[jmadsen]

The way to break gun violence is to teach people that the way to solve differences is not to make sure you're a bigger bad ass than anyone who might come in conflict with you.

Americans don't have a love of guns, they have a love of confrontation.

That was the most difficult cultural thing I had to learn when I moved to Japan.

[hga]

Japan is a really serious outlier when it comes to not having a "love" of confrontation! I mean, their word for "you're wrong" doesn't even have that semantic content.

I suspect America is a lot closer to the middle than it.

[jmadsen]

I wasn't comparing to Japan, merely stating how it took an effort to change.

America may be in the middle confrontation-wise, but when you add in the ease of obtaining a handgun, you get the current problem.

[hga]

Debatable, see my research on non-gun US and all method U.K. murder rates, which are really close: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4935644

I take this as evidence we're simply a violent people, however we're armed or not.