Most countries also have their traditional martial classes with some sort of pride/honor culture that makes them more inclined to private gun ownership (legal or illegal). Criminal classes and tough-guy student groups have guns. There's paramilitaries and equivalents of ROTC.
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Plenty of countries have mandatory military service and all adults have firearm literacy -- more than most Americans. Terror-ridden countries like Pakistan have entire cottage industries making AK-47s in villages. So... what's unique about US gun culture is its religiosity.
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I guess this is why I'm meh on US gun culture and besides being aware of the weird risks (mass shootings, possibility that random minor conflict could involve guns), I just can't take the *culture* seriously, even though guns are serious.
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As someone who grew up deep in gun culture, I still find it hard to escape mentally. I think your take is pretty close to my own with the exception that I was raised in it and still "observe" the tradition.
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Interestingly, I've escaped from pretty much every other aspect of my traditional upbringing: religion, NeoCon ideology, suspicion of alt cultures/norms, etc., but the gun thing still stays with me.
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I found myself at an anti-gun group one time, and I was like "I'm probably the only here who owns an AR-15" and went on to describe the actual views of pro-gun people but translated into a US liberal language.
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When I get down to it, I think it's fully a cultural tell like you're comparing to India/cows. Maybe it's like agnostics who still pray sometimes, I still like knowing that I have personal defensive capability.
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Exactly. Similarly I've escaped pretty much every other aspect of Indian culture except vegetarianism, and that behavior I've moved to an alternative basis of simply being concerned about animal welfare, rather than uncritical acceptance of religious-meat-taboo family background.
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Yea totally. That's a good transformation. It's funny because my only equivalent is telling anti-gun people how to regulate guns without triggering the gun culture, but it's likely that time/demographics alone will achieve that end before we convince the gun folks.
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That's generally how these things work. Like being gay went from being beyond the pale to basically "yeah whatever" except for the remaining religious fundamentalists who actually care (and those who pretend to care to pander to them). Generational effect.
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Cars are a good other example. I only knew how to drive stick when I came here and had to learn automatic. Then I forgot stick. Then after uber and moving to urban core I basically stopped driving unless I have to... don't enjoy it. Gen Z doesn't even want to get licenses.
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Yea, it's funny. In some ways I feel innovative or even avant-garde, and other ways it's like "dude you're a cis straight white dude who does manufacturing companies and still likes neoliberal globalism" Too retro?
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At least with cars everyone can essentially operate on the same roads without caring, and even non street legal race cars have tracks and no one worries about the guy who brings their Le Mans car on the highway.

