An article by Sarah Mackinlay at 18 Doughty Street covers the Virginia Tech shooting, and gingerly expresses some mystification at the “gun culture” of the United States:
American gun culture and lax laws are so at odds with the rest of the developed world that in Britain we find it difficult to understand how repeated massacres like this can take place. Why do Americans continue to tolerate something that condemns thousands of innocents to death every year?
Not all Americans support this way of thinking. But it is a vast federal nation, with different laws and cultures in different states. In Virginia, the scene of yesterday’s shootings, they passed a law a few years ago that restricted gun purchases to a maximum of one per week. In the neighbouring District of Columbia, the law bans the possession of all guns.
Much of the problem is rooted deep in the American belief of individual freedom, imbued with the right to defend oneself and ia [sic] suspicion of government. Some believe that as sad as such shootings as yesterdays are; it is a price to pay to protect individual freedoms.
UPDATE: Jules Crittendon, in a link round-up at Forward Movement, includes a link to a German view and another link explaining why German views on just about anything are irrelevant.
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