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Lay aside guns, per se, for the moment. Suppose that there were a causal link between American culture and the "gun culture", not that everyone owns guns (I don't), but that, with co- factors, this affection for guns is endemic to Americans. Now, suppose the link were through those characteristics that cause us to innovate more than any other nation, or to jealously guard our rights of speech, assembly, and religion, and that if one took them out (as it were, made us Canadians), we would cease to be so inventive, and would become comparatively docile about government control of the media, or the establishment of a national church. Not that Canada is a bad place, you understand, but they do make absurd attempts to control the media that we would never tolerate, in order to fight "Americanization". Think, for the moment, not merely of the effect on GDP, but on the costs in terms of new drugs not being invented or safer buildings and conveyances not being engineered, which means the potential for people to die who might otherwise not. Would it be worth getting rid of the characteristics? |
