The new anti-gun-control meme: The US should be more like Switzerland.

[Eleanors38]

12. This OP is a good point of departure for good discussion...

I'm glad the person quoted finally caught up to the "celebrity culture" explanation of things which have been discussed here and elsewhere for years; there is some resonance. What was once the true frontier mythology of millions of new people coming to a new nation (ours) and having a chance to BE someone, a self-made man or woman, has dissipated quickly with the mass media's collapse (this is the chief component of national mythologizing for a big modern nation), and is now bottled in a factory making smart phones and such. The tech didn't make you do it, but it has so far not been up to the task of justifying a nation and its myths, or of finding an alternative to the mass model.

"Now, don't you ask yourself who they are
Like everybody else,
They want to be a star."

-- Bad Girl by Donna Summer, 1979

By now, this phenomenon is obvious, and ripe for anyone to plug in their favorite hepcat atrocity. That said, the idea that some regulation or law is going to change that reminds me of our family's old Emerson radios: 5-tubes and fulla static. And atrociously limited.

"I think it is a good thing for the state to give this responsibility (to defend the state) to the people."

This quote probably best illustrates why the USA is different from Switzerland with regards defense using violence. The USA's government Recognizes the right to defend not just the state, but ones self. I don't think our country's philosophical approach regarding defense is the problem. The problem, imo, is that this big complex nation has lost the viability necessary to justify itself, let alone solve its myriad problems.