Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Sarge
Dana - You have made some good points and I have truthfully run out of ways to refute them. Guns have and will remain a part of US society, but it does have it's downside.
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Thanks
And there have been a lot of good points raised against gun control here. Certainly made me think and reconsider my own stance.
I think it does pretty much boil down to two very distinct cultures. neither one is better than the other, but what is appropriate to one is not necessarily appropriate to the other.
I do believe, that America cuold make itself a safer country and decrease the amount of gun deaths by imposing
some controls. But I doubt it is either feasible or desirable for America to take the absolute stance against guns that works in the UK. There are too many factors at play - gun ownership has a huge part in your history and your sense of self as a nation, but also in modern culture. Whilst some people dohunt in the UK it is a much more prominent part of US culture - probably plays a big a role in the US as football does in the UK. By which I mean it is, for some communities, a much valued part of growing up and inter generational relationships. Learning to hunt and going hunting with Dad seems to me to have similar elements to the way many British youth take on their dad's football team.
We don't have large tracts of wilderness full of game. There are places where hunting takes place but they are far more the preserve of the landowning elite - a throw back to a much older culture. Alongside that runs a working class culture of hunting which primarily focuses on small game (rabbits) and illegal poaching of landowners game - both of which have largely fallen by the wayside with the advent of mass farming and cheap meat, and with the urbanisation of much of the country.