>"It's just too much trouble to settle scores by fighting...etc. With a gun, you just find the guy and blow him away!" This says a LOT about the general regard for human life and the hopelessness of poverty....

It doesn't say that much about either, though it says a lot about the individual who's being quoted.

You don't have to be poor to lack a conscience. Furthermore, if the speaker is serious, I doubt that he'll purchase a firearm from a legal gun dealer. He's at least as likely to buy (or borrow or rent) it from the guy down the block so it's harder to trace.

But people with a real criminal mentality often can't imagine getting caught. That's part of the overall crime problem everywhere. Anyway, I don't think this guy is representative either of Americans or of poor people. (Of course, law-abiding poor people want guns too.)

The most important question is not why Americans want to own guns; it's how to keep the criminal and/or short-fused minority from shooting people - sometimes many people at once. (The Florida stand-your-ground law is obviously not helpful. I can only imagine that it was passed because there's a lot of crime in cities like Miami and Jacksonville, and a lot of people are scared stiff.)

But taking away all the guns is simply not going to happen, any more than banning cricket in the UK.

As I understand it, there is no comprehensive "second amendment" style legislation in Canada *guaranteeing* the right to bear arms, but gun ownership in Canada has been regarded as legal, with some restrictions, for a hundred years and more.

I don't know the ratio, but plenty of Canadians also served in the World Wars and were taught how to shoot and kill. Even a peacetime military teaches that.

Finally, except for some NRA members, I doubt that many American gun owners know or care anything about those statements by the Founding Fathers. They simply believe that guns are good, or at least necessary. And they know their Second Amendment rights.