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Comment by trident5000 | Hacker News Reader

The US has probably one of the most disrespectful and outlandish fringe populations with higher crime overall than other rich countries. Compare the US to how people behave in Australia, Norway, Germany, etc... Have a feeling this will get down voted but you know its true.

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As someone who actually likes and owns guns, I really think most (it's obviously complicated and multi-faceted) of this can be explained simply by saying "guns"

I mean... yes. That does seem to be it basically. Or not just guns (the Swiss have A LOT of guns) but guns + an attitude to them. The closest equivalent where I'm from in the UK (and I do live in the US now) is boy racers. Young men driving obnoxiously and thinking they have every right to drive obnoxiously. And they definitely do kill people, though as a side-effect, as it were. Seems like there's a similar attitude to guns in the US, but legally buttressed. My outsider's perspective anyway.

> Seems like there's a similar attitude to guns in the US, but legally buttressed.

There really isn’t. Almost no gun owners do anything unsafe with guns or ever shoot anyone. US gun culture is extremely safety focussed.

The media paints a completely bizarre and distorted picture of gun owners in general, picking the stupidest or most outlandish examples they can.

Most people who are involved in shootings in the US are in deeply underprivileged areas where there is a lot of crime in general, and ineffective policing and a dearth of opportunity.

It is often not irrational for young men in these circumstances to get involved in gang or crime related activities given the lack of alternatives, and it’s also not irrational to carry a gun under these circumstances, and it does lead to a lot of shootings.

This has very little to do with gun ownership and gun culture in the US in general.

I say this as someone who owns a good amount of guns, enjoys shooting, collecting, and has formal training in them.

Gun culture in the states, imo, needs iteration. The problem is that the people at the helm of gun culture are operating and advocating out of fear. The worst thing that ever happened to gun culture was people started lobbying to cancel 2a, which gave these people their power. It invited people who know nothing about guns, their uses, their purpose, or how to handle them into a world with real world consequences. It inspires buying frenzies and other ridiculous behavior. I'm not sure how many of these people actually kill people as opposed to the loopholes where bad actors purchase weapons they never should've had access to in order to bring violence and chaos into the world for their own gain.

Rather than talking down bad gun culture, I'd like to talk up good gun culture:

- know your weapon safety conditions. They're a community language for communicating safety and awareness. Knowing your weapon condition and confidently communicating something like, "condition 4" instills trust and confidence.

- know your weapons troubleshooting and function check procedures. The worst thing you can hear when you go to use a weapon is "clunk".

- know weapon safety rules. The military has some great ones that are quite universal. Treat, Never, Keep, Keep.

- weapons should be cared for and stored correctly. This is just an extension of good safety procedures.

Having good gun culture isn't just a thing to geek out about. It's a source of pride, much less a necessity.

Doesn't Ireland have some of that?

In US, there is a culture of going out of your way to do something that would be inconsiderate to others. I think its perpetuated by movies, games, social media. Most other countries probably dont have that issue, though France seems like an outlier given how much they seem to try and make muslims miserable over there.

> France seems like an outlier given how much they seem to try and make muslims miserable over there.

Citation needed here.

Hijab ban and president's anti-Muslim rhetoric is well known.

It's not really something that can be cited and I'm probably going to get some shit for it, but having been in France for a good while if you're a Muslim it really does seem that way, at least compared to Canada or even the US.

And yet there's a net positive flow to France, how can this be explained? If it was really that bad you would expect to see the opposite.

French Muslims aren't any less French. Most of them are multiple generations removed from another country than France. Why would you expect them to move to the country of their grandparents and of whose language they often don't even speak?

Beyond that, most immigrants to France aren't Muslim either. Around a third come from the Maghreb, though not all of them are Muslim either. The reason why they go to France is because colonial era French institutions mean that they were taught French, and their countries are quite poor, so they go to the only country they have a solid shot of going to. Often they already have family in France.

But even then, only about 100 000 people from the Maghreb immigrate into France, which is slightly north of a tenth of a percent.

They can't really leave France either for mostly the same reason France is the main source of immigration.

Go watch La Haine

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