Y'know, I was going to write up a long rebuttal

I'm not sure what you were going to rebut. My post doesn't seem to be an advocate for gun-control -- if so, sorry, I was just trying to point out a difference in attitude that I've noticed. Personally, I like guns. I like their design, I like the smell of gunpowder, I like the heft of a gun in my hands (I've only ever shot rifles). I'm not so naive as to think that gun-control is the panacea that will save the US from itself -- that's no more true than it is that youth violence in the US is due to Marylin Manson, violent video games, sex on TV, the news, or any of the other popular things the right/left/middle wing is going to try banning next. Other countries have the same, some to an even greater extent than the US.

It's kind of funny... the first link I clicked on ("Assault Weapons by Hugh Downs") in that first link you gave had this to say:
Firearms, in whatever numbers or whatever configurations, are not the problem. The problem would seem to have its roots in national attitudes we have toward correcting things. Where did we develop the idea that personal grievances or social wrongs can be redressed by shooting the bad guy?[...]The assault rifle debate takes our attention away from the underlying problem: how to effect a change in our national attitude toward settling differences by violence.

It echos my sentiments quite well, if not much more eloquently. Unfortunately, the attitude is so pervasive that few people even notice that it's there. One of the saddest ironies of Bowling for Columbine film was when Moore was talking to a Lockheed-Martin PR lackey. Moore asked if part of the culpability for the shootings might belong to companies like LM that implicitly foster the attitude that it's okay to resolve your problems by killing people. The response was something along the lines of "Well... when you're mad at someone, you don't just go killing them. You talk things over and come to a resolution. It's not like America goes firing missiles at other countries every time we get mad at them." Hmmm....

Cheers,