Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
Having grown up steeped in the US gun culture and then left the country, I do notice a real and possibly significant change in the outlook and emphasis within that culture. My memory is that gun life in my youth revolved around hunting and the outdoors... competitive target shooting was a presence but was widely seen as preparation and training to be a more effective outdoorsman. Stalking and woodcraft were seen as goals equal to marksmanship. On the range bolt action rifles with telescopic sights dominated, and the goal was minute of angle accuracy. There was also a faction devoted to light, handy, brush rifles, with a fair bit of debate. Shotguns were for bird hunting. I don't recall ever seeing a centerfire semiautomatic rifle with a magazine above 3 rounds on a range or even in a shop.
You do pretty much picture the world of hunting in which I grew up. Shooting was just a very small part of it. Today I hunt within a community of roughly 70+ active hunters and most meet on May Day to check the zero of rifles. Most use a single bolt-action rifle with telescopic sight with the rest shooting with break-open rifles. So far I never saw a semi-automatic rifle used in all those years. Keep in mind that we are in an area not yet affected by the growing numbers of Sus scrofa. All in all I would say that the weapons are well suited for their tasks. Of course quite a few are based on military weapons of days gone by.

Nowadays it seems like the culture revolves around actual or imitation military weapons. The adjective of the day is "tatical", and everything from your flashlight to your underwear is expected to be "tactical". The word, as far as I can tell, seems to have little meaning beyond intent, actual or pretended, to be used in killing people.
School shootings and gun spress have certainly happened before this development. I became a bit curious what those criminals used after reading some posts here. Of course this is nothing scientific but just browsing through Wiki handguns are by a fair margin the most common murder weapons in Schools and universities. Short shotguns, mostly pum-guns come second followed by semiautomatic rifles. Bolt-action ones are quite rare.
The British ban on handgun seems to reflect in part the fact those weapons were used in almost all such shootings.

At last it is important to remind ourself that despite the rather unique US gun culture other countries suffer from much more gun violence per capita. A stable, peaceful state and society are much more important in safeguarding the people against crime and violence then any gun law. Of course the latter can have a positive impact on violence and it's consequences.