The answer as to why we have a very high murder rate is staring everyone in the face, and it is on your news programs every single night, but nobody wants to acknowledge the reason. It has nothing to do with the availability of guns, or rap/hip-hop music, or even anything Don Imus has to say.

It has to do with the glorification of murder in our culture. We have been taught from the time we are little that it is good to kill the "bad guys". We cheer in the movies when our action hero kills the bad guys. We say it is good when a real life bad guy gets the death penalty and is executed. And we cheer when our military kills our enemies.

But it just so happens that everyone has their own opinion of who the "bad guys" are. For some people, the bad guy may be their loud obnoxous neighbor. For others it may be the guy their wife is sleeping with. And for some, it may be the guy in the BMW who cut you off at the traffic light. So those of us who are less well tempered are more likely to get into an altercation with any of these every-day bad guys, and that along with the combination of many Americans carrying around hand guns (both legally and illegally) results in murder.

The guns themselves do not cause the murder. It is the combination of both guns and culture.

There are plenty of other countries (Switzerland comes to mind) where it is common for people to own and carry hand guns, yet they have much much lower murder rates than ours. But if you look at such countries, you will find cultures that do not give the dealth penalty to criminals, do not celebrate war and the military, and in general do not glorify murder. And that is the difference.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...