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Thread: Private guns in American families

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[quote=TRAVELLERMIKE,255465]Guestkun makes some very rational observations.  Individual liberty and personal responsibility are fundamental to US democracy.  Whereas other governments around the world feel empowered to tamper with the rights and liberties of their citizens on the grounds of protecting people against themselves, in this case the US government is constrained by law not so to do.

I do not live in the US, but I guess that most people there wish there were less guns in 'circulation', and are concerned about the level of gun crime.  However, I suspect only a small minority of those people believe that the problem should be fixed by the government restricting the freedom of its law abiding citizens.

I think it is probably true that the gun is a part of American Culture, but recoginising the very high number of guns per head of population, I also believe that US citizens who possess firearms for legitimate reasons, do so with a sense of responsibilty and maturity which would be difficult for the citizens of other nations to match, were they to enjoy the same liberty. The 'culture' is also one of familiarity and respect for the gun.

I am glad that where I live, in the UK, we have a long tradition of mostly un-armed police officers, and relatively low levels of gun-crime.  That has been achieved at the cost of substantial restrictions on personal liberty, generally accepted as a reasonable 'trade' by the population.  Unfortunately the levels of gun crime are increasing, and increased restrictions on personal liberty seem unable to check the rise.  I dearly hope we do not end up in the situation of having comparable levels of criminal gun use to the US, but where law abiding citizens have sacrificed most of their personal liberty losing the battle![/quote]

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