>> And the very same politicians who make the loudest noises about "doing something about gun violence" are often the least likely to support strong legal sanctions against violent criminals who use guns. And those who yell the loudest about how dangerous modern society has become are often the least likely to genuinely want to address things that really contribute to that danger.
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>The stuff that comes across the pond is "make full auto harder to reach for civilians",
>but the incidence was done with a semi not converted to full auto ?
>
>>America and Europe have very different histories and I think that explains a lot of the cultural differences.
>>Most of Europe has often gone through periods of rather strong state control and guns never proliferated the way they did here. Every wave of invaders, occupiers or ruling class bullies disarmed the local citizens as best they could. That may indeed have been the positive side - once the invaders, occupiers, etc were driven out by people who *did* have guns and the will to use them, of course :-)
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>The difference is clearly there - but you could also describe it in a way that nearly always in europe
>there is/was a state/ruler controlled peace keeping force in place (with peace described by those in force for sure).
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>>All the talk in the world about "regulation" or "controlling" firearms is meaningless if there is not the willingness to make using a gun for bad purposes so unappealing that it might become less popular. We currently have some pretty impressive gun laws in many places but enforcement is, like the rest of law enforcement, lacking will and does not make any proper distinction between people committing offenses against property or moral regulations (drugs) and those who are really harming others and who are predators and abusers.
>>But a man with a gun breaking in to a house has little to fear from the state compared to what he is prepared to do to the homeowner - unless, of course, the homeowner inflicts his own justice - in which case the legal risk in now on the homeowner ( though the phrase is popular "It is better to be judged by 12 than carried by six")
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>This is something I wonder about - how can there be legal risk to the homeowner defending against illegel break in
>when OTOH things like the "stand your ground rule" seem to protect a selfappointed helper
>shooting an unarmed, but differently coloured person who did nothing illegal.
>Not close enough to the US to get a clear picture, probably obscured by state differences as well.
>
>And full ACK to your point of hrasher rules unneeded if the current ones are not enforced.
>

The Zimmerman case is still in the legal system. Whether he will be protected or incarcerated is an open question. IMO "stand your ground" laws are not even applicable. It has never been suggested that Trayvon Martin approached or threatened George Zimmerman. Zimmerman called the police, as he had done dozens of times before, to report suspicious activity. (IMO "young black male spotted"). The police told him to stay in his car, they would handle it. He followed Martin anyway and initiated the fatal encounter. I don't know how it will turn out in court but if Zimmerman's lawyers are going to use stand your ground as the defense they will be playing a losing hand.

UPDATE: Injecting a little levity, there was a great cartoon in The New Yorker a few months ago. A guy is in a gun shop talking with another guy behind the counter, an array of scary looking guns mounted on the wall behind him. The guy behind the counter says, "How much ground do you need to stand?"