Hey, I didn't get to chip in on the gun hijacked thread

[Moedad]

Before there was any notion of gun control in the US or Britain or Europe, the US had a much greater rate of violent crime than most other countries. It's not about guns. In Switzerland every house has guns. Every male serves in the military. They take their firearms home with them. They have one of the lowest crime rates in the Western world. It's us Americans that are the problem, not firearms themselves.

Another thing - much of that high rate of firearm related homicide in the US is criminal on criminal. Take out the turf wars between gangs and drug dealers and that rate drops dramatically. The death rate for kids being killed by guns goes way down too, because a lot of those people being counted as kids are hard core gang members up to the age of 24. Yes-huh. So yes, we are more violent than other countries, but it's not because of guns. Gun violence is a symptom of something more insidious. What makes America great is that most of the states in our country still give their citizens the freedom to choose whether or not they want to be able to defend themselves with deadly force in the face of deadly force threatening them. In those states that allow such liberty, the rate of citizens who actually apply for a CCW is very small--under 4% in most cases.

In Ca, it's up to the county sheriff's to decide if their citizens are allowed to carry. Some allow it, some limit it, some GREATLY limit it, and some don't allow it, period. Bad guys carry regardless.