VMB
I think it's possible that perception and reality are two different things in this case,We might view ourselves as one of the most violent cultures on the planet and the rest of the world might view us that way also but is it really so?
Look at the terrorism and bombings coming from the middle east and south east Asia, the wars and genocide in Africa, there have been mass shootings in Canada, Sweden,Great Britan and other places, even China, where they don't have guns , there have been mass killings.
Violence is a problem that we as humans, world wide, have always had to deal with.
I agree with you that we need to change attitudes, the way we did with smoking, but I think the attitude we need to change is the thinking that guns are the problem.
I believe that the problems we are seeing now in America are cultural, our society is changing, we do not treat the mentally ill any more, we have games that train our children to kill people,we used to believe in "do un to others" but now it's "do it to them, before they do it to us" and while I'm doing it to others I might just get my 15 minutes of fame on the nightly news casts!,and we vote for politicians that we know are lieing to us, and represent and are bought and paid for by big business and not us, "we the people". And instead of addressing the problems, of dealing with the mentally ill, gang violence and enforcing the laws to fight crime, it looks like our government, or people in our government are trying to disarm us.
Right here in N.Y. a man who has never been in trouble with the law is facing 7 years in jail for selling a gun that was legal before the SAFE act, and made illegal after the SAFE act. I just saw on one of the news casts another New yorker was arrested, they called him an "unlicensed gun smith" and seized 300 guns. In New York they are starting to Make criminals out of law abiding citizens and they are taking our guns.
I know that it sounds like I am some kind of gun fanatic, but I am not.I own a few shot guns, a couple of black powder guns and a 22 and I rarely hunt with my guns any more because I love archery so much. And politically I do not side with the right or the left, I have always been centrist in my thinking, I believe in compromise and working things out amongst ourselves, but what we are dealing with here in N.Y., and America as a whole, has little to do with gun violence, it looks more like disarming the citizenery.
We should be dealing with our problems, and not making ordinary citizens criminals.And we can only do this by talking amongst ourselves,compromising and agreeing with each other and voting for those who will really work for "we the people" to change our government and our society.
Kevin