Why do Americans love guns so much?

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Being a cop is pretty safe job here, it seldom even cracks the top ten in terms of danger (in contrast to delivering pizzas, a job we let teenagers do yet is often near the top of the list)...

It used to be common to... drive around with rifles clearly visible in the rear window of your vehicle...

...clearly something other than the availability of guns lead both to our crime problems and our overly aggressive cop problems.

Anyway, I'm not the one who's afraid to step outside without a gun.

There's no fear involved, I carry a gun for the same reason I keep a spare tire in the trunk of my car, a fire extinguisher in my kitchen, and a first aid kit in my backpack, they're all things you'd really rather have and not need than need and not have. Maybe the Boy Scouts should set up in other parts of the world, I'm shocked at how foreign a concept "be prepared" is outside of the US.

I'm pretty sure the articles I linked were not opinion pieces created by me and were actual news articles. This really avoids my point anyway, that being it's easy to find news articles about this subject. The problem is that it needs a proper scientific study.

While anyone can study the issue, maybe you arn't aware of this but, a large portion of the unbiased research done is funded by the government. Private corporations have no interest in such issues, the have interest in ventures that generate profit. eg The selling of arms and all the other items that go along with the culture.

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the CDC was openly biased in opposing gun rights. CDC official and research head Patrick O’Carroll stated in a 1989 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, “We’re going to systematically build a case that owning firearms causes deaths.” This sounds more like activist rhetoric than it does scientific research, as O’Carroll effectively set out with the goal of confirmation bias, saying “We will prove it,” and not the scientific objectiveness of asking “Does it?”
‘It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol — cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly — and banned.’

O’Carroll went on to deny he had said this, claiming he was misquoted. However, his successor and director of the CDC National Center of Injury Prevention branch Mark Rosenberg told Rolling Stone in 1993 that he “envisions a long term campaign, similar to tobacco use and auto safety, to convince Americans that guns are, first and foremost, a public health menace.” He went on to tell the Washington Post in 1994 “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol — cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly — and banned.”

CDC leaders were not shy about their intentions of banning guns from the public. Sure enough, they acted on their desires. In October 1993, The New England Journal of Medicine released a study funded by the CDC to the tune of $1.7 million, entitled “Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home.” The leader author was Dr. Arthur Kellermann, an epidemiologist, physician, and outspoken advocate of gun control.

In the study, Kellerman concluded that people who kept guns in their homes were 2.7 times more likely to be homicide victims as people who don’t. Major media outlets, such as the New York Times, still cite these statistics.
Unreliable Gun Research

However, the research was beyond flawed. For one, Kellermann used epidemiological methods in an attempt to investigate an issue dealing with criminology. In effect, this means he was treating gun violence the same as, say, the spread of West Nile, or bird flu.
It provided no proof or examples that the murder weapon used in these crimes belonged to the homeowner or had been kept in that home.

Furthermore, the gun victims he studied were anomalies. They were selected from homicide victims living in metropolitan areas with high gun-crime statistics, which completely discounted the statistical goliath of areas where gun owners engage in little to no crime.

Other factors that lent to the study’s unreliability were: It is based entirely on people murdered in their homes, with 50 percent admitting this was the result of a “quarrel or romantic triangle,” and 30 percent said it was during a drug deal or other felonies such as rape or burglary; it made no consideration for guns used in self-defense; it provided no proof or examples that the murder weapon used in these crimes belonged to the homeowner or had been kept in that home.

These problems prompted objections and questions from leading scientists in the field of criminology, such as Yale University professor John Lott, Florida State’s Gary Kleck, and University of Massachusetts sociology professors James D. Wright and Peter H. Rossi. Their research had come to vastly different conclusions, and they found the methodology unsound.

Which studies are these? Are they from an unbiased source? The issues in Chicago are a poor example. Banning guns in a particular city when they are easily accessible all around it does nothing. It doesn't take a lot of thought to figure this out.

I think you missed my overall point. That being we both could link articles all day of the good and bad outcomes of carrying weapons. The point is that an unbiased and comprehensive study of the issue is needed. It is more common than it could be is the point. I'm not sure why you wouldn't want a proper study done as it would surely prove you are correct. You could proceed to cite that research any time someone says something contradictory. Then we could start getting rid of all the onerous gun laws so we could all be safer.

I'm sure you know but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Not allowing the government to fund a study of the issue means it will likely never happen. That was the entire point of blocking them from doing so.

If it is stored loaded under a couch cushion of other place easily reached by children as a matter of normal storage procedure, it is not an accident but irresponsible.

If laws were put in place to better train gun buyers and enforce better storage of weapons a lot of these "accidents" would cease to exist. That would leave the media with less to sensationalize which would only benefit the cause of gun owners. The less people see this stuff in the media the less they will favor banning guns.

i don't really care anyway. i just said what i said because it sounded "witty" at the time (i see now it was not that good).

what you people do in the USA is up to you.

the only qualm i would have about guns being legal in australia, is that the police would be paranoid like yours are when they pull you over for even a minor infraction.

your cops are trained to treat everyone as if they are a potential gun carrier, and because of that, people get crash tackled and hancuffed until they are searched and found to be "clean".

in australia, police just walk up to your car and knock on the window and are quite friendly.

everyone that gets 'cuffed in the USA seems to have their hands cuffed behind their backs, and in australia, if they are 'cuffed at all, it's almost always in front of their bodies.

anyway raptor, i have no philosophical stance or interest in guns.

So we should all just agree with you based on your say-so? That would make us no dicks.

Sorry but I think Dox47 came up with a better argument that you did. Yours seems to be a bit too circular.

Perhaps I should have asked why parts of America are like that?

The three bad guys wielding hand guns and an AK-47 rifle were seemingly prepared for an elaborate armored-car robbery but their target was only a Pizza Hut driver toting a pizza in a pouch.

The suspects, who allegedly made their get away in a black Nissan Xterra with the pizza and whatever change the driver was carrying, have not yet been captured, according to a Colorado Springs police.

According to CMPD, Pizza Hut was closed when three people walked in to rob the business. One of the employees reportedly fired his own handgun, fatally striking one of the suspects. He was pronounced dead on scene by MEDIC.

Police said the robbery suspect was carrying a gun when he was shot.

Just post a picture of a plate of fried fish and hushpuppies, or a fillet knife.
Scares the hell out of him.

Here's a quick overview of why CDC funding for gun studies was cut, and why I continue to support that action:

http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/15/why ... ch-budget/

Two notes:

I think a lot of people who've never done it think there is more to carrying a gun than their actually is. I'm sure most people have a little table or basket or something where they drop their keys, wallet, cell phone, etc when they get home, and I'm the same, mine just also has a gun and a spare magazine in it, which go back in my pocket when I go out again, it's really not that big a deal. I happen to carry a pocket pistol most of the time so I don't have to deal with a belt holster or anything, but that wouldn't particularly complicate things, the gun would just go into the holster instead of into my pocket, no different than people who carry cellphones or multitools on their belts.

Violent crime in America is interesting, but for the point of this discussion, I suggest that anyone who thinks guns must be the secret sauce take a look at our non-gun crime statistics, which are also relatively high. What that should suggest is that while the guns may make some crimes more harmful than they otherwise might be, they don't cause the crime to happen in the first place, which should be obvious to anyone who's ever held a gun in their hand and failed to suddenly have any criminal urges. As always, poverty, desperation, and honor culture are the much more likely culprits, plus creating a giant market for illicit products where the only way to enforce a contract is force certainly didn't help.

It's also dickless to blindly go along with propaganda and slanted statistics. Why not apply some critical thinking to the subject and come up with your own answers?