[CliffFletcher]

The problem with the U.S. is much of the country got democracy before it got civilization. So where most of the world lived in a orderly society where there was a monopoly of violence (and therefore much less violence), in the U.S., people were allowed to do as they please and reject all authority before they had a functioning state with laws and infrastructure and regulated commerce and all that good stuff. Then when civilization eventually came in the form of the state, these people - many of them religious refugees or other malcontents who immigrated to the U.S. to escape authority - were suspicious and frightened. Throw in a civil war that flooded the country with guns, and then bring to a boil with the racial hatred and fear awoken by the dismantling of Jim Crow and segregation, and you get the toxic stew of fear, tradition, and hatred that breeds gun culture.