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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25035 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025

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Keep in mind that the U.S. is not just LA, DC, and NYC - it is also Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho.

I'm pretty much most countries like the US have gun rights.

How much? Okay that can be a problem, but when social services are three hours away and wild animals are an actual threat....you have to.

Europe is not the US

Canada is the closest analogue and has much stricter gun laws than the U.S., although laxer than most of Europe. Russia also has very strict gun control, although I don’t know how enforced that is in Siberia. India, dangerous wild animals living alongside humans- super strict gun control, and villagers are too poor to buy guns anyways.

South Africa has a large rural population and still has dangerous wild animals. I’m aware that there is an Afrikaans speaking gun culture but I don’t believe that the actual laws on the books are notably loose, and anyways crime rates are so high there that self defense is just mathematically dominated by common criminals.

Where else? I suppose Australia technically has dangerous wild animals in great variety, but guns are tightly controlled there.

Where else? I suppose Australia technically has dangerous wild animals in great variety, but guns are tightly controlled there.

While this is strictly speaking true it is slightly (and inadvertently) misleading. Australia's most dangerous animals are not ones that you can stop with a gun - an assault rifle will do nothing to stop you from being bitten by a funnel web spider that had moved into your shoe, a perfectly camouflaged snake that you stepped on or a small, transparent jellyfish floating 30 metres away from you. People in rural areas still use them and don't have much difficulty getting them.

Carrying a gun for snakes isn’t totally unknown.

Where else? I suppose Australia technically has dangerous wild animals in great variety, but guns are tightly controlled there.

Vast majority of Australian wild animals are only really going to cause you issues if you step on them or you're pretty far off the beaten track.

Dingos and saltwater crocs are technically dangerous to people, are they not? No bears, snakes and monitor lizards avoid people, no big cats. I suppose guns are pretty useless against saltwater crocodiles in general but still.

You’re not going to get attacked by a grizzly in a suburb either, you’d have to be way off the beaten track.

You’re not going to get attacked by a grizzly in a suburb either, you’d have to be way off the beaten track.

Grizzlies no, black bears maybe.

I know somebody who just got back from safari in South Africa. Apparently suppressors are near-universal there; it’s considered rude not to use one. But accessing guns was extremely lenient.

Argentina is another lax one. Big history of ranching.

Argentina has no dangerous wildlife(to humans) to speak of- argentine pumas are known for not even being willing to defend themselves against human assailants, jaguars have only a marginal presence, and the South American canid species are too small and tame to threaten people. I suppose theres bushmasters and rattlesnakes but guns are less helpful against snakes than macro predators.

Not really, not to the same extent or of the same kind. Europe broadly doesn’t allow handguns or concealed carry, and makes getting a rifle difficult. The same is broadly true for Asia, Russia and a bit less so for India. Africa is unable to enforce this kind of thing.

The map of worldwide gun ownership per capita (which was made by the Swiss) is teal and blue globally, with a black blobs for America, Alaska and Yemen.

America doesn’t have handguns, ARs etc. because of its size and wild animals, it has them because it is (ironically) a very conservative country based on armed revolution.

Plus of course because you need them to protect yourself from all the people with guns. I’ve never seen posters here advocate for gun ownership to protect from wild animals, it’s always as a Schelling Point against government overreach or for self-defence.

I’ve never seen posters here advocate for gun ownership to protect from wild animals, it’s always as a Schelling Point against government overreach or for self-defence.

It’s worth noting that self defense from wild animals is written into the gun laws of Canada and Norway, I believe. Now gun politics in those countries are not a big topic of discussion, but it does seem to be a recognized use case.

In the US nobody really cares about Wyomingites and Alaskans having handguns, so this topic doesn’t come up as often.

I’ve never seen posters here advocate for gun ownership to protect from wild animals

Worth noting that this is a very common use-case IRL, although the self-defense question is of course much more interesting and gets more "air time." I've personally used an AR-pattern rifle to shoot predators in defense of livestock.

Defending oneself against predators is very rare but it's enough of a problem in bear territory in North America that ammunition sellers will advertise ammunition as being relevant against bears. Mountain lions (and maybe wolves) are also a potential threat that might warrant a handgun in some places, but don't pose the same challenges that killing a bear does.

I might just be falling for toxoplasma, true.

I've personally used an AR-pattern rifle to shoot predators in defense of livestock.

Very cool, care to tell more? The closest I’ve got is a friend using a BB rifle to fend off monkeys, which can get very vicious.

Not much to tell! Shot and killed a coyote off of the back porch with an AR (chambered in .223) while growing up. Probably at 75 yards? It had come up to steal a chicken. This was a not-infrequent occurrence back on the farm, and we've killed a variety of predators though a variety of means, but the AR-15 was our typical go-to because it's reliable, relatively light, didn't require cycling a bolt for a follow-up shot, and of course it's easy to put whatever sight or other attachments (such as a flashlight) on there that you want. Plus, of course, if you had to you could grab the same gun for a defense against a (human) home invader.

I'm not going to pretend I couldn't have done that with another weapon, but a semi-automatic "sporting" rifle in a small caliber like .223 is ideal for dealing with predators like coyotes and foxes.

Hunting rifles are overkill – they are often heavy, use a larger and more expensive round with more recoil, and you typically mount optics on them that might be more suited to longer ranges and actually hinder target acquisition at closer ranges (this depends entirely of course on your property layout – on a ranch you might prefer a scoped weapon.) Also, I think I prefer the pistol grip on the AR rifle if I am shooting standing. But a less powerful round like a .22 is not generally considered powerful enough to reliably kill a predator, particularly at longer ranges.

An AR is cheap, reliable, and lets you get the first and second shot on quickly. It's also very modular, meaning you can easily adapt the same gun for different situations (so for example I used the same lower but a different upper receiver chambered with a larger round to kill a deer while hunting). This can save you a few bucks, and also it's cool.

Obviously it's not the only option, but for that specific threat (predator, relatively close, say expected at 200 yards or within) I would want a rifle with the same characteristics: small and fast rifle round with a flat trajectory, iron or red dot sight, semi-automatic. And that's a very similar problem to the one the military is trying to solve (especially for dismounted urban combat) so the design convergence is natural.

I admit that the English solution for foxes is less convenient ;-)

More seriously, I think in the UK we would usually use a shotgun. Even rural UK is much more dense than the US and people worry about a missed shot or ricochet killing someone in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Not that sticking to non-rifles keeps things safe… In a quite staggering display of insouciance both of my grandfathers managed to shoot a friend or significant other at some time in their lives, thankfully causing little damage in both cases.

I have nothing against shotguns (used one recently against a raccoon) and with a slug or buckshot they can be effective at the 75 yards or so that I was shooting at for sure. But compared to a small caliber rifle, they have some disadvantages:

  • Large bore, meaning there's a lot of recoil
  • Accuracy will fall off at longer ranges, and on sporting shotgun models the bead sight might not be the best possible configuration (as you say, while performance at longer ranges might be less relevant for people in the UK, particularly in Western American states it's the name of the game, although people will likely use slightly spicier rounds than the .223 if they're shooting out at longer ranges).
  • Much less modular

Of course – with sufficient practice, almost anyone could have made the shot I made with a smoothbore musket, or a bow. The reason the AR and similar platforms are popular is because it's versatile and easy to use, not because it's the only possible solution.

Now if I was marketing to English gentleman, I would consider making a double-barreled .410 shotgun with slugs that could accept a red dot sight (...is that legal?) to get a lot of the same functionality for pest hunting as an AR.

Certain vice presidents have had trouble with shotguns too. Similar incidents have happened to a number of other celebrities over the years too.

Most countries allow for hunting rifles and such, no?

For a very specific value of "allow", maybe.

Yes, certainly. But I don’t think that ‘some farmers have a rifle in the barn’ is what we’re talking about here. A Hassan wouldn’t be able to get a hunting rifle, and certainly wouldn’t be allowed to carry it into town or anything. There is essentially no probability that someone you meet is ‘packing’.

I made a post way back saying that lots of countries and England in particular are fine with sporting/hunting guns to some degree, but are absolutely rock-solid on forbidding personal weapons (with some unavoidable fuzziness in between).

My understanding of American gun rights supporters is that it’s the opposite: they feel it’s existentially important for their civilisation to allow people access to personal weapons specifically.

Yes "gun culture" is more American, but my point is that the access to guns is there in most countries should you wish. Most gun control advocates don't realize this though.

I'm aware that isn't you but might have been OP.

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