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Y would one want to carry a firearm anyhow? i mean im a hardcore gun freak , and it would be cool at the start but the novility would soon wear off and it would just become a bugger having a firearm straped to myself.
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That's actually a good question and it doesn't have a really easy answer. The reason for that is because the US isn't one homogeneous society. There are communities here that are very European in nature in that they have a relatively patriarchal government that insists upon rather tight control over citizens' behavior (by the way, no knock on Europeans!), but there are also many communities that are, for a lack of a better term, very American, in that the government is essentially a provider of basic services and the citizens essentially govern themselves. That's because, even though we have a Federal government, most of the immediate governmental effects on us are local in nature.
Now, that's a pretty big oversimplification of how things work over here, but if you bear with it, the question about carrying a firearm seems to generally work like this: in communities with a very strong, patriarchal government, the people tend to rely on the protective services of law enforcement, such as they are. Thus, the police carry the guns and are at the people's disposal when there is trouble.
In the other case, the people treat the police less as a protective force and more as an enforcement and investigative organization. In that case, the people rely on themselves as their first line of defense if there is trouble. That's the situation described by the adage "if you're in a life or death situation, remember, the police are just minutes away."
There's also the case that people from one community mix with people of the other. And even that still oversimplifies things. Maybe it just boils down to a tradition (for many) of being able to take care of oneself. I know that when I carry a handgun, it's for the same reason that I have a fire extinguisher in the car and in the kitchen: I hope that I never have to use it, but if I need it and I don't have it, the result would be awfully messy. For me, I'd be a happy camper if I went through life and never had the need to draw my gun. And, to be honest, just like the fire extinguisher, my expectation is that I'll never need to use it.
Anyway, that's what I think. Of course, it's pretty dusty and disorganized in my brain, so I could be completely out to lunch.