Quote:
Originally Posted by whomario
It is however not in question (to me at least), that the easy accessibility and resulting gun culture lowers the inhibitions and makes them more 'accesible' from a mental perspective as well. And this has nothing to do with media and the likes, because there is pretty no difference (anymore) between western countries.
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That makes sense, but I don't think restrictions on who can buy guns can really put a dent in the number of guns in the United States or damper the gun culture. How many millions of millions own weapons in the U.S. that wouldn't be prevented from doing so even if ownership restrictions based on crimes already committed and mental diagnoses already made could be tightened up? It's still worth doing those things, but that's yet another part of the gun control debate I find disingenuous - Americans pointing to how things are done in Europe but also claiming they don't want an outright ban of guns here. How exactly do we get to those drastically reduced levels of gun ownership without a broader ban that impacts non-felons and non-schizophrenics, etc? What laws get guns away from CU Tiger or all of my neighbors in Idaho? Unless you get guns away from them, we're not becoming Europe when it comes to gun culture. In fact, I think we've seen that the more gun rights are threatened (even just as rhetoric that doesn't go anywhere), the stronger the gun culture becomes. Just the irrational fear that Obama was going to take away their guns caused the best 8 years ever for gun sales. Governments aren't great at regulating culture generally - except when they go full totalitarian.