I remember hearing that Hitler used to carry around a riding crop and whip people when he was a teenager.. Can't speak to the truth of that, though. I do know that his doctor was pumping him full of a cocktail of drugs during WW2 that can't have helped his mental state

Well yeah, we're certainly not as fit as we were before the agricultural revolution. Still though, if we lost all our technology tomorrow, those of us who survived more than a few months would still be apex predators. The fact that we use tools shows a degree of cognitive sophistication that actually supports our claim to the top of the food chain, not negates it.

Running prey animals down to exhaustion is one of our great strengths as a predator species. It is known.

Mouse balls were fun to play with though

You're thinking of the mass hysteria at that convent in.. France, I think it was. The witch hunts spanned continents, lasted hundreds of years, and involved some of the best scientific and judicial minds of their ages - there was nothing accidental about them.

Having pride is one thing, insisting that your country is better than everyone else's is exactly the kind of attitude that makes America look so obnoxious. Every country has its triumphs and its problems - it's not a competition. The "us and them" mentality is so damaging, can't you see that there are more productive approaches to the conversation?

You do keep telling everyone it's the greatest country on earth

Oh god and the portion sizes!

I'm in Australia and I do understand

Right. And here endeth the conversation.

I don't know how you begin to define a justified shooting, and I believe that the self-defence side of things is too convoluted by the fact that the attackers from whom one needs defence is so often also armed with a gun.
What I see is equivocation. To me, it's a no brainer that my freedom to carry a gun, no matter how much I love it, is not worth the damage that other idiots are doing with them. I'll gladly give that freedom up so that fewer of my fellow citizens will be killed by them. There's a social contract at play in my role as a citizen - and this, I think, is the real crux of the issue: America largely sees itself as the place where an individual, unhindered by government and regulation, can achieve great success - which is a fantastic ideal. In practice, though, that focus on the individual comes at the cost of social cohesion, because there's no inherent social mechanism to counter base human selfishness.

Also, one indisputable case of gun legislation having direct and immediate effect: Australia after Port Arthur. But that's totally different, right?

You're right, dead is dead, and yes, homicide holus bolus is a big, real problem.
Mass shootings are also a big, real problem, and there's an obvious correlation between the proliferation of firearms in the US and the disproportionately high rate of mass shootings in the US.
And come on, "I don't give two shits about "gun deaths"" - that's not helping. You don't mention accidental shootings, you don't mention shootings deliberate or otherwise that result in non-fatal injury - dead might be dead, but facts are still facts. You might not give two shits about gun deaths, but some people, thank god, still do.

Japan has plenty of problems, not least the way it deals with mental health. But that's not the point, is it? The conversation about gun violence in the States just won't go away and the current trend among pro-gun rights people seems to be to deflect the conversation away altogether. Either, if you're not American, you don't get to comment (which strikes me as funny in the face of American cultural imperialism), or, look! People die in other countries too, why don't you go pick on them? America, you have a problem with gun violence. Deal with it.

I was replying to a different comment - read the thread again.

You can buy fentanyl and methadone over the counter in the States?