[Colonel]

Tripper, I'm sure New Zealand is a wonderful place to live. However I would assume that much of the difference between there and here is a combination of cultural differences (I can elaborate if you need me to) and population density. New Zealand has four million people spread out over a country the size of the UK. The UK has fifteen times as many people. The US is about the size of Australia and has a popluation approaching 300 million.

BTW - I may be reading these charts wrong, but according to this site (http://www.police.govt.nz/service/stati ... /calendar/) New Zealand has about 110 violent crimes per ten thousand people.

According to this site (http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm) the US had about 506 crimes in the "violent" column per 100,000 people. I may be reading this chart wrong too for all I know but it seems like New Zealand is not much safer, if any, than the US as a whole. (But congrats on the declining Overall rate and the steady increase in the rate of Solved cases!)

It may not seem like an imposition to you that you are not allowed to own a gun because you've never had that freedom, but to us that have enjoyed going hunting with our dads, or going to the pistol range with our daughters (I've enjoyed both scenarios), or have protected ourselves from a home invasion (as my 78 year old dad had to do a couple of years ago), any talk of taking away our right to own a gun causes the hair on our necks to stand up. Couple that with our national history of citizens using their own guns to fight for our freedom and you have a culture that a person who has lived their life in New Zealand, or Japan, or Germany, or even the UK cannot understand.