I'm from the UK where debates about guns don't exist.

[Lars77]

108. Guns are a deeply embedded part of American culture, in Europe they are not.

As a Scandinavian i come from a totally different kind of society.

But I've had this discussion with someone in Kentucky. Basically her argument was "what do you do if someone breaks into your house?".

I said that i will probably get out of my house and call the police. But even if i confront the burglar he probably won't have a gun. Might have a knife and that's dangerous enough but it still doesn't warrant me arming myself in my opinion.

Then she said "What if he takes all your stuff before the police gets there"?

In Scandinavia that might happen, as there are plenty of small communities far away from police stations. I did not want to be condescending to her, but basically we have invented insurance so that you do not have to put yourself in harms way to protect your things. It really is that simple.

American gun culture comes from the time of the frontier, where people lived in territories where the federal government had no power yet, and where the sheriff might be far away or not exist at all. Settlers had to protect themselves against bandits, native Americans and wild animals, as they lived in a territory where the government did not have monopoly of violence (Max Weber).

In Europe there has never been a frontier, and so Europeans have never had the need to arm themselves. I know some people in the US argue that perhaps Hitler would not have come to power etc if Europeans had guns, but this is a false argument, because the original purpose of arms in the US was not to protect themselves against their own government. It was to form militias to protect themselves against invaders (until the Fed. Government decided to raise a permanent army), and to protect themselves on the frontier.

In all European countries, criminals can buy guns and get guns. Some of them do, some few of them actually use them. But it seems to me that in order to use a gun against another person in Europe, you need to cross over boundary that is simply not there in the US, because there you can assume that the other person is armed as well.