"Why do you Americans care so much about guns?"

[Bennettjh]

Tell 'em 'Merica.

 

[MAJB Retired]

Because I can!

 

[jamil]

:

Many Europeans are used to being told what to do and being, largely, taken care of. A very large portion of their self-reliant, adventurous stock left between about 1600 and 1900. Our country benefited, but many people here (more and more) now long to be told what to do and to be taken care of.

Why do we care so much? Because our cultural heritage emphasizes self-reliance to a much greater degree than does European cultural heritage.

This is the crux of why they think it's so odd. It's a completely different mindset that shapes what we think of each other.

They think we're cowboys. We think they're pussies.

Because I can!

If they were freer to own what they want, probably fewer Germans would think it's crazy. But things are turning here towards their way.

 

[Jeepsandguns]

I had a coworker from London that couldn't understand why we cared about guns so much. There was nothing I could do to help him understand. He was of the mindset that no government in the modern world could be evil.

 

[Fordtough25]

Am I the only one that can't stand the term "'Merica"?

 

[cosermann]

...He was of the mindset that no government in the modern world could be evil.

Because we're beyond all that. Human nature has changed. And history is a mere curiosity, does not inform the modern world, and is irrelevant.

 

[jamil]

I had a coworker from London that couldn't understand why we cared about guns so much. There was nothing I could do to help him understand. He was of the mindset that no government in the modern world could be evil.

That's the progressive, elitist, arrogant mindset. It's a misplaced confidence that humans can overcome our inherent selfish nature with an altruistic nature.

But I think there's a difference between being a gun nut and just being a proponent of the 2A. For me, guns are not only a means for protection, but also a hobby. I shoot guns for fun. For me a trip to the range isn't just about training.

Shooting guns for fun seems to blow their minds most. How many times have we heard pansy Piers Morgan say, "you don't *need* assault weapons to defend yourself"? But here, still, our government does not limit ownership rights to what we need. We can own things simply because we want them.

HoughMade hit that point a bit earlier. It's beyond their cultural understanding to accept that ordinary citizens in the US are allowed to own things that can harm themselves or others. They are conditioned to be dependents, to be told what they can't do and what they're allowed to do.

We can still enjoy doing what we want because the mindset of our ancestors emphasized personal liberty and personal responsibility. Do what you want, and be responsible for what you do. But progressivism has all but eroded that mindset. Eventually we'll be just like Europe.

 

[JeremiahJohnson]

Why are 2A supporting citizens who seldom if ever get into trouble with the law referred to as "Gun Nuts",

While,

Illegal gun shooting recidivistic criminals don't get a title...except perhaps societal victim of western culture...?



I still like "because we can".

 

[jamil]

Why are 2A supporting citizens who seldom if ever get into trouble with the law referred to as "Gun Nuts",

While,

Illegal gun shooting recidivistic criminals don't get a title...except perhaps societal victim of western culture...?



I still like "because we can".

I think about everyone's response for why distills down to that. Because we can. And I am a gun nut because I like shooting and collecting guns a whole lot more than the average person. Some people are car nuts. They love cars way more than the average person. We're fans, or to say it the longer way, we're fanatics. I'm okay with that. With the average gun shooting recidivistic criminals, I'd wager it's not as much about the guns as it is about the crime and the status.

 

[JeremiahJohnson]

I think about everyone's response for why distills down to that. Because we can. And I am a gun nut because I like shooting and collecting guns a whole lot more than the average person. Some people are car nuts. They love cars way more than the average person. We're fans, or to say it the longer way, we're fanatics. I'm okay with that. With the average gun shooting recidivistic criminals, I'd wager it's not as much about the guns as it is about the crime and the status.

That's not what people mean when they say gun nuts though. I'm a gun nut for the same reasons, but when the media uses it or the populous uses it they mean drunken stupid uneducated narcissistic wife beating moron.

 

[rambone]

If you wouldn't do it, why assume everyone else would? I'm not saying EVERYONE woukd stand up, but I think enough of us would that trying to do that these days woukd be a bad idea.

Some people would resist, yes. But they will die ingloriously and be remembered as criminals.

Just look at how the Drug War wages on. Sure, its a "bad idea" to raid homes at midnight over victimless crimes. The authoritarians don't care. They aren't interested in a fair fight... or justice. They come for the law-breakers, one at a time, as they sleep.

The same M.O. will be followed in phasing out gun freedom. It will not be some dramatic house-to-house confiscation... no. The laws will creep forward, and soon enough we require permission for everything, and felonies are handed out like candy. Then one by one, the law-breakers will get raided.


Its already happening.

"Immediately I’ve got two M-16 machine gun rifles within five inches from my face on both sides. One cop came up with his gun in my face and the other one proceeded to put my hands behind my back – conducted a raid on my house and put me under arrest for the sole purpose of owning and possessing assault rifles...."


California doubles its number of full-time gun-seizure agents raiding homes of 'prohibited persons' | Police State USA

 

[spencer rifle]

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!" -Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (Chapter 1 "Arrest")

 

[AtTheMurph]

As a contrast, the trip I got to take to China a few years ago, we got to talking about life in the states versus that in China--Hong Kong in particular. Our hosts were quite intrigued with being able to own land, guns, etc. The one young woman I was talking to had never even operated a lawn mower or owned gardening tools. Now we didn't spend a lot of time talking about guns but they were mentioned and they were more interested than indignant.

I have a Chinese exchange student. She turned 18 about a month and a half ago and I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday. She said "someting American"

I took her, my daughter and wife to Atterbury and we shot guns.

when I grabbed my weapons fromt he car she asked where I got those. I told her from the house. Her eyes bugged out. She couldn't believe we had guns at the house. And she loved shooting.

 

[hooky]

I have had this happen to me before too. I just tell em, because I'm an American and it's my right under the Constitution. I grew up around guns, that was instilled in my brain at very early age.

It's your right regardless. The constitution was designed to grant very specific powers to the government, not grant us our rights. Regulating firearms wasn't one of the powers we gave to the gov't.

 

[Hoosier45]

I work for a German company and had something similar happen. There was a group of us at dinner. Somehow American gun culture came up. I was late to the conversation, but a woman from Austria (there were also people from China, Germany, and Belgium there) was saying something about how America is a young country, hasn't been through the centuries of violence that Europe has, so Europeans want nothing to do with violence and thus don't want guns. Once America has grown up a little, you won't want guns either. I stepped in and said, well we as Americans won our independence with the use of privately held guns, and they are a symbol of that hard won freedom, from one of those European countries. Maybe we as Americans grew up with parents and grandparents that fought in European wars. Maybe we keep our guns so that the violence we have seen throughout Europe doesn't happen here?

That was greeted with eye rolls, dead silence, and a change of subject. That dinner took place last summer in Atlanta, GA, and sadly most of the Americans at the dinner agreed with the woman.

 

[jamil]

I work for a German company and had something similar happen. There was a group of us at dinner. Somehow American gun culture came up. I was late to the conversation, but a woman from Austria (there were also people from China, Germany, and Belgium there) was saying something about how America is a young country, hasn't been through the centuries of violence that Europe has, so Europeans want nothing to do with violence and thus don't want guns. Once America has grown up a little, you won't want guns either. I stepped in and said, well we as Americans won our independence with the use of privately held guns, and they are a symbol of that hard won freedom, from one of those European countries. Maybe we as Americans grew up with parents and grandparents that fought in European wars. Maybe we keep our guns so that the violence we have seen throughout Europe doesn't happen here?

That was greeted with eye rolls, dead silence, and a change of subject. That dinner took place last summer in Atlanta, GA, and sadly most of the Americans at the dinner agreed with the woman.

I think my eyes would have been rolling at that. What an incredibly condescending remark. U.S history did not start in 1776. We arose because of an inevitable need for Western civilization to have a free nation. It had to happen somewhere. The U.S. is where the greatest people that THEIR ancestors pissed on went to, and they helped build the most power nation on Earth. Of COURSE the Austrian wants to condescend. If Europe is so beyond us socially, why then did their brightest people move here? Who the **** immigrates to Austria?

 

[actaeon277]

I work for a German company and had something similar happen. There was a group of us at dinner. Somehow American gun culture came up. I was late to the conversation, but a woman from Austria (there were also people from China, Germany, and Belgium there) was saying something about how America is a young country, hasn't been through the centuries of violence that Europe has, so Europeans want nothing to do with violence and thus don't want guns. Once America has grown up a little, you won't want guns either. I stepped in and said, well we as Americans won our independence with the use of privately held guns, and they are a symbol of that hard won freedom, from one of those European countries. Maybe we as Americans grew up with parents and grandparents that fought in European wars. Maybe we keep our guns so that the violence we have seen throughout Europe doesn't happen here?

That was greeted with eye rolls, dead silence, and a change of subject. That dinner took place last summer in Atlanta, GA, and sadly most of the Americans at the dinner agreed with the woman.

They've grown up and want nothing to do with violence?
WWI didn't start here.
WWII didn't start here.
Bosnia/Serbia
Korea
Vietnam
Arab Spring
Tianamon
Those all sound foreign. Doesn't sound like they've abandoned violence.

 

[Dim Mak]

Don't let them off easy. Stick the knife in hard and fast.

*rolls up sleeve*

"Because we Americans don't like number tattooed on our arms."

*rolls sleeve back down*

My exact thoughts before I scrolled to your comments. If they don't get the point after a comment like this they're beyond any help period.

 

[The Bubba Effect]

I just think it is nice we let the krauts have opinions about things after we beat their asses and saved them from the Soviets. It says a lot about us as a free, principled people.

 

[cobber]

Who the **** immigrates to Austria?

Turks and Libyans?