Canada moving to ban all assault weapons

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What I think funeral is saying is: there is nothing inherently more violent about Americans that wouldn't happen to other nations were the laws to be different, ie, more guns being available.

I can see his point. It sort of reminds me of the classical psychology study in which they wanted to prove that Germans were inherently more easily led into the violence of the holocaust than other nationalities. Of course, what they found was almost anyone will do egregiously immoral things provided they have been told to do so by an authority.

The main problem with gun violence as I understand it, and I have read quite a bit about it, is that we don't know what would reduce gun violence. We can argue until we are blue in the face, but without scientific studies, we are banging around in the dark, so to speak.

That all said, I do think that Americans are tarnished by greed, as AB pointed out. We are very money-focused and frequently just want to know what is in it for ME. While there are some well-thought out libertarians, many I believe are focused on "me." And that may have more to do with it in the long run.

I wasn't disagreeing with you, goldfish. I think it depends on what you, editorially mean. I think you are correct that Americans are much more gun violent than other nations, especially if you take war out of the picture. At the same time, I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with Americans that makes them more violent, except access to guns.

It would be nice to see some actual discussion rather than debating. Just my preference.

i distinctly remember reading, a few decades back, an article about psychologist stanley milgram's 60s "obedience to agents of authority" experiments he conducted in several nations in order to determine if some cultures were more violent than others, that that america and germany both had higher percentages of test subjects who took the test to the maximum [lethal] level, then the rest of the nations he tested. the figure for germany was 80%! but the martian ET visitor silently observing us doesn't need to know that, he or she can just look at our entertainments versus those of more enlightened countries, as well as various nations' movie rating systems, to know which are more violent cultures- american movies that got a R [adults must accompany children] rating [for violence] often got "X" [18+ or adults-only] type ratings in other nations or were banned.

^ That is the study I was referring to. But it did not show that one culture was more obedient than another. Unless there was another study???

https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html

he did cities/countries other than new haven CT, in subsequent years. i think i also saw a news report after a 1975 CBS telefilm and documentary about it.

The original studies were at Yale. Then he did some in some other cities, maybe New Haven. The main criticism of the study, as I understand it, was that the volunteers were self-selected.

I remember watching a film, probably in a college psychology class, that showed clips of how the "teacher" behaved. It was scary.

I think there are cultures and/or religions that tend to be less violent...but I am not sure it is by nationality.