Re: @Robert Helpmann??
Firstly, there needs to be a more nuanced discussion than simply using the word 'guns'. There are 2 countries in the 'western' world with comparable* levels of gun ownership as US. These are Canada and Switzerland. However in Canada the majority of guns are hunting weapons, in Switzerland these are military weapons that people have from compulsory military service and have very strict (and very strictly observed) rules around carrying, storage and transport. In the US, the vast majority of guns are handguns that are relatively easy to carry on one's person and/or conceal and/or kept readily accessible as 'self-defence' in homes.
I think this a major key. Gun advocates say that high gun ownership promotes deterrence, that no-one is willing to commit a gun crime because anyone else might pull a gun on them. But I think in reality, all it promotes is that baddies carry bigger and more guns, and are less inclined to show restraint to bystanders, exactly because the bystanders could be armed.
The other big key is a deep-rooted social fear. No two ways about it, black people and white people in US are afraid of each other. Not in the xenophobic European 'I'm afraid they will take my jobs' kind of way, but in a paranoid 'they will kill me if they get a chance' kind of way. Not, of course, everyone and everywhere, but enough to make a huge difference in firearm murders.
*Still less than US, but not order-of-magnitudes less as in all Western Europe
Biting the hand that feeds IT
