It might be useful to compare the US not only with other Anglophone countries or European ones, but also with Latin American ones. Most Latin American constitutions are from the 19th century, they’re countries which won their independence through war (although as the Mexicans like to remind anybody within hearing, in some cases the war started against the French occupiers), and while some do have gun cultures similar to the US it’s by no means a given. Why does Brazil have a “my gun is bigger than your gun” culture, but Costa Rica or Argentina do not? And what does that say about the US?
Places like Israel, Taiwan and South Korea are under threat from neighboring nations but they do not have a gun culture from what I know and have very strict gun control.
I know studies have found that harboring racist attitudes is one of the strongest predictors for gun ownership in the US. But nations like the ones above show you can be under threat without having a gun culture.
Israel and Switzerland have tons of guns, but do not see them as the symbol the US does. They do have gun cultures. what they don’t have is “my gun in your face” cultures.
True. Probably because of the institution of Universal Service, by which it is drilled into every citizen that we’re all in this together.
Virtually the entirety of Latin America would raise an eyebrow at that assertion. Were you missing a qualifier “British-settled” in the sentence?
The fork in the road there was Australia’s first major mass shooting, in 1996. The Australian government acted fast while public opinion was still shocked, and banned the type of guns that could be used in such an attack. Thousand Oaks: Australia changed its gun laws after 1996 mass shooting
Same in England, after the Dunblane school shooting, also in 1996. Firearms regulation in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia
This viewworthy clip from College Humor explains why the USA did not follow the same path. While the NRA used to be a sensible club of gun owners, by 1996 it had become a corporate commercial lobby club for arms dealers. Basically, the NRA wanted Private Americans to buy as many fire arms as possible, and the NRA made damn sure noone and nothing stood in its way. https://youtu.be/8YpUSt6Z2hg
So there you have it: misery in the USA caused by corporate lobbying. It is a familiar story by now.
Accept the premise but Port Arthur was a crescendo from other spree incidents like Hoddle St in ‘87, Queen St in ‘87, Surry Hills in ‘90 and Strathfield in ‘91.
Most of our police are still not armed, or at least, are only armed with a truncheon and maybe CS gas. In some locations there are routine armed patrols, but I’ve not seen an armed copper in over a year now, since moving somewhere fairly rural.
In most rich countries, gun ownership is a privilege, and not an especially important one to most people. It’s also a responsibility. If you have a gun at all here, it’s kept in a locked cabinet almost all the time. My Grandpa and my Great Uncle both were members of a shooting club, both actually had guns in the house, but I never even saw them, despite staying at both their houses regularly. My other Great Uncle did not keep his shotgun secured (back in the '70s), and it was borrowed by his teenage son’s friend who fatally shot himself. Even back then, said Great Uncle was the one widely blamed for it, for leaving it out where teens could get it. I’m not sure what all the repercussions were as I wasn’t born then, but he’s barred from owning a firearm now.
In the UK wanting a gun ‘for self defence’ not only isn’t an allowable reason for applying for a licence (except in NI), suggesting it’ll probably get you some very suspicious reactions. A bit like the one co-worker I used to have who’d always wear a stab vest to work in the most innocuous locations; it came across as wanting trouble, rather than wanting safety (I never knew if he actually wanted trouble or not, but a personality like that probably did need a stab vest).
I think a lot of the gun culture comes from active/ex military. The USA has one of the largest militarys in the world and most all the veterans I know own one or more firearms.
Also the USA is a big country and especially rural citizens use firearms for hunting, home defense, varmint control (groundhogs, snakes, etc.), and recreation.
Same for Canada. Same for Australia. But not the same result.
I think it arose from the Enlightenment period. Other countries had governments that started at the top with a king or emperor and then worked their way down to the people. The people might have rights but they were rights that were given to them by the central authority. Government was something that came from the central authority to the people.
The American government, established in the Enlightenment and after a recent revolution had thrown off the authority of the king, started from the other direction. It started with the assumption that the people had rights and then build up a government from there. Government was something that came from the people to the central authority.
So in Europe the people had no inherent right to own guns and it would have taken positive action by the government to give that right to them. In the United States the people were assumed to have the inherent right to own guns and it would have taken positive action by the government to take that right away.
There have, of course, been many other revolutions since the American Revolution. But they were post-enlightenment events and generally they functioned more like coups; they were a new central authority replacing the old central authority. And the new central authority assumed it had the power that the overthrown king had and it would decide what rights the people would receive.
I’m really talking about the last 100 years, not since the 90s. Passage of gun control legislation does not cause the desired effect of lowering crime.
Nope. While some were quite peaceful, other tribes warred on and even conquered other tribe, even before we got here.
“You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead, Gruyère-scented fingers!”
By “not all that warlike” I didn’t mean they were absolute pacifists at all times and in all contexts. I meant that “warlike tribe” conjures images of e.g. the Sentinelese, which doesn’t correspond to even the most aggressive of North Eastern tribes (which were highly amenable to being bribed anyway)
The primary reason people in the UK do not want guns for self defense is that guns have never been needed for self defense like they are in the US. The UK murder rate peaked in 2002 at a rate of 2.1 per 100K, that had not been seen in the US since 1905 and that was probably a mismeasure. That rate is about half the current US rate which is hovering around 100 year lows.
Most other countries do not have the experience of living through a huge wave of violent crime for decades.
White page for me. Anyone else ?
None of that matches my understanding of the French Revolution, which was very much the product of the Enlightenment and produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man, based on individual liberty and equality.
And the French revolutionary model was so powerful that it influenced the other European countries along the same path.
And yet guns did not become an entrenched part of that Revolutionary, Enlightenment-based culture of universal rights of individuals.
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*…However, the evidence clearly shows gun-control laws don’t work and, even if they did, they could never realistically be enforced.
Gun-control advocates say that if more firearms were banned, people would be safer. But based on state-level crime data, this claim doesn’t hold water.
There is no connection between higher gun ownership rates and greater amounts of crime.
Case in point: In the states where 50 percent of the households own firearms, if gun-control supporters are correct, these states should have significantly higher crime rates — but the opposite is true. Data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show those states ranked in the top half of all states for having the lowest homicide rates.
Two of the states, Idaho and Wyoming, ranked in the top six. Is anyone not aware that cities the likes of Chicago, with very low legal gun ownership rates and tight gun-control laws, have extremely high gun-related murder rates? 4,000 gun-related crimes in 2017!
If legal gun ownership were curtailed, only illegal guns would be on the street, mostly in the hands of criminals.
I urge Mr. Peduto and his well-meaning colleagues to put more effort and resources into improving economic growth and providing better educational opportunities — efforts that have proved to reduce crime in cities.
Taking guns away from law-abiding gun owners, although politically expedient, is not the answer to curtailing crime in our cities."*
People (especially those from other countries) should remember that the ‘gun culture’ in America is mostly a lot of noise from a small group of people.
Only 25-30% of US citizens on a gun – 70-75% don’t have any. And only 3% of the people own over 50% of the guns in the country – averaging several dozen apiece. Those are the ones we call ‘gun nuts’. And those are the people who make noise about guns.
Most Americans (75-80%) want tighter controls on guns. But the ‘gun nuts’ are organized and have outsized political power because they are supported by the NRQA (funded by gun manufacturers, and now Putin) and the Republican Paty, which finds this an effective polorizing, GOTV issue.
This is one of the things that came to mind right away. There are something like 20 million veterans in the country, most of whom were taught that firearms are effective tools and some of which relied on them to preserve their own and their fellow soldiers’ lives.
For comparison, the USA has a population of roughly 330 million with an active-duty armed forces membership of ~1.36 million and another 0.85 million reserve. If I’m doing my math right, that amounts to a bit shy of 0.67% of the country that is currently serving in the armed forces. Canada has a population of roughly 37 million with 68,000 active duty and 27,000 reserve members of their armed forces. Again, apologies if I screwed up the math, but I think that comes out to ~0.25% of the country that is currently serving in the armed forces. The UK is 0.29%, and Australia is 0.32%. Basically, more than double the % of our population is currently serving in the military compared to those other countries.