Probably only partially understood your message at this late hour, but thought you said that the problem is cultural. Thought you might have said that eliminating the 2nd Amendment was the only way around that cultural barrier, but re-reading it tells me that part of my understanding was just confusion.
I assume that guns can be owned in a safe manner and should be allowed. Elimination would not be my goal. Responsible purchasing, training and selling, (and perhaps both tracking the weapons and using the technology that "fingerprints" a bullet to its firearm), should be enacted. But, I don't believe guns should be banned.
The vast majority of people, including gun owners, want sound background checks. That doesn't sound like a cultural divide. The problem is that the political system is not venting the public pressure, but instead, bowing to the special interest pressure who, not coincidentally, have the money and the fanatics.
Ok, we definitely agree. I was also making the argument that we
can't eliminate the 2nd amendment, it just won't happen. I think that if there hadn't been a second amendment in the first place, things would be different, but we have one and it isn't going anywhere, ever. I was addressing mostly to our European buddies in this thread, who tend to throw up their hands in exasperation at us Americans and our insistence on our rights.
I don't personally like guns, but I don't think that an outright ban is realistic or even the right thing to do. Working within the constitutional framework and enacting and enforcing strict gun control laws is an actual accomplishable goal.
The point I was making about culture is not that there's a cultural divide within America, it is that there's a cultural divide between the way Americans see guns and the way many non-Americans see guns. America, all of it, has gun culture. This is something that most Europeans, Australians, Chinese, don't understand. I have never owned a gun, never fired a gun, and probably never will, but if my country were to take away that right altogether, I would not be happy. That's (political) culture. If I'd grown up with different expectations regarding my rights, I likely wouldn't feel this way, but there it is.