Las Vegas death toll over 20 now

I have been to different parts of the US, most recently to Florida at Easter, and most notably as the best man at my friend’s wedding to an American in Maine in 2011. On the whole I found them to be warm, friendly people who, contrary to reputation, were interested in me and where I was from. Queuing for hours on end to meet Disney Princesses gives you a lot of opportunity to talk to new people and they were unfailing polite and interesting.

On some levels we are incredibly similar culturally to the US, but on others hugely different. Rightly or wrongly gun ownership is ingrained in a large proportion of the population’s psyche, in the same way that they see any form of state health care as creeping communism. None of that makes them bad people but it does make them hard to understand from our own cultural and societal norms. It also makes it incredible different to bring about any meaningful change.

But to answer your point about safety I completely agree. I never felt unsafe in Florida, although I certainly was sub-consciously aware of the fact I was in a country that has a proliferation of guns, and remember thinking about that a lot before I went.Even seeing a professionally trained firearms officer in this country makes me feel absolutely uncomfortable and that we are failing a bit as a human race, so the notion that buying and owning a gun for personal safety or pleasure a part of American life is beyond baffling.

 

Some NRA Gun advocate on tv used an argument that" their was more deaths by RTA's than by guns but no one was calling for Car control" (?!) Their excuses are mind boggling