daswig

American society is indeed much more violent that some other societies. But pathologically violent? Nope.

There are a wide variety of reasons why American society is more violent than other societies are. Guns, however, are not one of the reasons. A supermajority of Americans who die by firearms are deliberate suicides. If you look at the societies that most think of as being less violent than the US, you'll find that their suicide rates vary greatly, and in many cases are equal to or greater than the US suicide rate. They just use other methods than guns.

It's illegal to sell a gun to somebody who is pathologically violent in the US. That's what the "adjudicated mentally defective" language in Federal law is all about. I don't see why the majority of people should be denied their civil liberties because a small minority of people are insane. The Right to Keep and Bear Arms is an American Civil Liberty enumerated in the US Bill of Rights. Using your argument, all Americans should be in mental institutes because some Americans are crazy.

The balancing act is between keeping guns out of the hands of people who are dangerously prone to violence, while not infringing upon the civil rights of those who are not. Gun control does the exact opposite....it keeps guns out of the hands of those people who obey the law, and does absolutely nothing to keep guns out of the hands of those who break the law. In fact, SCOTUS has ruled in the past that gun control schemes don't apply to criminals, not based upon the Second Amendment, but based upon the Fifth Amendment's prohibition of the right against self-incrimination since it is an additional criminal violation for criminals to possess guns and the reporting element of gun control laws violates that right.