Ms. Davidsen,
Your fear is born, as always, in your utter ignorance. If you’d like to actually learn something about the subject, including the laws and customs in your own nation, all you have to do is ask.
In the meantime, your support of Fascism is noted. I thought you Europeans had learned your lessons about that. It appears that I was wrong…..
Sincerely, A Free Citizen

■ People were happy.
■ Suddenly, I was standing in the middle of a tiny room located just beside the kitchen. It was dark and cold. The lights were turned on and I saw myself in the surrounded by numerous guns; pistols and rifles of all sizes were placed precisely on shelves and some were locked in a glass cabinet.
■ I honestly got scared, and all I wanted was to run home. The father must have noticed my nervousness, tapped me on my shoulder and handed me an empty pistol, which in my hand looked more dangerous than on the shelf. I looked at him and forced a giggly smile while I handed him back the gun.”
└ This is because the vast majority of families have a positive connotation with firearms. You see on the news people being killed with guns and you have developed this hoplophobia against it. 99.999999% or more of Americans aren’t killing people with their firearms and they are enjoyable to them. They don’t associate their firearms with death and destruction. You do. As an example I have a beautiful swiss made k11 carbine straight pull made in 1916. All I get out of it is warm feelings. I also have a an AK variant that my father gave to me before he passed away. I remember buying it with him at the gun show when I was a kid, I remember shooting it with him for the first time. It was fun and we had a great time. Nothing horrifying about it.

People were happy.
Suddenly, I was standing in the middle of a tiny room located just beside the kitchen. It was dark and cold. The lights were turned on and I saw myself in the surrounded by numerous guns; pistols and rifles of all sizes were placed precisely on shelves and some were locked in a glass cabinet.
I honestly got scared, and all I wanted was to run home. The father must have noticed my nervousness, tapped me on my shoulder and handed me an empty pistol, which in my hand looked more dangerous than on the shelf. I looked at him and forced a giggly smile while I handed him back the gun.

This is because the vast majority of families have a positive connotation with firearms. You see on the news people being killed with guns and you have developed this hoplophobia against it. 99.999999% or more of Americans aren’t killing people with their firearms and they are enjoyable to them. They don’t associate their firearms with death and destruction. You do. As an example I have a beautiful swiss made k11 carbine straight pull made in 1916. All I get out of it is warm feelings. I also have a an AK variant that my father gave to me before he passed away. I remember buying it with him at the gun show when I was a kid, I remember shooting it with him for the first time. It was fun and we had a great time. Nothing horrifying about it.

In America, to me it seems like everybody has a gun for protection or for hunting.

Or for sport, enjoyment in shooting, and many others.

The American people take huge pride in their gun laws and their guns.

I take pride in our “lack” of gun laws. Which isn’t much pride at all, given how many laws we have. I wish there were fewer laws – not more.

In Denmark, only people with hunting certificates can buy a rifle strictly for hunting purposes only. There is extreme control, and no one can go into a pawn shop and buy a gun. It has to go carefully through the system.

We are not “pro control” here. We like freedom, self reliance, independence, personal responsibility, etc.

These Danish laws are held in order to decrease violence, crime, killings and other incidents involving deadly weapons.

It is against the law here to murder people. If someone is being murdered, why does it matter what instrument was employed to murder them?? Also, in another few decades, this silly anti-freedom law that makes attempts to force-fed people safety and authoritarian control, will be completely moot, when anybody and everybody will be able to print a gun made of steel by means of laser sintering. 3D plastic printers were unobtainable by the vast majority of the public due to its cost, and now anyone can have one, even build them themselves, at almost no expense at all. Laser sintering is next.

In Denmark, we have a strict knife law restricting the use of knives. It is illegal to carry knives in public places, and in order to have a knife blade exceed 12 centimeters, you must have permission from the police.

I’m sure the criminals completely and voluntarily follow this.

I am aware of the differences of society structure, government control and mentalities of Denmark and America, but I do believe guns and other deadly weapons are too easy to access in the states.

That’s fine. It is clear you don’t support the US constitution (2nd amendment of constitution –
Question 45 of the Application of Naturalization – USCIS form N400). When you are finished up here, please make no attempts to become a US citizen and move back to Denmark. Denmark is the place for you.

Honestly, I believe American gun laws are extremely casual. I understand the American pride regarding guns, but I do not think anybody should be proud of the innocent people get killed every year in America, either because of street or gang violence or police violence, and I believe this is due to the mentality concerning guns.

Mentality concerning guns, or mentality concerning murder? Again, 99.99999% or more of Americans like the guns and don’t want to kill anyone. Is the problem the gun, or the individuals decision to commit murder? Do you seriously think for one second that the street and gang criminals are getting their guns legally? The problem here isn’t a gun problem. It’s a criminal problem. People willing to kill other people. They are the problem. Not people that own guns.

It saddens me innocent people get shot by police or innocent kids get caught in the middle of a drug war and lose their lives.

It saddens me that people don’t take responsibility for their children and just hand them over to the village to be raised by the riffraff. Again, is the problem that guns exist in this environment? Or is the problem that people were raised without morals and civility?

This problem cannot be solved by increasing the causality of weapons.

I disagree with your premise that the “problem” is guns. The problem is morally reprehensible individuals. When they murder someone, I am upset about the death that has resulted. I could care less what instrument they used to murder someone. The problem is they murdered someone. The problem isn’t, that they owned a gun, or a knife, or a bat, or whatever.

It is about time the American gun industry is called out as well as its money and power is decreased.

Uhhh. No. The “American Gun Industry” isn’t the cause of crime and gang violence. The “American Gun Industry” isn’t a single entity appropriated by taxes. It is many thousands of large and small companies privately owned and operated by people with the freedom to do so. I know you don’t like this kind of freedom, which is why Denmark is the place for you.
Everything about your post is offensive by the way. If you don’t like our culture, you don’t have to stay here. Your opinion is noted, and we don’t really care for it. I wouldn’t go to Denmark and tell them that I didn’t like their culture and that they should change it because I didn’t like it. But yet this is what you are doing to us.

Amalie –
First, to be clear, there are MANY federal and state restrictions in the US related to the legal purchase of a firearm. To suggest one can just saunter into a gun store with a driver’s license or state ID and purchase a firearm is rather disingenuous. I do get where it might appear that way to an outsider but it simply isn’t true. Unfortunately many of our own citizens are equally in the dark on this issue.
There IS a definite line between “illegal” and “still possible”, though – that may come as a shock to some, but making something illegal does not really have any effect on whether or not it is ultimately still possible. The government by itself simply cannot legislate reality. Laws are, ultimately, a kind of “friendly agreement” between the citizen and the state. There is MUCH room on either side of the relationship to ignore or abuse that agreement 😉
Culture also factors in when talking about firearms in the US but I would caution against drawing too direct of a conclusion there. Yes, the Second Amendment in our Bill of Rights acknowledges one’s inherent right to self-protection – this is often framed as a gun issue but it is really a “most effective tool for the job” issue. Limiting the right of potential victims to protect themselves is hardly a winning strategy when criminal simply do not care in the slightest what laws they break, either in the commision of their crime or in the preparation for it (i.e. how they obtain their tools…)
I get it, though. Coming from another country/culture there certainly is a need for adjustment. I’m sure I would have a similar struggle visiting Denmark if it meant having to give up my ability to protect myself from terrorists or (the more pedestrian) local thugs targeting tourists!
I would like to think that most of us Americans simply do not try an sugar coat a difficult subject. Let us start here: a tool does not have any will of its own. Guns are a tool – a tool with a very specific use, mind you, but a tool nonetheless. Is the gun debate really about how people choose to use that tool or is it over whether or not the tool is valid/useful? You cannot expect to legislate a physical tool into oblivion – has that ever worked? No.
In the end the gun debate is actually about a core issue: control. Does government have a right to control the citizen? Does that extend to the invalidation of basic human rights? I say no. Absolutely no. Laws and the governmental protection they afford should never be perverted to point where a law-abiding citizen’s rights are invalidated by the government’s response to the actions of criminals. Laws establish a guideline for proper behavior and, by extension, punish criminals – they should NOT punish the law-abiding!
Taking away a person’s right to self defense is NOT the solution. Better protection against and prosecution of criminals IS. This plays out on a regular basis here where the US cities with the most restrictive gun laws – unconstitutional gun laws that strip potential victims of the ability to effectively protect themselves – prove to be the most dangerous cities in the country with the highest rates of violent crime. Is that all gun crime? No. Is that the true concern? Of course not! Violence is violence.
Like it or not, guns ARE an effective tool, regardless of who wields them. Senseless European-style anti-gun laws don’t change that basic fact. Better to have effective tools in the hands of those who can do the most good with them, I say. Our government, for the most part, acknowledges a citizen’s right to protect innocent life, whether it is their own, that of a member of their family or the public at large.
Cheers,
Tim

Congratuations. Your opinion piece also made it to TTAG:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2017/04/daniel-zimmerman/quote-day-european-discovers-americas-gun-culture/

This is a very very strange opinion piece. Denmark also has less protections than US First, Fourth and Fifth amendment rights. I went to undergrad for one year there. You have to show your ID to police if you are walking on the street even if there is not reasonable suspicion or probable cause. Refusal to do so constitutes reasonable suspicion for a search. Also if a warrant is executed in your home, items not on the warrant are admissible, something forbidden in the US due to the Bill of Rights.
As a woman I was conscious of the really extremely high rate of rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment in Denmark, which has been doubling every few years.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sweden-and-denmark-have-highest-number-of-sexual-assaults-in-europe-a6800901.html
https://www.thelocal.dk/20170201/reported-rapes-in-denmark-double-in-two-years
I also found these quotes interesting:
“and it is not possible [in Denmark]to buy knives at the gas station.  ”
But you can in Norway, which has a lower murder rate. hmmm.
“or that some Americans own AK-47s”
Fact: total US murders with legally owned full automatic weopons such as AK-47 in the US since 1950 (when records started for that): 2. Not two per year, two in the last 67 years. People killed with toothbrushes since then: about 240.
“I clearly remember my first time in Wal-Mart. Besides all the chaos, something that blew my mind was that a person with a government-issued ID could buy a gun. ”
Fact: Walmart stores that sell guns are all Federally licensed dealers, and do not sell any guns without a full FBI background check to make sure the person is completely qualified by law to buy the gun. And what is the writer suggesting, a person who wants a shotgun buy it online? by wholesale?
“This problem cannot be solved by increasing the causality of weapons. It is about time the American gun industry is called out as well as its money and power is decreased.   ”
a) The number and power of firearms has both increased profoundly since the mid 1990’s. US murder rate fell 61% as guns increased and gun control was reduced.
b) A dozen studies by police and criminal justice agencies across the US have shown over 90% of homicide victims are criminals. If you are not a criminal you are safer from rape, safer from violent assault and safer from murder in the US than you are in Denmark. (the huge majority of US murder is criminal on criminal)
c) between 500,000 to three million crimes are prevented each year by gun owners. Gun murder of non criminals in the US is under 800 per year.
d) the NRA has the largest membership of any civil rights organization of the US. It has 56% approval from all US citizens according to gallup. Paid membership of all US gun control groups combined is under 400 persons. it is the gun control groups that are a fake non citizen lobby. NRA paid membership is over 5 million and growing as the gun control advocates attempt to ban guns and advocate confiscation.

To react with fear to dangerous weapons is understandable. This is particularly true when someone is as unfamiliar with weapons as Amalie is. There is a tremendously awesome responsibility that goes along with owning and carrying deadly weapons. I think Amalie may have a valid point when she says that Americans have a casual relationship with firearms. I say this after spending 12 years in the Army and the past 9 having a carry-and-conceal permit.
Where I disagree with Amalie is that we need stricter gun laws. What I think we DO need, is a total overhaul of the patchwork of federal, state and local laws. I think there should be federal preemption; I also think that carry permits should be recognized cross country the same way that drivers licenses should be. Americans have a much more casual, and deadly, relationship with the 1000 – 6000lb missiles that they climb into every day.
I think that more information on how, when, and why firearms are employed is necessary. Between the FBI Uniformed Crime Report and the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, the overwhelming majority of firearms deaths are by suicide. Setting that aside, I think that we should look at violence as a more encompassing phenomenon versus “gun violence.” Both sides of the firearms argument have an unhealthy fear of data. If we can understand how firearms are used, and how they are not used, we can begin to solve our society’s issues of violence. Unfortunately, the two sides of the ideology are too emotionally entrenched in their views and have far too much invested in the ideological war to make an honest effort to actually come to a viable resolution.
Amalie’s post, I think, is a great example of people without a vested interest in the topic attempting to show The One TRUE Way™ and t hat all other frames of mind are invalid. I think that is a disservice to the American citizens that work diligently to own and operate firearms in a safe and legal manner.
Thank you for reading my thoughts to their conclusion; have a great day.