I think there is a gun culture here, just a very different culture to what is in the US.
As you say, people call the police here. Guns are seen as something for national defence or a hobby, not for things that go bump in the night.

This is exactly it.

The phenomena of mass shootings in the US is far bigger and more complex than merely gun regulations and gun ownership.

The curious thing from a research perspective is that the event repeats rather frequently. So, over the years there should be a lot of data.....hey look eggheads and thick-glasses users have crunched the numbers:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...47272719301446

It seems that personal freedom is effectively more important than feeling calm and happy.

Yeah. It’s an individualism thing too…. American exceptionalism that’s been pounded into a largely isolated culture. If you think of it, cultural things flow out of the US like crazy, but not so much the other way. Not a lot of foreign media, everything must be translated to English and Americanized and until recently passport uptake was slow - so US folk pretty much stayed in the US.

There seem to be a lot of folks that think that the majority of Americans walk around with guns. In fact only about 30% of Americans own guns, and of that many are are folks who own a single gun - and keep it away safely. And most Americans are in favour of stronger gun safety laws - which are consistently blocked for a number of factors mentioned throughout this thread.

Unfortunately, due to the US's lax gun laws, as well as a myriad of other reasons, we wind up with these gun nuts, folks with gun fetishes, paranoid self preservationists, folks with phallic complexes, and what not... have a look at this photo project to see the small minority of folks who are the owners of the vast majority of firearms in the US. Why have one hunting rifle when sixty-seven will do?

I'd wager that the vast majority of these folks would not meet the conditions for gun ownership in places like Switzerland, Canada, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.

Read the captions for some truly chilling stories.
https://www.gabrielegalimberti.com/the-ameriguns/

https://www.gabrielegalimberti.com/the-ameriguns/

__________________
“one of the good guys”

Tom

Of course it's not everyone, even if it's only 10%, that's already 30+ million people :/

Yes... but did you have a look at the link, to see what some of those folks are actually up to?

I guess we can talk about semantics a bit more, but in principle this was my idea.

I think the vast majority doesn't have shooting as a hobby though.There's nothing wrong with shooting sports but I wonder if that could be classified as gun culture. As for keeping your gun after military service that is obvious for defence reason, Switzerland is not in Nato or anything like that and people are believed to respect the rules i.e. keep them locked, in safety.
Yes, I've seen the video posted by someone else, that looked like a proper redneck shooting festival but it's just a hobby for them, they're not against the "govinment" or anything like that.

Yup. Some people like guns as much as I like beer and wine, or as other people like cars, shoes, jewelry, or white sneakers. Conspicuous consumption.

There were a few fun ones. Like the 44 YO dad that looks like 60+ in a house with tin roof, the new rich with mandatory fireplace (in warm place), piano and guns, the irony of a safe box named liberty, the woman with the serenity pillow and great quotes as:

Overall, I saw more or less people that it's more or less integrated to society and have guns as hobby. Only 1 woman use gun for the job. I'd be more worried about the idiots that aspire to be like the people in the photos but don't have the IQ or control over their emotions to do it. The youtube influencer is bit on the side of evil. I guess that's the downside, that several of them feel so sure about doing the right thing and share that idea in their communities. But things can change, smoking tobacco is low status these days, guns can be like tobacco one day.

For the people in the photos I guess worst thing can happen is they use one day one of their toys to end their own lives. Or kids stay away from parents when they become antigun adults.

… or kids, feeling depressed decides to end it all. Not only for themselves, but for other family members, their teachers and classmates, their neighbours and random school pupils.

Nothing in those photos give ne confidence that all the guns are usually stored securely and beyond access to their children.

I see Canada will now buy-back all remaining semi-automatic weapons and ban hand gun imports and sales. A brave, but necessary step. About the only gun you will be able to buy will be for hunting.

But with their porous southern border it may be for naught.

And with the super-porous US southern border, it would be impossible to do this in the US. Mexico/US economies are inextricably intertwined (as the idiot TX governor found out when he tried to put extra controls on trucks coming in--major mess...you cannot imagine the volume of traffic across that border!) I wonder how CA is going to defend itself against the "push" from the south? (or the "pull" from the north?)

They aren't here, why would they be in the US?

Tom

On top of what Axa said, this is already a huge number, but more importantly, it is also a contributing factor to the reasons why the US police is more trigger-happy than the police in the rest of the developed world. They simply don't know if someone is carrying a gun and they would rather play it "safe" and shoot rather than being shot.

Of course they are, and even if they weren't, is this your argument in favour of gun culture/thing in the USA?

Because...tradition

https://news.google.com/articles/CBM...S&ceid=US%3Aen

And….

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

The actual person the shooter wanted to confront wasn't on site, so he began shooting other people.
Why waste a perfect opportunity to go postal, right?