General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I'm from the UK where debates about guns don't exist. [View all]HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)and actually lot more to do with urban crime. And I suspect that has very much to do with the complicated interplay of perceptions of individualism, crime and the sense of personal self-empowerment provided by a firearm.
Europe and Scandinavia may not have had a frontier in a very long time, but frontiers may not really be the point. Although I do agree that "The Frontier" is a popular feature of literary attempts to explain America.
Consider for example that Europe certainly had one hundred years of Viking raiders who pillaged the defenseless not on frontiers but at refuges of civilization. Well, at least that's the story we get handed to us from the victims...
It doesn't take a frontier to make a landscape lawless and violent. It just takes people willing to act in lawless or violent fashion.