David Niose suggests that debates over gun control and reining in gun violence in the US are useless because "American society reveres aggressive, take-no-shit behavior, an attitude that naturally sees violence as not just a plausible option, but often a desirable one."
http://davidniose.com/badass-the-culture-that-makes-gun-reform-impossible/
Our national mythology is all about that, from the take-no-shit Founding Fathers (who defeated the most powerful army in the world) to the take-all-the-shit settlers of the West, to the US as World Power that needs a bigger defense budget than the next ten countries (most of whom are allies) combined, to pretty much everything else in our collection of cultural icons where violent stands for principle are seen as the be-all and end-all of dramatic conflict and heroism.
It's a depressing thought, but it certainly explains some of the modern condemnation of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama (as "negotiators"), and the lionizing of folk like Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, and even Vladimir Putin.
What it says is that gun violence is not the price of liberty, but the price of our preferred self-image.
The question then becomes, what the hell do we do about it. If we really think we should do something about it.
(h/t +Les Jenkins)
Well, I sometimes think, in several senses America was kind of one of the earliest nation who left a medieval state of affairs, i.e. in terms of society, legislation and democracy. I mean the presidential election mechanics is still like messages are aggregated and send by riding horses. And now the USA might be in very old versions and countries which came later, i.e. France, Sweden or even Germany took somewhat wider step and are now a bit ahead in some aspects?!
+Frank Nestel The disadvantage of being an Early Adapter, yup.
See also "decimalization / metric system".
To a degree, I think that the actual settlement of the North American continent (and conflicts with the folk already settled there) also plays a role in the Bad-Ass culture that isn't shared with, say, European democracies.