Our ancestors believed that if most citizens owned guns, it would be possible to overthrow a government that became oppressive. It is no coincidence that brutal dictatorships, whether Communist or not, always want to take guns away from the population. So we keep our guns, but there are more restrictions now. We must have criminal background checks before we can buy another gun. Quite often we must wait several days while this is done to pick up our new guns.
Critics blame our high crime rate on the large number of guns in the United States.
Much of it involves guns. But there has always been a lot of guns in the United States, and it was a lot easier to buy them before than now. The US only began having a lot of violent crime in the 1960s. I blame the breakdown of families, children watching violent television and movies, and listening to Rap music glorifying violent crime. Most misuse of guns for criminal purposes comes from a very small percentage of our population.