Mr gryphon: For some reason we Americans seem to think we have the only "free" society in the world, and that is a result of our gun culture. Not true. There are plenty of other "free" societies out there: Japan, Canada, Great Britain, Iceland, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, almost all of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, most of the Pacific Island nations, certain nations in the middle east and Africa and Asia and South America. They all seem to get along fine as a "free" society, and they do it without the plethora of guns that we have in the United States. I'm not suggesting that we go the way of Great Britain or Japan, because we are a very different culture. What I am suggesting is that other countries have learned to live in a "free" society with a modicum of gun regulation, a higher degree of personal responsibility on the part of gun owners, and seem to be doing just fine. They have a fraction of the gun deaths and crime that we have in the US. Maybe we could draw a lesson or two from their experience and make our society safer.
And while we're on the subject of "free" societies, I'll be visiting Japan a few times in August. I have learned to appreciate the fact that they have almost no crime. They don't have to lock their bikes or their cars, and I could walk around any major city in Japan at any hour of the night and be perfectly safe. So maybe, just maybe, they're doing something better than we are. We could learn from that.