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Originally Posted by freddie
it's not such a huge bother getting a weapon in Europen countries neither.
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It's almost impossible for a regular citizen to get a firearm in western European countries, not to mention totally illegal under any circumstances. All kinds of automatic weapons are banned, even revolvers that use real bullets are illegal, only 'alarm' revolvers can be bought (and you can't kill anyone with that), and even alarm revolvers need a permit (not easy to get, you need a valid reason) and a registration to the police. Even hunting rifles can't be bought by just anyone, you need a hunting license which is not easy to get, and you'll have to register to the local police (they'll take your picture, finger prints, gun serial number, etc.). The reality is that almost nobody has a gun in western Europe, not even all police officers have a gun, certain categories are unarmed, and the situations where a police officer is allowed to shoot are extremely limited and regulated.
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Originally Posted by freddie
a crowbar is just as leathal
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A crowbar can be lethal, but it takes much more determination to kill with a crowbar than with a gun, and you can't kill 20 people in a few minutes efficiently and from a distance with a crowbar, whereas it's totally possible with a nice automatic rifle that you can buy freely in any American gun store.
The number of people killed by firearms is of a few hundreds each year in Europe whereas it's 10th of thousands in the US, so banning guns does make a huge difference in the number of homicides.
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Originally Posted by freddie
But lets not fool ourselve that Europeans don't buy their fare share of BMW X5s, MB M Classes or Range Rovers and other useless gass guzzers
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Yeah, but you know that even when the same car is available in Europe and the US (which happens rarely, who in the US knows what a Renault Scenic is and who in Europe knows what a Ford F-150 is), it's not equipped with the same engines, the American versions have much bigger engines whereas the European ones have smaller (often diesel) ones. Most cars in Europe have 4-cylinder engines and anything bigger than that is a small percentage whereas in the US most cars have 6 or 8-cylinder engines, not to mention that a good half of cars sold in Europe have diesel engines that consume much less petrol.