More of the madness of US gun laws

I find the whole "I need a gun" attitude quite scary,
but American friends find our gun control / gun laws unbelievable.

and the pictures you occasionally see of someone shopping with a rifle over the shoulder...

there are nearly as many guns in the US as people, but only 1 in 3 owns a gun, and I'm told the majority of gun owners only have one, this leaves the small minority ( possibly 10% with 5 or 6 ). yes i know people in the UK with multiple guns, mostly farms with a rifle and a shotgun. but in the US it's heavy duty weaponry held by some of these idiots.

There are actually more guns than people, 393m as of a 2018 survey, and there are probably more now with everything that's happening over there. One in 3 Americans "admit" to owning a gun, and almost half admit to living in a house under the protection of a gun. It's very easy to get a gun in most states (although gun shops have waiting periods and criminal history checks), second hand guns are not policed nearly as well, and they can be purchased (legally) from many websites if you know where to look (the second hand market is 10 times bigger than the new market). Most second hand gun purchased do not need registration in any way, so you can figure out what the "real" percentage of people are that own guns might be. 

Europeans will likley never understand USA gun laws, and vice versa. Personally I'm from the UK, but lived in the USA for 25 years (Arizona, where many people carry guns). I had the "crazy ass gun carrying Americans" mentality for about the first  10 years I was there. Right up until I purchased a house a little bit out of town on a large lot. Got into a heated discussion about guns with a friend, from which I took one paragraph away from: he said "think about this, if someone breaks into your house, they are 100% going to have a gun. The nearest police station is 15 minutes away. Explain to me how you are going to protect your family". The more I lay in bed at night thinking about this, the more it played on me. Every sound, creak etc. Just thinking how helpless I would be if some nutter broke in with a gun (and let's face it, there are a lot of them). Did you know that most gun crimes in America never get solved? In a robbery, you are more likely to get shot so there are no witnesses, should there be contact between the homeowner and a robber. I ended up buying a couple of guns (semi-automatic and pump-action shot gun) and getting special training. I never had to use a gun in anger (thank goodness), but I slept a whole lot better knowing they there. Did get a few rabbits though :-) As a side note, my neighbor did get broken into, and he did have a gun. We are still friends and he didn't lose anything, so you can probably figure out what happened there.

Now, all that being said, I am still not a gun advocate (at all). I live in Portugal now where guns are just as rare as the are in the UK, and I feel very safe here and I don't want (or would have) a gun in the house. I do however understand that no matter how many people don't like it, or complain about it, it will likley be a long time before anyone is able to take guns away from Americans. It is part of the constitution, part of life over there (in most states), and more importantly, part of an ingrained distrust of government dating back to 1776 (in which of course the UK played a big part of). Even if they outlawed guns altogether, they would never get many of them as most Americans have them stashed in a hiding place or a safe, or buried in the yard, and they are not likley to hand over their guns to any government agency they don't trust. That is just my opinion from 25 years of living there. American attitudes go like "if they outlaw guns, only criminals will have them", and that is an attitude that will take a while (probably generations) to change.

Just my opinion, don't want to argue with anyone for or against.

This opinion is based on your how many years living in this environment? 

If you never lived in the environment, you'll never understand (as I said).

It's based on simple reality.

It's three in the morning, you've got somebody wandering around in your house who expects you to be there... while you've just been woken by a creak and don't know what's going on.

I know who's more likely to get the first shot on target.

And that's exactly it. If you have had some formal gun training, you're probably better equipped than the criminal who (probably) hasn't. And, if you hear him in the house, you are possibly in a better position to take over the situation and subdue him (rather than shoot him). If you don't have a gun, you'd better hope the person who broke into your house is a "nice guy". 

It's fine for people who've never lived in an environment where most (probably all) criminals have guns. I used to be of the mind "put your hands up and pray they feel sorry for you, take your stuff and trust you'll never ID them", but the fact is, if you catch a glimpse of them, or hear them, they are more likley to "kill the evidence" than not. Personally, after living in that environment for 25+ years, I want some kind of self defense that's at least on par with what the robber has. That's just me, everyone has their limits.

Oh, and you can get gun safes that actually fit into the side of your bed, quickly accessible by a code. I always kept my guns in one of these safes. 

There's 2.5m or so domestic burglaries in the US per year.

Approximately 100 of those result in either the burglar or the householder being fatally shot.

www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/gun-violence-and-the-irrational-fear-of-home-invasion/266613/



Many times more many children (6x in 2022) are killed or injured than there are defensive uses.