Originally Posted by Chris

The problem is that the personal right to defend liberty via lethal force is so prominent in the American psyche, and the definition of liberty is rather broad.*

It is entirely possible for a society to maintain relatively high rates of personal gun ownership without resorting to regular bouts of mass slaughter - Switzerland manages it, but then in Switzerland they’ve all had military training and they have a different view of themselves as a people.

America’s problem is the lethal mix of modern automatic and semi-auto firearms combined with a Wild West pioneer mentality, reinforced by a constitutional document almost all of them seem to revere as a near-religious text.

Unpicking all of that is the work of generations, and must be done one small step at a time. Sadly, a lot more kids are going to die in the meantime.

* Any country that permits the personal ownership of heavy calibre machine guns, under any circumstances, is defining ‘liberty’ very loosely indeed, IMO