Okay, hear me out. How about we get all that good stuff and just carve out a gun excepion. There'd be a lot less shooting each other if people weren't afraid of starving on the streets and were getting free mental health care.

I live in the socialist paradise Sweden and have three rifles for hunting, my wife has two, my mom three. Some of my friends have pistols for sports shooting. I don't get why Americans think guns only exist in America. Also, we currently have a right wing government. Funny thing is that is was the social democrats who made the laws that anyone could own rifles for hunting as it used to be only the land owning people who had that right before, the parties on right opposed that because they were afraid the rifles would be used to start a revolution or something.

You are allowed guns but the reason that you have for owning a gun has to be a little bit more than "because I want one".

Also the decision about whether or not you get a gun is up to local police. And they can deny you for any reason they like including that they know you to be a frequent flyer.

But really it's more about the fact that people aren't really interested in guns outside the US. In the US they are a cultural thing, outside they are just a tool but a useful to have if you need to make use of that tool. I don't own a gun for the same reason that I don't own a quad bike, I'm not a farmer and I live in the city, so I don't need one.

Or maybe it's because republicans take every opportunity to block it or remove it, like they did this past December.

European socialist country? Which one?