Politico pubblica un articolo di uno storico americano che ha studiato le varie ondate di colonizzazione degli USA, in cui l’autore dà la sua spiegazione di come l’uso delle armi da fuoco sia dettato dalle varie culture che gli immigrati hanno portato negli USA, e smentisce le affermazioni di vari politici repubblicani secondo i quali le morti da armi da fuoco sono più comuni nelle città democratiche come New York o Chicago.

The reason the U.S. has strong regional differences is because our swath of the North American continent was settled by rival colonial projects that had very little in common, often despised one another and spread without regard for today’s state boundaries…

… In the process they laid down the institutions, symbols, cultural norms and ideas about freedom, honor and violence that later arrivals would encounter and, by and large, assimilate into. Some states lie entirely or almost entirely within one of these regional cultures, others are split between them… 

… A famous Scot once said ‘let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws,’ because culture is extremely powerful … Culture drives politics, law and policy. It is amazingly durable, and you have to take it into account.