America 17: Guns

Apple Pie is European, hot dogs are German, baseball is English, even the Japanese make the best blue jeans, but nobody can take guns from America. Sometimes the culture shock is overt: open carry, gun-totin' bumper stickers, rifles in Walmart next to the fishing rods. Other times it's more subtle, "no firearms" signs at schools and hospitals prove exceptions to a deeply troubling rule. So much is made about the significance of guns; guns as a political third rail, guns as protection against a scary world, guns as the last line of defence against tyranny of the state. For all that, when you fire one, you find out the truth: they're not that big a deal. It's the casual fun of guns that makes them truly scary; they're just a cool toy that occasionally murders people.