And the rest of the world usually has a very limited knowledge of America. your point?

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Success is measured in blood; yours or your enemy's.

Please. I can tell justified criticism from stupid gloating, and so can you. What is sorely lacking from this thread is a serious attempt at describing the problem and proposing a solution. Instead, we have a French-bashing fest.

From what I figured out from the FBI homepage and the page of the german Bundesinnenministerium, the chance of beeing murdered or manslaughtered is in the US currently more than seven times higher than here in Germany (approx. 1 out of 17000 americans was killed in 2005 compared to one out of 123.000 germans). This is allthough unemployment is definely higher in Germany than in the US. I don't know how it's in France, but I expect it to be at least half as high as in the US, probably it's even less probable to be killed there. This shows both why many americans feel they need a gun and why most Europeans can be happy to live in a society with strongly restricted private possession of fire-arms. Any attempt to refer to central europe when advertising the right to keep and bear arms fails. FAIL, mate. FAIL.