Guybrush

Yes, definitely!

Hey Jans, long time no see! All fine here.. hope everything's good on your end

Hunting rifles are definitely more like sniper rifles. I'm also not a hunter, but we did own a rifle when we lived on Svalbard as guns were a requirement whenever heading out of town for protection against polar bears. It was also required that we spent time at the range learning to handle guns properly and to shoot from various positions.

This is not a handgun country, so I'd say they're rare here, much more rare than shotguns or rifles. I only know one guy who has handguns and I've never actually seen them. The people who own guns are generally gun club members who like to shoot at ranges and that's not a popular pastime. Compeition guns are often kinda weird looking too.

This ties in to a lot of stuff, though. I mean, people here don't own guns for protection because most people don't feel like they need protection. We don't expect criminals to have guns. We don't see them on our police officers either. Guns are just not part of our consciousness unless it's to do with hunting.

If you put a norwegian in the US, he might not feel so safe anymore and might opt to get a handgun. Who knows? So in a sense, I guess the gun culture has deep roots way into societal workings that don't directly involve guns. Without reflecting too much, it's possible that gun violence is a symptom rather than a disease in itself. However, tougher gun control might still be a way to break out of a negative feedback loop (if criminals have guns, more people want access to guns which in turn makes it easier for criminals to get guns).

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Something Completely Different

Trollheart

"Protection against polar bears"? Yeah I can imagine: there you are, minding your own business in your shop when these four white bears walk in, dark glasses, threatening aspect. One, clearly the leader, signals to the others, who lock the door and pull down the shade. Your heart begins to hammer. The lead bear approaches you, nose to nose, and says in a quiet voice "Nice place ya got here. It would be a shame if something were to - OH I'm sorry!" As he knocks down a statuette and it shatters on the floor. "See?" he says, looking up with a wounded grin, "accidents happy so easily, don't you think? Well now," he leans forward with a faux-friendly smile, "that's where me and the boys can help..."

Happens everywhere! It's a real problem. And the cops do nothing - backpaw payments and those who can't be bought are whitemailed...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

SGR

A police sketch of the lead suspect.

Trollheart

It's true: most of these guys are big into the coke trade. Looks like this one has made the fatal mistake of sampling the merchandise. Rookie mistake! Behind those mirror shades his eyes are a spiderweb tracery of red cracked veins and burst blood vessels. I think they call them "bubblers", due to the excessive amount of air that goes up the nose when the bottle is opened. Sad. But still no reason to resort to a life of crime...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

jwb

with regard to an assault weapon ban, it's not necessarily relevant how prevalent hand guns are in your country, more how easy they are to obtain. I would guess that assault riflkes also aren't particularly common there. But if they are easy to get they pose the same risk in terms of mass shootings. So if you banned just assault rifles then a mass shooter will probably just use hand guns if they can't get their hands on an illegal assault rifle. If you ban both assault rifles and hand guns, since as you say it's not much of a common thing there anyway, then you might actually make this sort of incident much more difficult to pull off. In the US that's a non starter cause nobody is going to ban handguns anytime soon here. But if you guys have a different culture then that could be an option there.

As for gun violence and criminals... like I said earlier the best thing i think we could do is to set up a robust registry/database for maintaining proof of possession of legal guns, the same way you have to renew your tags on your car to keep it street legal. That would make it harder to do straw purchases and leak illegal guns onto the streets for criminal use. But people in this country are so paranoid that they see any such registry as just the first step in the govt coming in to take everyone's guns away. They're making a list... they're checking it twice... you get the idea.

Trollheart

They're afraid Santa is gonna take their guns?

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018