
o you think maybe the U.S. has a bigger problem with the idea of less gun usage because of a kind of (excuse the cliched term) cowboy-esque lifestyle / history of your people, due to living in amongst wild habitat - along with the obvious factor of gun liences and tight government enforcement over the country - as I do believe that people have a natural (and also do develop) relationship with their environments?
Could be, but ownership of firearms would be part of a rural lifestyle.
I grew up in Ireland, on a dairy farm in Mayo.
My grandmother was a crack shot with a shotgun, picking off crow or fox as the need arose.
My cousins in Ireland are actually still rather well armed. The only difference is that I have more handguns. On the other hand, they can purchase sound suppressors ( often erroneously called ‘silencers’ ) very easily. Having the sound cut in half is considered to be neighbourly. Over hear, it requires a Federal permit that is difficult and expensive to get.
But that is in the rural West, I imagine very few in Dublin have hunting rifles.
But on most of those farmers in the rural villages almost certainly have shotgun permits, at the very least. It is simply part of running a farm.
And like Eddie noted, larger lots are more common here than in the UK, at least in the Midwest. I live in a suburb of Detroit on a 3 acre lot, about an acre and a half is woodlot. Kind of the equivalent of living on the outskirts of Birmingham, about a half hour drive into the city centre.
On my property, we too see a lot of deer, coyote, raccoon, possum, etc… We keep chickens in the backyard, and have to make sure they are securely locked, or else they would fall victim to either the coyotes or the raccoons. We even had a coyote sniffing around one evening when my then 3 year old was outside playing. My older son went to retrieve him, but the coyote followed them. I went out with one of my pistols and a baseball bat, but it ran off when I growled at it. No shots fired. But I certainly would have to save my son from an attack.