I agree with a majority of your post, but there's one part that you might be confused about.
Quote Originally Posted by curious aardvark View Post
Just bear in mind that the states is totally untypical on a global scale.
Pretty much the rest of the world treats guns as a tool, not as a toy or an indelible part of their national identity.
Americans often mistakenly believe that guns are rare in the uk. Not so, you just need a reason to own one, and then you need a licence. But if you want one, you can have one - you just need to want it for a reason, and be able to prove that reason.
The vast majority of the population don't need one and don't want one.
And that 'don't want one' approach is what generally confuses the average american.
Brits don't want a gun because they don't need a gun.
Very few americans can understand that. And very few brits can understand why americans want guns they don't need.
That and the english language are the two biggest differences between our two peoples.
Only the absolute bottom of the IQ scale in the US would ever consider an actual gun to be a toy, and the ones who do wouldn't likely be able to legally buy a handgun (or even carry one they already own) in over half the states. While several rural families do teach their children to hunt at a fairly young age, they teach responsibility along with it.
Second, there are only a few states where buying and carrying a pistol is a largely unregulated process, judging the entire country on them is like making an opinion on the entire EU based on Amsterdam's drug policies. For the rest of the country, buying a handgun requires a background check and licence almost as difficult to obtain as one in the UK with the important exception that America recognizes self defense as a reason for carrying a gun.
That's the big difference between the US and other places with regards to firearms, is that the use of a firearm (or in the UK even a knife) in self-defense is kind of an unfathomable concept to most non-Americans.