. Guess how it affects the mentally unbalanced who perceive one and only one instrument of boundless empowerment. Oh, and just while you’re at it, guess why the “castle doctrine” laws passed by many states became known as “make my day” laws. You do know where that expression comes from, right? Who’s being glorified there? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2019, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/125 "2019-07-17T23:59:00Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791, by which time all but two of the northern states has outlawed slavery :dubious: You are now shifting the temporal goalposts from your earlier assertion that “America has had gun rights since 1787”. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/126 "2019-07-18T00:18:54Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791, by which time all but two of the northern states has outlawed slavery, and those two had measures being worked on . The North was anti-slavery from 1776 on, altho yes, it took a decade to get laws in place. > > Other than the fact they had to compromise with the South, that is exactly what I am claiming. The North was quite liberal for that day and age. And now you are shifting the topical goalposts from racism to abolition, to distract attention from the fact that what you call “anti-slavery” and “quite liberal for that day and age” was actually still quite racist against blacks. Black people were still discriminated against, many black people in Northern states were still enslaved due to the “gradualism” policy of abolition laws, and many emancipated black people who could no longer be enslaved were pressured to leave the region to avoid the much-feared racial “mixing”. You can’t reasonably analyze early American gun-rights culture in isolation from the issue of white racism. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/127 "2019-07-18T00:31:34Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Feeling safe is a completely foreign concept to you? or is it that you feel less safe when around guns? That’s fairly common. Everyone has things that make them feel safer, that to others make them nervous. A big dog for example. No, what’s utterly foreign is the concept that having a gun would make me feel safer. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/128 "2019-07-18T01:02:23Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > No. But there’s a reason for the big increase in mass and school shootings, and sociologists have published studies which show that it’s media attention and glorification of the shooters. We have had thise debate before, and the proof is solid. There is actually no proof of this. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/129 "2019-07-18T01:18:16Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > So, other countries where these things almost never happen don’t have media? > > Not only do they have media, their media covers the stories much like US media does, and furthermore, those countries have access to global US media like CNN and access to all their websites. So, all the same media exposures, yet mass shootings rarely happen outside the US. In the US mass shootings are so routine that, in fact, as profit-seeking enterprises, media tends not to cover them in any significant way at all unless they’re truly spectacular – a bar that is getting higher and higher… Your _opinion_ is noted. However, experts disagree: > **[dp11900.pdf](https://docs.iza.org/dp11900.pdf)** > > 354.74 KB \*Can media coverage of shooters encourage future mass shootings? We explore the link between the day-to-day prime time television news coverage of shootings on ABC World News Tonight and subsequent mass shootings in the US from January 1, 2013 to June 23, 2016. To circumvent latent endogeneity concerns, we employ an instrumental variable strategy: worldwide disaster deaths provide an exogenous variation that systematically crowds out shooting-related coverage. Our findings consistently suggest a positive and statistically significant effect of coverage on the number of subsequent shootings, lasting for 4-10 days. At its mean, news coverage is suggested to cause approximately three mass shootings in the following week, which would explain 58 percent of all mass shootings in our sample. \* [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1532708616679144](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1532708616679144) _This article identifies distinct mass media reporting stages used in the coverage of mass killings, and the inspiration they provide for future killers. Ethnographic content analysis was used to identify common and ordered stages/themes expressed through mass media accounts of the massacres committed by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris (Columbine High School), Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), James Holmes (Aurora Movie Theater), Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook Elementary School), and Omar Mateen (Pulse nightclub Orlando). Many of these infamous killers reference/discuss their well-publicized prior homicidal role models in self-created archival documents they leave behind. They do not just copycat prior killers, they often relate to them, are inspired by them, and want to outdo them. The entertainment form and logic of mass mediated news provides the inspiration and fuel for later killings._ > **[Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0117259)** > > Background Several past studies have found that media reports of suicides and homicides appear to subsequently increase the incidence of similar events in the community, apparently due to the coverage planting the seeds of ideation in at-risk... [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088767913510297](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088767913510297) [https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=engl\_176](https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=engl_176) \* As the occurrences of mass shootings in the United States have increased, the depiction of these events through news outlets, media stories and journal articles have also increased. With these devastating events on the rise, the perceived public safety within the nation is at stake. By evaluating the effects of media coverage on mass shootings, we are able to uncover whether it may be encouraging the increasing trend. Through the examination of multiple news articles, scholarly journals, and books through a behavioral and psychological approach, we are able to further understand how media coverage and portrayal has changed the perception of mass shootings to future perpetrators and whether the discussion of media change surrounding perpetrators has actually occurred. As a result, we are able to conclude that media coverage on perpetrators does have an impact on the occurrences of mass shootings, as the amount attention surrounding perpetrators has been shown to be correlated with the number of shootings…The coverage of perpetrators given by the media can have detrimental effects, including fame seeking offenders trying to cash in on their prize and media stories sparking contagion, copycat, and imitation effects. Many attackers explicitly admit that they want fame and directly reach out to media organizations to get it. For example, the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooter stated, “Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight” and the 2012 Sandy Hook gunman wrote in an online forum, “Just look at how many fans you can find for all different types of mass murderers” (Dahmen, 2018, p.11). It was found that on average, fame-seeking offenders kill and wound more than twice as many victims as other active shooters, and this seems to be positively correlated with the amount of media coverage they receive (Lankford, 2016). Many fame-seeking offenders deliberately kill and wound high numbers of victims because they know it will help them get more media attention. Media coverage of mass shooters rewards them by making them famous, and provides a clear incentive for future offenders to attack. Many of these at-risk attackers recognize from past media coverage of offenders that murdering large numbers of men, women, or children will guarantee them fame. They believe their names, faces, and actions will be seen worldwide on newspapers, television, movies, magazines, and the internet. Unfortunately, these beliefs are correct, due to the media’s predictable pattern of behavior by giving more attention and publicity to offenders who kill more victims. These offenders are not only being rewarded for committing mass killings, but they are also getting a strong incentive to kill as many victims as possible.\* Dont get me wrong, of course the wide availability of guns makes such shootings easier. But why would kids want to do a school shooting? Why didnt they do them before? Media glorification. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/130 "2019-07-18T01:20:18Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > No, what’s utterly foreign is the concept that having a gun would make me feel safer. That’s what I said. Other people would say that “what’s utterly foreign is the concept that having a big dog would make me feel safer” or several others things. It’s Ok to be afraid of guns… or of big dogs. But that’s _you._ Guns make most people feel safer. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/131 "2019-07-18T01:22:01Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > There is actually no proof of this. so wrong so fast. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/132 "2019-07-18T01:25:58Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > :dubious: You are now shifting the temporal goalposts from your earlier assertion that “America has had gun rights since 1787”. OK, then since 1987, it doesnt matter if gun rights were enshrined in the Constitution on 1787 or 1791 . But the North had almost entire banned slavery by either date, so your post " _most of the Northern states had not abolished slavery by the time that gun rights were enshrined in the Constitution._ " is false. Only two states hadn’t- NJ and NY and in both cases bills for abolishing slavery were being worked on and passed soon after. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/133 "2019-07-18T01:35:36Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > … > > You can’t reasonably analyze early American gun-rights culture in isolation from the issue of white racism. Yes, in fact I can, they have no relationship whatsoever. Nor more than we can separate the issue of Freedom of the Press or Freedom of Religion or The Right to a jury trial, and every other Right enshrined in the Bill of Right- all written by men, who TODAY would all be considered “white racists”- even tho many of them were not racist in any way shape or form by the morays of \*that \*day. Yes, The Bible, Greek Philosophy, the Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights were oddly and strangely written by men of that time, and not by people of today. :eek: Every man of a thousand, even of a hundred years ago was racist by todays standards. **You and I will be racists by the standards of a hundred years from now, likely.** You mean, you dont support Chimpanzee and Dolphin suffrage? :eek: Judging the great men of yesterday by the standards of today is a form of bigotry, methinks. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/134 "2019-07-18T01:37:34Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > OK, then since 1987, [_sic_; I assume you meant 1787] it doesnt matter if gun rights were enshrined in the Constitution on 1787 or 1791 . But the North had almost entire banned slavery by either date [Nope](http://www.civildiscourse-historyblog.com/blog/2017/1/3/when-did-slavery-really-end-in-the-north). Vermont outlawed slavery in its state constitution as early as 1777, but Pennsylvania’s 1780 “gradual abolition” law didn’t actually free any slave till 1808. Massachusetts never formally abolished slavery in the 18th century. Connecticut’s and Rhode Island’s “gradual abolition” laws also didn’t result in actually emancipating any slaves before the 19th century. A New Hampshire Judge in 1788 ruled that slavery was still legal in the state. New York’s and New Jersey’s “gradual abolition” laws weren’t passed until 1799 or after. Delaware never officially ended slavery before the 13th Amendment was ratified. And again, your attempt to deflect the discussion from the influence of white racism on early American gun culture to chronological details of the abolition of slavery in Northern states is not doing anything for the persuasiveness of your arguments. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/135 "2019-07-18T01:39:22Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Your _opinion_ is noted. However, experts disagree: I don’t see any experts disagreeing with anything I said, which was the factual statement that other countries have equivalent media, as well as access to US media, and yet mass shootings are vanishingly rare, whereas they’re practically routine in the US. I don’t dispute that in any horrific crime, media attention may be a factor, but you clearly have to look far beyond that simplistic premise in order to explain the rise in mass shootings in the US. I notice that you chose to make these extensive yet irrelevant quotes while ignoring everything I said and the very simple and basic questions I asked. Let’s just focus on the first and most basic one: \*\*So, other countries where these things almost never happen don’t have media? Want to try again to guess what the major difference is between the US and those other countries? \*\* ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/136 "2019-07-18T01:39:59Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > … > > And again, your attempt to deflect the discussion from the influence of white racism on early American gun culture to chronological details of the abolition of slavery in Northern states is not doing anything for the persuasiveness of your arguments. Yeah, but they still outlawed it. So, you were wrong. Because there _is no_ influence of white racism on early American gun culture. That’s 100% pure antigun propaganda. Maybe put that “racist” card away for away, eh? It’s been played too often. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/137 "2019-07-18T01:40:34Z")
> [@Oedipus](#): > > I know that Switzerland somehow maintains the balance of a strong hunting culture and society that really values guns and the UK MIGHT be an exception to this…but where was the fork in the road where, for instance, Spain, Italy, Germany, or France didn’t become big “gun” countries? The main reason is that the US, the frontier outran the law. i.e. fast land acquisition meant that in many places, people had to make their own justice because there were no law enforcement organs to do it for them. Eventually the law caught up, but norms around gun ownership are hard to dislodge. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/138 "2019-07-18T01:48:39Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Nor more than we can separate the issue of Freedom of the Press or Freedom of Religion or The Right to a jury trial, and every other Right enshrined in the Bill of Right- all written by men, who TODAY would all be considered “white racists” You are exactly right that we can’t validly separate the issues of press freedom, religious freedom, or other constitutional rights from the history of American racism, any more than we can separate the history of early American gun-rights culture and the Second Amendment from it. That doesn’t mean that we can’t speak in support of what those rights mean to us today. But it’s childish and irrational to refuse to acknowledge historical facts because we think they will somehow “taint” our principles. > [@DrDeth](#): > > Judging the great men of yesterday by the standards of today is a form of bigotry, methinks. It’s not a question of “judging” anyone in the sense of saying “tut tut, how awful of them to be so racist”. It’s a question of being honest about the influences of a historically fundamentally racist culture on historical events. Pretending that the beliefs and acts of colonial Americans were not significantly affected by racism because you consider it unfair to “judge” them “by the standards of today” is not only dishonest but outright silly. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/139 "2019-07-18T01:50:08Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Maybe put that “racist” card away for away, eh? Just because you don’t want to pay attention to uncomfortable historical facts doesn’t mean that anybody else is obligated to stop mentioning them. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2019, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090/140 "2019-07-18T03:11:35Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Just because you don’t want to pay attention to uncomfortable historical facts doesn’t mean that anybody else is obligated to stop mentioning them. Well, Ok "You are exactly right that we can’t validly separate the issues of press freedom, religious freedom, or other constitutional rights from the history of American racism, any more than we can separate the history of early American gun-rights culture and the Second Amendment from it. " Yes, those nasty racist white men were the fount of all todays liberties including your right to post here on this MB. :rolleyes: If by \*all _our current liberties- Right to a free press, freedom of religion, right for a fair trial, right to own a firearm- all of them, if you mean they were_ all \*rooted in white racism, :rolleyes: well then fine. But dont single out the 2nd Ad. Oh, and just so you know- I dont agree. But that’s fine. They were great men. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-exactly-did-gun-culture-blossom-in-the-us-and-seemingly-not-in-most-other-western-countries/837090.md?page=8)