ubernoir wrote:
You have a higher per capita murder rate which arguably could be connected to gun ownership and we have a government which sometimes treats its citizens like children.

Let me say this. There is a connection, but I'm not sure its direct.

We have a high murder rate and a high rate of gun ownership because we are a more violent society. Banning guns, or allowing them, may, or may not, actually relate to our murder rate. The same might be offered about banning violent movies. I've offered that we shouldn't execute people, because we communicate a message through doing so that killing people is a reasonable way to solve problems in peacetime. But regulations of individuals... well, you can't force people to be something they're not.

Our violence is related to our independence but not directly. We're more violent because of our history. The UK has quite a fine history of violence but most of it was committed overseas. In the US, it happened here. The French-Indian War, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Spanish American War, and the Civil War.... We had a period of about 100 years in which each generation fought on U.S. soil.

After, our western frontier experience was distinct from Canada's in that they deployed a strong federal police force to secure the frontier, whereas the US left security up to local governments, who were often too poor to keep order... Ultimately, Civil War vets took their guns west after the war and fended for themselves. And particularly in the south, the mutual distrust during a subsequent 100 year apartheid society that followed the 100 years of war provided a culture that was by then used to needing guns for war with a reason to keep them at peace.

I don't think Europe's most recent century of war (from the Franco-Prussian war to WWII) had the same impact because people didn't take the guns home after the battles were over.

Clearly, by the 1970's, these rationales for keeping firearms were gone, and at the same time you saw a rising tide of inner city violence caused by the peak of the suburban abandonment of the city, and thus you saw the sort of gun control laws beginning in the 1980's that this whole debate refers to. The pendellum is, today, swinging the other direction in many respects. Our cities are becoming safer, and the rates of violence are going down, but, like racism, it will take several generations to work some of this history out.

RE: Guns for Safety? Dream On, Scalia. - washingtonpost.com