Just seen this thread kind of by accident.

It's weird for me as an English person. When you all talk so casually about something that can kill a person so easily, I have to admit it sends a shiver down my spine. It's downright petrifying, especially how normal you all make it seem. I suppose it must be normal to you. You'd probably find the idea of walking unarmed through the dodgy bits of my home city weird. To me that's normal. It helps to know the majority of the thugs and criminals over here are also unarmed.

So do all you seemingly lovely, tolerant, easygoing US Mudcat types all carry guns?

And I don't get that bit a few posts back about how it's somehow my fault because of something the rulers of my country/oppressors of my ancestors did 400 years ago.

Do you ever actually use them? Or are they just "for show"?

I spent five weeks camping in your Deep South - only had a gun pointed at me once, thankfully - but it was one of my scariest ever holidays, mainly because of what I'd heard about the prevalence of guns and what I'd heard about some of your population's reputation for using them first and asking questions later. The image you've lumbered yourselves with - as much as the reality - caused my fear. The first night in my tent I don't think I slept a wink.

It didn't help that I watched "Deliverance" in my motel room the night before...

Beautiful country, mind you.

And some of the people I met were lovely, despite the strange tendency of some of them to be a little too upfront about their religious and political views. My mother always taught me you should get to know someone before you ram your ideology down their throat, but that's for another thread.