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The love of guns in the United States has been well documented, as have multiple mass shootings across the country such as those in Orlando, San Bernardino, Newtown, and Virginia. The ease of access to guns in American society comes at a shocking cost.
As of September 2016, almost 11,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence. Despite this high death toll, mass shootings in America show no sign of disappearing.
The Stateside obsession with guns can appear baffling to UK observers unfamiliar with its origins. So just how did this gun culture become so deep-rooted in the American psyche?
BBC source: Why Are Americans so Obsessed with Guns?
Wikipedia: Gun politics in the United States
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Why Are Americans So Obsessed With Guns?
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(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @11:47PM
Calling BS on this:
> Without privately owned guns, there would not be a United States of America; there would be a bunch of British colonies.
Obvious counterexamples from different eras are Canada and India, along with many other former British colonies, many of which left the empire without major wars.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:25AM
Which of them were the major center of goods and profit that the colonies within current US borders were for the British again? Oh, right, none of them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by tekk on Tuesday January 10 2017, @07:40AM
You mean like Canada, the world center of the incredibly lucrative fur trade which was the reason the British beat the French up over it in the first place?
Or maybe India, not like any valuable products were extracted from there. No sir, haven't heard of tea (literally the reason the subcontinent was conquered) or exotic spices or anything like that.
Those Caribbean holdings probably weren't worth anything either, right?
The British had plenty of holdings that were on the same rough level of value as the US, and I would argue that India was worth more than the US, all of which managed to separate from the empire without a civil war.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 10 2017, @11:21AM
Erm... sorry, no. Not a one of the above came anywhere close to matching the production value of the American colonies. Not even matching just the southern colonies.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 10 2017, @10:32AM
Obvious counterexamples from different eras are Canada and India, along with many other former British colonies, many of which left the empire without major wars.
The key phrase is "different eras". Even if we were to suppose that the British empire would have collapsed on time anyway despite the additional economic support of the American colonies, that still means a century or more that the American colonies would remain under the thumb of the British.