Funny to hear of culturally superior Americans behaving like them pesky Ayrabs in Afghanistan and Palestine.

No one on this list is claiming superiority. People here in the US can and often do things as thoughtless and inconsiderate as individuals anywhere else in the world, despite having ample opportunity to know better. (Look at the current occupancy of the White House for a great example of this!)

Firing off weapons on holidays is all too common in Texas. I don't know where Jeri lives--but when we lived for a few years in Temple, north of Austin, we always heard gunshots on the holidays. Of course, it was also a county known for its lack of educational achievement (50 percent high school dropout rate, for example). I couldn't get out of there fast enough once we had a child--the prospect of role models outside the home was pretty grim. But in Fort Worth we live on the southern outskirts (at least, it was an outskirt when we moved here!) we also heard occasional shots fired at midnight. Not so often now.

I grew up north of Seattle and never heard gunshots on any occasion, except for when I was learning to shoot at the rifle range, or when Dad took us out to a beach at the bottom of a bluff for target practice. It seems to me to be a regional thing, diluted as people move around and take their expectations and practices with them.

SRS