OT: Americans love their guns

[Paul Rubin]

Steve Lamb <grey at despair.dmiyu.org> writes:
>     If guns were such a overriding factor why is it the UK has as high
> if not higher rate of gun related violence than the US?

Whaaat??  Where did you hear that the UK has anywhere near as much gun
violence as the US??  I've always heard it's much lower.  Do you have
a cite?

> For that matter why is it in several other European nations
> (Netherlands and Switzerland IIRC) where there is a legal
> requirement for all males over a certain age to be armed (standing
> militia) that there is so little gun related violence?

Just Switzerland, and those guns are rifles and they take special ammo
that is issued to you in sealed cans that you keep in your house in
case you'er called up for service.  It's not a handgun that you can
easily go mug someone with.  And as someone else put it, it's not your
gun, it's the government's gun and every so often a government
inspector comes to your house to make sure you still have the gun and
ammo and that the ammo cans are still sealed.  I don't know what
happens to you if they find the ammo they issued you is partly used up
outside of official exercises, but it can't be anything nice.  It's
nothing like the US where you can buy as many handguns as you want and
shoot them whenever you want.