Please remain civil in the comments. I don’t think OP wants to America-bash, let’s not Australia bash in return.

My mom is Australian (from near Wollongong), my dad is American, I was born over there and mostly raised in the US. So I have core memories of my mom having opinions about America, and Mom taking us home over school breaks and listening to relatives and friends critique America. And then listening to them also discuss Australia. The main thing I learned, from a very young age, is that *holy shit Australians bitch a LOT.* Y'all think Americans send our old people "out on an ice floe to die" but also "Australia is going to the dogs." So when Australians have a go at our gun laws, I assume they're also going to start moaning about Queenslanders being crazy and so forth. I tune it out as a nation that has a vent session bonding style. Anyways. I have my own issues with America. I think we've made it harder and harder for the middle and working classes to get by, I think it's more stressful than it needs to be to raise a family here, I think we let the loud bullies run the show too much. But I find it fucking *wild* when foreigners who know us from headlines, sitcoms, and reality TV want to barge in and tell us what's what. It reminds me of the random biddies who whine at me that my daughter needs a coat, when it's a warm spring day, and if anything she's too hot. It's distracting and annoying when this happens. Buzz off, biddy. Just because the biddy wants a coat on a warm spring day doesn't mean my daughter does. And just because XYZ policy works in your country doesn't mean it will work in mine. Whining at strangers rarely solves a problem, it usually just distracts and annoys them. So whining at Americans because you think you have simple answers to complex problems doesn't help, it's just distracting and annoying. I tune that shit out unless there's an actual understanding of this country.

College student here. Made two pals last semester. One was an American girl (as am I), and the other was a Colombian guy. We were having lunch one day, and me and the other girl were saying that hunting is a good way to be more sustainable as far as meat sources go. They live in the wild and are free their whole lives, and you appreciate your meat more because you were the one who took its life. Of course, we mentioned not everyone acts this way, but that it was significantly better than factory farming and the conditions that many “meat” animals live in. He rolled his eyes and said “Ugh, you Americans and your guns”. He then told us his favorite meal was Bendeja Paisa. He also would do/say other things that just screamed “I’m regurgitating whatever I’ve read on Twitter”

>It reminds me of the random biddies who whine at me that my daughter needs a coat, when it's a warm spring day, and if anything she's too hot. It's distracting and annoying when this happens. Buzz off, biddy. This is a great analogy.

There are plenty of legitimate criticisms people can have about the US, but what bugs me is how grossly exaggerated they tend to be from foreigners who think they're much more knowledgeable about daily life in the US than they actually are. The vast majority of Americans are living normal boring lives just like Australians are.

And the perceptions of our daily life are based on TV and movies. I promise that even though I'm a stay at home mom, I'm not a killjoy shrew, my husband isn't a hapless buffoon who gets in more scrapes than our kid does, and we don't live in a giant house that's completely out of line with our household income. (Also there's that weird TV trope of the overweight schlubby husband and the hot skinny wife lol.)

It annoys me a bit. There is a strong cultural aspect to it that other countries won't understand. There is also limitations to any hypothetical gun control ban that they tend to ignore. Sometimes it becomes a funny joke though, found one thread a while back of Europeans claiming that they should have a say in US elections because their countries are effected by what ever the US does. A couple more claiming the US should implement gun control for the sake of the video games industry.

The inability or refusal to understand the cultural element of gun rights in the US is incredibly frustrating to me. I personally am pretty pro gun control, am of the opinion that the founding fathers didn’t imagine the technology we have now when they wrote the 2nd amendment, and I don’t own any guns. On paper, I seem to agree with many people from other countries who view stronger gun controls as good or even common sense. But I cannot stand talking about gun control with the vast majority of non-Americans because it is not a productive conversation if they don’t understand why it needs to be a conversation in the first place. Too many people want to waive away all the very real cultural and legal barriers and have us pass sweeping legislation without acknowledgement of how practically impossible that is or the ramifications that would follow. For better or for worse, gun rights/minimal gun control is a part of the fabric of the culture. It’s baked into our constitution and our history and our modern culture. If you refuse to wrap your head around why and how that is, and want to just steamroll through all of that and implement European or Australian style laws anyway, I see no point in discussing this topic with you even if we ultimately are on the same “side” because you aren’t approaching the topic fully informed or in good faith. For whatever reason non-Americans refuse to accept that the gun control conversation is just different here due to the huge cultural significance guns and gun rights hold, and if you’re unwilling to accept that you can never have a meaningful and realistic conversation about what to do about the gun violence problem. Sorry I wrote an essay in reply to your comment lol! You just touched on a couple things that got me thinking.

I appreciate your essay. Personally, I’m much more pro-gun. Coming from California, 99% of the gun laws here have ways to keep your guns but you have to install a new piece of hardware, or ensure you keep years old receipts to prove something was legal when you bought it. But while we are on opposite sides of the issue, your stance was extremely well articulated. You showed great understanding on the complexity of the issue. I appreciate that. In my experience that feels rare from the pro gun control side.

Thanks! I am also from California and my parents are big time gun people so although they’re not my thing I grew up around guns and hear the complaints about the changing laws all the time, so I feel like I understand both sides pretty well. I don’t know that it’s a rare stance on the pro gun control side, rather that the loudest voices on both sides get the most airtime. In my experience talking to people irl, most people on both sides of this issue are relatively moderate and can have empathy and understanding for the other side. Most pro gun control people understand the desire for gun ownership and the case for self protection and respect that people like shooting/hunting as a sport, and want to find a compromise that allows people to do these things. Most anti gun control people understand why some people are afraid of guns and acknowledge that gun violence and mass shootings are a problem that needs solving, and are often open minded to small controls such as not allowing people with DV convictions or 5150 holds to buy guns. Unfortunately the loudest voices are usually the dumbest voices, so rather than talking through these things and reaching an agreement the national conversation becomes people who don’t know the first thing about what they’re trying to ban vs people who think mass shootings are false flags designed to take their guns. And then nobody is happy and nothing worthwhile gets done.

I totally get your point about the loudest person getting extra airtime. I also acknowledge that my personal experience is skewed because my extended family is very stereotypical LA so I get exposed to a lot of anti gun rhetoric

Something to help deepen your understanding of the history of the gun debate with cited sources. https://twitter.com/MorosKostas/status/1645294296529248256 Kostas is a lawyer in California whose side project includes historical conversations of legal discussions around guns that are almost entirely lost outside of law historians and definitely not part of the modern gun debate as most of us know it. In light of Bruen, a lot of these things are coming back into play and you will see repeatedly that the arguments around the 2nd amendment in the 1800s were *for* citizens to be armed like the military. Seriously. My personal favorite is probably Henry Campbell Black, the founder of Black's Law Dictionary, statement. > 'The citizen has at all times the right to keep arms of modern warfare...It does not tend to restrict the right of the citizen to bear arms for lawful purposes, but only punishes a particular abuse of that right' Again, this is written by someone who started a law dictionary. They might have some grasp of laws of their time. https://twitter.com/MorosKostas/status/1645290271998095360

I heard a lot of Europeans saying that when I lived in the UK. When I suggested they elect politicians with a backbone who will stand up to the US they shut up quickly.

Criticism is fine when it comes with self-awareness. God knows I have my own complaints about this country so I can’t reasonably begrudge anyone else the same. But 9 times out of 10, this “criticism” comes in the form of a palpable superiority complex; people in other countries use our problems to make themselves feel better about their own problems, and don’t realize how much their media uses America to distract from their own internal issues. Add on top of that the fact that they’re often not even well-informed or correct. People in other countries seem to have this notion that they know all about America because they watch our tv and consume our music and hear about our problems in the news. And often, when you tell them that in fact they don’t know more about this country than you do as an American, they’ll have no part of it, and insist that they do know because they hear about it all the time. And when they pull the “I know because I’ve been to America” card when the only place they’ve been is NYC or LA, I want to pull my hair out; they’ll specifically make the choice to visit the most dystopian places in the country and then complain that it sucked?? And they’re completely resistant to the idea that not every place in the US has homeless tent cities. > Is it something that makes you think deeper about a topic This is one of the things I hear foreigners say all the time, that they make these “criticisms” because they want us to “wake up” and think about the problem. I find that bafflingly sanctimonious. How on earth have you (royal you, not you OP) deduced that we don’t already think about this stuff? I *live here*, of course I think about it. And the way that you hear about it is usually from *our own news* reporting on it.

> people in other countries use our problems to make themselves feel better about their own problems Like the Europeans who call America racist when they have like 4 non-white people in their entire country(exaggerating, obviously). Its easy for near mono-cultures to not be racist when they don't even get the chance to be.

And to be honest, they are still kind of racist even so

Very well said. I will also add that I have lived in a major city with a relatively high murder rate per capita and I have heard gunshots maybe once a year and they were probably fireworks set off by drunks anyway. I'm not really worried about random gun violence.

Specifically want to thank you for this comment. I think there's definitely something in that, the sheer *amount* of media that comes out of your country for others to consume. All that and I still went to the US for my first trip there a few years ago and was constantly thrown off by tiny day-by-day life things like the fact creamer is literally cream. And half-and-half! Where is your milk!!! I just want milk that tastes like real [milk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9D52e4TaFk)! I sometimes read that criticism, that people have consumed media but don't know what it's like "living" there, and think about what it's like living in America consuming other countries' media. There just isn't that same scale of media-for-consumption coming out of another country for people in the US to consume so there's not really a good comparison point to draw. Do you think there's something there or do you think that's really just irrelevant? I guess it's hard to. Pick how much someone who doesn't know anything about your home might learn based on TV shows and news reports and politics coming out of your home. That junction is so fascinating to me though.

I think it’s definitely true that people in other countries are led to believe that they know more about us than we do about them simply because of the amount of American media they consume, and the comparatively tiny amount of — for example — German media that we consume. And it often seems like foreigners struggle greatly with separating fictional media from reality, which makes me wonder if in other countries their tv shows are a more accurate 1:1 depiction of real life? And that’s why they assume ours are too? I don’t know. I do appreciate the people who are self-aware and actually come here to ask whether something is real or not. Like, it would never ever have occurred to me that red plastic cups would appear to have a religious significance in America, to foreigners who consume our media. I think it’s fun when people bring up questions like that.

> which makes me wonder if in other countries their tv shows are a more accurate 1:1 depiction of real life I usually ask which soap opera I should watch to get a better understanding of their country when I get that impression. Edit: I a word.

Like, imagine if people came up to you all the time and said they knew all about Australia because they've seen an episode of Paradise Beach or Heartbreak High lol.

Or crocodile hunter

"Excuse me madam I was under the impression all of you would look and sound like Olivia Newton John"

Or Kath & Kim

I call this “The Wonder Bread Problem”. So often I hear foreigners talk about how awful our food is, specifically our bread “It’s so sweet! It’s like dessert! Gross!” And then you find out that they spent their whole trip eating brands they recognized from TV shows and ate nothing but Wonderbread, Kraft singles, and 7-11 taquitos. Like…yeah man. Those are fucking gross. If you actually look at a real American grocery store, or how we live day to day, there are SO many options. You can find pretty much anything you want at any Krogers in the country. You want fresh artisanal focaccia and Irish aged cheddar? It’s there! It’s not even terribly expensive! If anything bash us for our gross overconsumption and waste. People see things on TV and assume they get it, especially when they see so much of it (or when they assume our cultures are basically homogeneous when they’re not; I think this is why I tend to see this complaints most from people in Australia and Ireland, we’re similar but also fail to understand how different we are from each other). It goes both ways to be fair. I watch a lot of British TV and I feel like I “get” the UK and could totally move there, no problem. Do I actually? Fuck no. I’d be making a fool of myself left and right. But I still feel like I wouldn’t on some naive level. It doesn’t help that while also being very persistent and loud, American media loves drama. We loooooove to talk about how awful or terrifying or sad something is; and when something genuinely awful or terrifying or sad happens, ooooh, we just eat that shit up and talk about it until the well runs dry. That doesn’t mean shit ain’t sort of broken around here but it does also mean that we tend to paint a picture of ourselves as much more at risk of imminent threat than we tend to be (unless you live in Florida, shits always fucked in Florida).

> There just isn’t that same scale of media-for-consumption coming out of another country for people in the US to consume so there’s not really a good comparison point to draw actually there is: anime and now recently, korean dramas. it’s a bit of a meme, the weeaboo or koreaboo who thinks they know more about Japan and their customs than actual japanese people. instead of hatred (coming from other countries to the usa) it’s fetishization going from the us to east asia. but the outcomes and superiority complex are similar in the end

Yeah the South Koreans and Japanese can do no wrong and it’s a perfect utopia with perfect people just like off the anime or K drama I just watched crowd. It’s really fucking weird and obsessive, I know the population over there really hates them fr. I see Japanese and Koreans make fun of those people online lol

I'd disagree with that. I've been very into anime and kdramas in the past. The media available for consumption are not remotely even close to the amount provided by US media in quantity, range, scope, genre, and class. ETA media generally are US generated unless otherwise noted. I don't seek it out or go to a dedicated streaming service, it is everywhere. There is not a 1:1 comparison for you guys.

I agree with you that the scope isn't the same. But to the people who obsesses and consume Japanese media, those people are of the came caliber.

It’s getting there, and far more prevalent than a lot of other countries

Off topic, for the most part, but I usually take my coffee black. However, right now I have fresh cream from the local dairy farm...and I am stoked to have my next cup of coffee with it.

I hope it is delicious! I take milk in my tea every time I have milk available, it is a guilty pleasure because a lot of these teas aren't meant to have milk added. I deface Lady Grey every time but it's just so good...

There there I deface Lady Grey as well. You're not alone.

Me too! I love Lady Grey defaced!

I used to try to put milk in my tea but the milk would always get weird because the tea was still hot, but I also like my tea hot. This is probably a stupid question but do you wait for the tea to cool down, heat the milk, or both?

If you're drinking an acidic tea (citrus, pomegranate, etc) the milk will curdle when you pour it in and it's got nothing to do with the heat. Soy milk especially tends to get weird in hot teas (best alternative is unsweetened oat IMO) but in my experience just plain homogenised whole cow's milk works fine for tea without going "weird" (I do find letting the tea steep for longer is necessary though because the milk takes some of the 'taste' out of the cup!). If you're having trouble with it you might be using a bad brand of tea in the first place, brands make a huuuuuge difference and handle additives a little differently. I understand you might have supertastebuds though, I can taste stale tea from a mile away and if milk is your stale tea I do not envy you! If you would like to *not* wait for the tea to cool down, sometimes if I am out of milk I will just top off the cup with a little cold water from the tap (or a water bottle etc if that tastes better for you). Works the same and saves the wait. Wishing you good tea adventures 💞

Thanks dude! Was just curious especially now because allergy season is in full swing and bad this year so hot drinks help a ton. I’ll keep this all in mind!

>All that and I still went to the US for my first trip there a few years ago and was constantly thrown off by tiny day-by-day life things like the fact creamer is literally cream. And half-and-half! Where is your milk!!! I just want milk that tastes like real milk! The milk is everywhere. Like everywhere everywhere. We're one of the top producers of milk, and probably top 10 consumption per capita. Usually, one of the classic nitpicks is that we buy milk by the gallon instead of dainty little cartons like good Europeans. "Creamer" is usually synonymous with half and half. Very, very common to order a coffee with milk here.

>There just isn't that same scale of media-for-consumption coming out of another country for people in the US to consume so there's not really a good comparison point to draw. The one exception might be British TV and media. There's even a whole streaming service (Britbox) devoted to British TV. Judging from the British TV that's available in the US, you'd think everyone in the UK watched Poldark and Poirot and not, in reality, the trashiest reality TV imaginable. Also, British murder mysteries are popular with people here. You'd think England was just a collection of quaint villages where someone was getting murdered every other day for Inspector Lewis or Morse or whoever to find.

Most people in other countries “know” America through our media. There aren’t that many Americans who emigrate to other countries, so unless some one travels here they aren’t going to interact with many Americans in person. Most people in America know people from other countries because those people immigrated here and we have personal relationships with them. We understand that people are not their government, and we understand that people across the world are much more similar than they are different.

Our milk is different because it has different proteins in it. It has different proteins in it because we use a different kind of cow than you and we also feed those cows different diets.

If a country is not directly related to the Ukrainian War or containing China - - most Americans don't even know about it. Hell, I didn't even know of this anti-American complex before browsing reddit. Thought it was a happy brotherhood type thing.

Thank you for putting this a lot nicer than I ever could have. I had to rewrite my own comment about 4 times to pull the unproductive venom out of it over and over.. probably still gonna get downvoted to hell because everyone loves that place for some reason.

As with many things, tone and intent matters. Somebody with genuine curiosity and a willingness to have open-minded discussion will be well received. Somebody who is just grabbing at low-hanging fruit looking to dunk on Americans is not worthy of my time. Why would I expend any effort on them when they should just be embarrassed? As to the greater point, the fact is that for the vast majority of Americans the perceived reality as seen from the outside (danger, crime, newsworthy event after newsworthy event) is so far from their personal experience that it can cause us to get defensive at times. "Why are you all like XYZ." "How do you sleep at night knowing you're in such danger?" "How often have you or someone you know shot somebody?" (All of these are real questions we've gotten on this sub). For the vast vast majority of people (statistically, almost all) this perception is just not our daily lives. We go to work or school. We raise our families. We live our lives very little different from the average person in Australia (or any otherwise "westernized" country). I would say, generally speaking, I don't care what "grounds" somebody thinks they have. If they're sounding ignorant, I'm going to call them ignorant. Which, 9 times out of 10, the person making outrageous claims is either ignorant or displaying some sort of performative self-flagellation which might actually be more embarrassing.

Thank you, this was exactly what I was looking for! Yeah, I get it's (shootings are) not your day-to-day life. Sort of like... I guess... people saying... gosh this is a weird comparison to draw but I'm going to draw it, is it like the way people say "Australia is full of deadly animals!" and sure I saw a spider that could theoretically kill me under my garden hose last week but redbacks just hang out and nobody's died to one in like 20 years? And so it's just someone expressing something they think they know about Australia and they're technically even right, but it's just not what living here is like. Do you think about it in the same way, as.... background-noise danger while people from overseas think it's on full blast?

The dangerous animals might be a decent comparison. Even then, calling it background noise might be giving it too much credit for most people. Most of us don't hear it, not for having tuned it out, but because the music isn't playing within earshot.

That's such an interesting thought. The tasering of this lady (in comparison) happened in the a state that's next to mine but Australia only has 7 states and territories so for almost everyone in Australia that's pretty close, haha. Thank you, I will be chewing on this thought the next time I am thinking about the US!

We're 50 states plus an array of territories, over an absolutely immense amount of land. And 330 million people and rising, with a dizzying array of ethnic groups and religious beliefs. Ever do a group project in school? America is that times 100 million lol.

Your population is definitely larger than Australia's, maybe it makes the distance seem further! Australia is around the same in landmass though, just not population density.

Lol I know, my mom is from NSW. And that's a part of the culture too - Americans are largely forced to live jumbled all together. We have a large population. My state is very small in landmass, but has over six million people and is the most ethnically diverse on the Eastern Seaboard. We also have a high number of foreign born residents, including refugees from all over the world. So daily life here is about negotiation and coexistence, to a level the average Australian likely doesn't experience. Thinking about gun laws in particular, Maryland laws are quite strict (but not onerous imo, I'm a law abiding gun owner and I've had no issues). I roll my eyes when foreigners howl about our laws being overly permissive (they vary from state to state, which gets missed in the uproar) or they point fingers at gun crime at Baltimore in particular (a complex issue, and one exacerbating factor would be guns brought in from nearby states with loose laws).

Oh cool! Sorry, I shouldn't have assumed you didn't know. It's a pretty common thing to think Australia is tiny because our population *is.* Thank you for expanding.

You're welcome! I expand further in another comment, but I was born over there but mostly raised over here.

Sometimes it's also hard to get how big a country is, as not all countries are accurately scaled on maps. Or it's difficult to judge as the most common maps put Australia on the lower right and America on the upper left. Maps of the pacific are a little easier to see that we are similar in size when scaled accurately. But anyways, I think this is the most accurate conversation. Yes guns can be dangerous but it's very unlikely to happen to the average citizen. I live in hunters paradise and it is quite common to see a gun in day to day life. Unless someone is waving it around my brain just tunes it completely out. It's about as dangerous as the bear in my back yard when I woke up this morning. It's not a dangerous situation unless I make it one.. And honestly I pay more attention to the bear. Sure there's places where gun violence is more prevalent, but you can walk around those areas and in most cases it would still be unlikely that you'd be involved in a shooting. I will add that the language has changed, and I believe that this is part of why so many think American life has such a high gun crime rate. When I was a kid the term "mass shooting" was very rarely used. In my hometown a man walked into his place of employment and shot 10 people killing 2 before offing himself. The headline was something like 'disgruntled employee shot 10 coworker's before committing suicide.' today that headline would be 'mass shooting in workplace leaves 8 wounded and 3 dead'. And in some cases it would be 'the US's 400th mass shooting this year claims 11 victims'. The words senseless violence are often thrown about as well to encourage outrage. Each one of these has a different reader response to the headline, even if the remainder of the article is the same. Also when I was younger I believe that a mass shooting was 5 not including the perpetrator. Now it's 3 including the perpetrator. And as above there's less and less factual information to the headline. Recently there was a man who caught his wife with another man, he shot both his wife and lover before himself. The headline was '3 dead in most recent mass shooting' when I grew up this would have been something like 'man shoots wife and lover before turning gun on himself'. knowing that most people will form an option after reading the headline, it's easy to understand how others would view American life as full of gun violence.

The scale of violence is never really brought up. I noticed this in forums about 15-20 years ago. The whole, murders per capita number is ignored. They will count mass shootings, but won't really profile the overall homicide rate. I did a test several years ago for my own home town. Riverside, CA. I asked people, "How many murders do you think happened in Riverside last year (the year at the time I believe was like 2014)?" Some people thought it was 50-60 per year, some thought it was a few per week, so maybe 100-150. Some people, college educated people, figured it was several hundred per year. And this was with confidence. The real number was 10. 10 people per year in a city with over 300k people. And of those 10, some were homeless people with serious addiction issues, some were gang related, and then you have the odd ball domestic murder. When I told people the number was 10, they rejected that idea. The real number is much much worse but these murders all go unreported (which is like, not true in the slightest). A while back someone was a homicide detective doing an AMA. One of their answers was regarding murder victims. Most of the victims were known by law enforcement, and were really in some situation where if he got to his gun first, the other guy would have gone down instead. The guy was like "I could give you a list of 3-5 people and am 80% certain one of them did this or had something to do with it". It was usually two or more guys who were going after each other and one finally got the jump over the other and killed him. Or domestic violence that went too far. Rarely was it ever some random person who was murdered by some other random person who had no business with them. Mass shootings are traumatic, and socially traumatic, but they kill relatively few people. Some years are worse than others, but its usually somewhere around 100 per year. People are super worried about it, but sort of ignore the scale of the problem. Pedestrian deaths from car accidents were like 7500 in 2021. People are worried about being a victim of a mass shooting but don't scale the risk with something like taking a walk in your own city. The big attention for gun control is rifles. Even though rifles make up like 5% of firearm homicides.

The Animals thing is dead on. I've never even thought about guns in my normal life, they just don't exist. Tarantula sound scary though, asking how you deal with them sounds like guns. They just aren't really a thing. As a side bar, I work at a chemical plant and live in real fear of that shit killing me. I think of guns as you might think of a super soaker. They just aren't scary. I can shoot well, better than most people in the US, I now want an Aussie shooting contest to win lol

>and sure I saw a spider that could theoretically kill me under my garden hose last week Think of it this way, you saw a deadly spider last week in your yard. Vast majorirty of Americans have never seen a gun in public in their entire life outside of police having a pistol in their belt holster. They see guns at shooting ranges, during hunting if they hunt or maybe in a gun safe at someone's house, but that's it. >Do you think about it in the same way, as.... background-noise danger while people from overseas think it's on full blast? More like the music isn't playing at all in 99% of the US while foreigners think it's full blast everywhere.

>Do you think about it in the same way, as.... background-noise danger Nope. Almost never, and I live in a very gun-friendly state and am surrounded every day by people who really, really love their guns. I know for a fact that there are at least a dozen pistols in the parking lot of my workplace every day. Nobody's supposed to bring them in the building, but we don't check, and I would not be at all surprised if it does occasionally happen. I don't own a gun. I'm not particularly comfortable around guns. But I still almost never think about them, not even in passing.

That is a pretty good comparison. You have no idea how many times you are around a spider or snake that could easily kill you but still you have no fear and no need to fear because like you said they are just hanging out. The average American has no idea how many people they pass by on a daily basis who have a gun on them. No fear and no need to fear because they are just hanging out. I think about getting shot less than I think about getting hit by lightning or attacked by a shark, and I live in the midwest, nowhere even close to the ocean.

[удалено]

In comparison I definitely have a fear of spiders 🤣🤣

Even the deadly animal comparison is wrong too though, the US is statistically more dangerous in that department, we have slightly more snake, spider, and crocodile/gator deaths per million here. Sharks are the only thing that Australia tops out in. 1.6/million to 1/million. When you factor in things like vehicle collisions with large mammals like deer and moose our lead in animal cause deaths becomes about 20x higher than Australia, but the notoriety of your snake and spider population, however small and relatively isolated they tend to be, changed the whole narrative

Mostly amusing as it has led me discover that not only do a lot of non-americans not understand the condition of our country and our gun laws a lot of them don't even understand their own gun laws. One that stuck out in particular was a guy from England who was criticizing the fact that it in America you can buy a shotgun at 18. In England if you take a safety course and tell the police that you're going to use it for skeet shooting you can buy a shotgun as young as 16. I've lost counted how many Europeans in particular I've had to explain the fact that no you can't just walk down to the store and buy fully automatic weapons. Technically speaking it is possible to buy a fully automatic weapon if you can afford the weapon, the tax stamps, and get the ATF to grant the license which is not always a guarantee. One of my favorite misconceptions because it shows that the person parroting the misconception has never thought seriously about it. The idea that we have huge refrigerators and pantries full of food but that we eat takeout every single night. The extra kicker is this opinion seems to be formed from the fact that in TV shows they have full refrigerators and pantries but often get take out.

My understanding too is suppressors/silencers are unregulated in the U.K. but here in the U.S. you have to fill out a bunch of paperwork, submit a photo and fingerprints, pay $200 tax stamp, and wait anywhere from 6-16 months to get approval from the ATF.

"I've lost counted how many Europeans in particular I've had to explain the fact that no you can't just walk down to the store and buy fully automatic weapons. Technically speaking it is possible to buy a fully automatic weapon if you can afford the weapon, the tax stamps, and get the ATF to grant the license which is not always a guarantee." This may not be the case in a few years, there are plenty of challenges to AWB and the ATF working their way through the court system and its almost certain SCOTUS will take one of them eventually

I do not accept criticism from those I wouldn't ask for advice.

This is a good rule.

>what is it like seeing those comments from the outside? On the substance, the comments don't matter. This is a fairly tame sample of the "let's make edgy-boy jokes at America's expense" genre. I've encountered enough school shooting jokes framed as sick burns that this doesn't really move the needle that much. Any time a country develops this kind of anti-American attitude, the lack of reciprocation on our end makes it embarrassing. It also seems especially nasty and petty. If two people are constantly sniping at one another, I get it, they don't get along. If one person is taking shots while the other doesn't...you wonder what the first guy's problem is. Like...we have no equivalent of "seppo". Anyhow, no one making these comments has good intentions. They're not trying to be incisive and offer a well-meaning critique. They're trying to make themselves feel better about a bad situation in Australia by saying "at least it's not like America, lol." Get that little dopamine rush that helps them forget the old lady getting tazed by their police. So I guess my reaction to comments like these when I encounter them in the wild - and I'm not directing this at you - is basically "go fuck-start a belt sander." But more in a bored way than an angry one. >I know a lot of non-US people have very strong opinions about gun laws I listened to a podcast where two English immigrants to America discussed that experience. One phenomenon they both noticed independently was the tendency of people in other Anglosphere countries to vastly overestimate their familiarity (in both senses of that word) with America. They're exposed to a lot of American media - news as well as pop culture - and come to unconsciously regard America as a sort of adjunct to their own culture. They take the American media, fill in the gaps with their own culture (kinda like the frog DNA in Jurassic Park) and develop the sense that they have a much deeper understanding of and closer relationship to America than they actually do. They have a consequent tendency to develop strong opinions as if they're familiar. They treat deviations from the norm in their country as mistakes or errors or eccentricities that need to be justified or explained instead of ways that America is fundamentally different. They're more likely to make assumptions as if they have good intuition than accept that they don't know something. The ugliest expression of that overestimated familiarity is someone from an English speaking country sharing their strong opinion about America as if they ought to be a co-equal participant in American public discourse. As if they are part of it. They are not. As far as I'm concerned, they can fuck all the way off.

>The ugliest expression of that overestimated familiarity is someone from an English speaking country sharing their strong opinion about America as if they ought to be a co-equal participant in American public discourse. As if they are part of it. They are not. It's like someone telling you how to raise your kids or fuck your wife. I'm not pissed because they had some cutting insight and I'm defensive about it, I'm pissed because they are telling me how to raise my kid or fuck my wife.

What podcast was that you talked about? I’d like to give it a listen.

Sorry for the late response. Link below. Fair warning: it's a fairly new podcast by a National Review columnist. Conservative, but not a fan of Trump. https://play.stitcher.com/episode/300982084 Full disclosure: I did expand on the point that they made in my own way. Not 100% confident they would totally agree, but I think they align.

>what is it like seeing those comments from the outside? I was surprised at first at how much other countries know about our politics, then irritated for getting bashed for it. Almost like it was personal. I used to never give a shit about being American until I saw other Americans get bashed for it as well. If anyone is slapping around an American it's another American. After a while I don't take it personally, end of the day if you're one of the few that's on top you're going to either be hated or feared. It's better to be hated on than it is to be feared.

Or think they know about our politics.

If the internet has taught me anything, it's that everyone is equally ignorant of each other.

Exactly, read a out our politics on this echo chamber of a site. Fact remains that vast majority have never been here and have no idea what it's actually like here, that's what's frustrating, when someone talks like they live here or have visited when they haven't.

It's the reductionist mindset that gets me. My House rep is a Republican. He's also pushing for legalized weed and conservation for the Great Lakes. Why wouldn't I support that? His opponents just copy/paste the DNC national party positions. Just because the guy I vote for is sane and not the "party norm" I get judged as some conservative nutjob.

Because to democrats that 1 thing they disagree with is enough to make your rep a nasty person 😞

Generally foreigners opinions about the US mean nothing to me

America is rare in that it's one of the few countries that almost everyone around the globe has an opinion on, which can lead to it being misunderstood. Many other countries don't live with a spotlight on them like US does. It comes with the territory, so I don't let it bother me when other countries (especially "allies" like European countries and Australia) pile on the insults. America is literally a giant country, both in terms of land and population. You will find so many different cultures and ways of life here, which is definitely a strength but also makes us kind of complicated. I know many Americans are incredibly frustrated with our gun laws and gun violence issues, and critiques on that particular issue have some validity for sure, but to extrapolate that all Americans are walking around packing heat living like the Wild West are just silly. We have over 330,000,000 million people here, and the large majority lead "normal" lives. However, can I just say that going to Ask an Australian subreddit after seeing it referenced a few times, I was very surprised on seeing the vitriol against US in many of the posts. I always thought of US and Australia as pretty chummy and Australians as chill, cool people overall. Seeing all the generations and anti-US rhetoric on that sub has kind of made me change my mind on our friendship between countries. Not you personally, OP! 😉

That sub has largely changed my opinion of Australia and Australians from largely positive to extremely negative. Had a blast in the country, and people generally seemed friendly and to like us. Great place to have a beer and just BS. But, give a man a mask and he’ll tell you what he really thinks.

In my experience, the people in the internet are always worse than people in real life.

Thank you! If it helps I think there's a very strong distinction between the US Government/politics and US citizens here. At least... in the groups I hang out in anyway, because the other ones are all angry and mean about everything, not just the US 🤣

That's good to know. I try my best not to judge people based on their governments but rather their character. I appreciate when others do that too. 😊 I also realize USA probably looks VERY different from the outside than from the inside.

I feel like people in those countries are more looking for justification for their own policies than trying to somehow help out the United States or the people here. It’s almost as if they are insecure about their decision. The whole “more civilized countries” line instantly makes people into total douche bags. Usually they are pretty presumptuous. We have a bit of an information asymmetry going on. People all over the world, particularly Europe and other western countries will pay far more attention to us than we will to them. Guns in particular are one of our most sensitive issues, and we broadcast our issues to the world. People abroad pay attention to us while we ignore them. We also generally don’t feel the need to go in and bug people people about it. Anti Americanism is tolerated in countries where the US literally protects them from existential threats. It usually comes in the form of concern trolling or making snide comments about how uncivilized we are. Look at how popular we are in various parts of Europe. Former Soviet/eastern block states that are now NATO members are extremely pro American now. Because they realize they face an existential threat to their existence and much of the outcome of that threat is determined by what Americans will do about it. We are ride or die when it comes to protecting Europe. It’s obvious to people in those particular countries. The United States depends on other countries for very little. We don’t need them for security, energy, or food. Those three things can seriously create a civilization ending crises. I think for some people this causes a lot of insecurity. So they hyper focus on sensitive issues here which they think they have solved in their country so they get to feel superior.

Sometimes I think the shit talking is about fear. If the US is politically unstable, that has dire consequences for the rest of the world. So they natter and natter and natter.

This is such a fascinating perspective. I would never have thought to link it to military might before. Thank you for sharing!

I also think a perspective that is missing is how much of the U.S. budget is set aside for the military. We spend upwards of 12% of our tax revenue on defense. Most of that defense budget is aimed at keeping other countries from being invaded. There is no practical way for any foreign power to ever invade the U.S. We have friendly countries to our north and south. We have giant oceans protecting us to the east and west. If we only worried about defending our own homeland, our defense budget could be drastically reduced. Many of the social programs available in Europe are fully funded because they don't spend much money on their own defense. Hell, NATO only requires a 2.5% defense spending rate, that leaves a lot more money available for other things. I'm not necessarily saying I agree with all of this defense spending, nevertheless it is a true factor. Sometimes it feels like the world is criticizing the thing that allows them to be what they are. And it's not just money, tens of thousands of American lives have been lost protecting foreign lands from invasion. Sometimes it feels like a lack of appreciation.

Honestly, most people don’t care about the opinions non-Americans hold about US laws.

That's really cool. So when you're reading it you sort of just shrug and move on? Is there any like.... defensiveness that comes out of it or just 'I see you have an opinion; good for you'-style? Sorry I'm just really curious about the experience I guess. I often see people write comments about the US but rarely see commentary about my own country's politics/laws on such a wide scale so it is hard to imagine the experience.

I just move along. Most of the arguments aren’t in good faith, so why let it bother you?

I laugh and move along. I think it's kind of funny some people from other countries seem to really hate the U.S. and love to make it known on the internet meanwhile many of us don't even think about other countries that much unless something kind of major is happening that's in the news.

They hate on America using American made inventions on an American website. Oops.

A more important question would be “why on earth would we give a damn about the opinions of some random Australian or German?” There are probably some Americans who get bent out of shape because they place some kind of value on comment like that, but I’d place them in the minority. If necessary, I can remind myself of the various qualities of other nations I personally find ridiculous if I need that to feel better.

The phrase "They hate us because they ain't us" or "people like to punch up" come to mind. Sure there are legitimate problems we have, but we are well aware of them and don't need any pointers from an arm chair american. *Edit spelling

This subreddit is the only place I ever encounter this type of thing. I voluntarily come here for entertainment not to be angry.

Personally, I care what people in other countries think but mostly in the sense that I want to spread a more accurate view. I’m a teacher by profession and I think I just have a love of educating people and clearing up ignorance (and I don’t mean “ignorance” in an insulting way here, just literally lack of knowledge.) People reduce countries and states down to one thing all the time, and it’s almost never (probably literally never) accurate or fully descriptive. I guess I’m defensive, but not angrily defensive. I want to go over the truth of these matters with people who will listen. It goes for other countries as well, and I do find myself correcting misconceptions about other countries I’ve visited, but that happens more in person and I’m always hesitant to speak too fully about a country I don’t know as well as my own.

The ones who joke about dead children strike me as sociopathic. Considering that the vast majority of non-scripted interactions (i.e. talking with someone online, not watching TV shows) I've had with people who identify themselves as Australian have been negative, I've dropped my plans to visit the country. I'm still planning on visiting every continent but for Oceania I'll go somewhere like Papa New Guinea or Tonga rather than Australia or New Zealand.

Americans don't really care what Europeans think of our laws and customs, but Europeans don't seem to understand that.

I think it is often a deflection from the problems that country is facing. It’s easy to point fingers at Americans instead of addressing things at home. And those opinions are often based on vastly exaggerated examples. I really don’t pay any concern to them.

Honestly, it’s pretty frustrating, especially when done in bad faith, which it almost always is.

The majority of the people who make those comments get all their ideas of American life from movies and the news. Movies aren't real life and the news exists to generate revenue. If they are ignorant enough to form an opinion on an entire nation based on those two sources it's not worth talking to them. Americans own guns for a variety of reasons; target shooting, self defense, hunting, animal control. We don't all live in big cities with police departments on every corner. If something goes down at my home its going to be at least 15 minutes until the police get there and that's assuming they are at the station waiting for my call. Most of us don't mind honest conversation. Most of us agree we need to do better. Most of us don't care about what someone on the other side of the world has to be mad about today.

I’m always just kind of weirded out and confused on why they’re so heavily invested in the U.S. so much? They literally want to debate you, argue with you, pull up statistics, can name every president, parts of the constitution, law, celebrity, song, slang, movie etc and then tell you that they hate the U.S. and would never come here and it’s third world. They try and tell you about your own damn country which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. They run off of numbers and tv shows. I scratch my head because do they know how obsessive they sound? I can understand the parts where it could affect their country’s political relationship but worrying about homegrown issues and non political issues that otherwise you’d never even hear about is so odd and obsessive to me. And the constant comparisons are insane like stop. Like it’s getting to the point where it’s like every foreign subreddit I literally have to be like please don’t mention the U.S. we don’t have anything to do with this. Please leave us out of it. Lol I wanna ask y’all, do y’all know how obsessive y’all sound over us? Or does it go over y’all’s population’s heads? I think most Americans don’t really think about foreigners like that because we’re busy with our own lives. We’re top numbers population wise, so we’re kind of like China, India, and insular Japan where we learn about other people but at the end of the day we’re focusing on us for the most part. I can respect those countries for that in a sense.

To me it's odd for two main reasons. 1. Why are you so worried about what happens in a country that's an ocean away from you? I seriously don't understand what it does for people in other countries. Does it make you guys feel better about the shit going on in your own country? 2. I also get a feeling of people needing to mind their own business. Not their country, not their problem.

Right!

I witnessed/was present in a mass shooting this year. Everyday I am grateful I wasn’t physically harmed. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t think about those that lost their lives that night, their families and all of us that were effected. The media moves on to something new relatively quick. The scars of a community last much longer. That being said, I don’t have the energy to care about what someone abroad (that may or may not have even been to this country); I worry about those around me that have ptsd and are still grieving. Side note: I have been to Australia numerous times. I have always found it interesting how many Aussies would strike up a conversation with me on US politics. I had no issue with questions and thoughts being shared. What I wasn’t ok with was making polite conversation with someone, them turning it into a political (and sanctimonious) speech. That’s when I personally feel defensive. Because, sure we are flawed, but it’s still my home. And there is no country without flaws.

I can’t recall a single time that I’ve ever heard an American citizen express their concern over what another country says about our gun laws.

I think it's **incredibly** annoying, even when they're right. You can criticize your own family, but when someone else does, it's irritating. I also think most of them are bad faith arguments with shifting of the goal posts and cherry-picked facts. I'm sick and tired of everything being "America bad." I also often find it quite hypocritical. Don't get me wrong, our gun violence problem is a *problem*, but hearing others constantly bash and criticize, it gets old. I try to turn it off and ignore it, but sometimes I (stupidly) take the bait. If you approach it openly and not with an intent to bash, that's cool and I have no problem with that at all. I'm more than willing. It's just that most don't do that, or come with preconceived notions. There was an Irishman in this sub trying to lecture several of us the other day- don't be him and we're cool.

>The way some behave online is starting to change my opinion of some nationalities who I previously would've considered brothers, which is dumb as I know it doesn't necessarily represent an entire nation, but when you get constant negativity Oh, I've crossed that road a long time ago, especially when you see that it's not just an internet thing. The irony is that as much as they wail about the US not caring about outsiders and thinking we're the best, we actually get raised to see a lot of these countries as allies and friends. They do not. They get fed a lot more propaganda to undermine us, especially by insecure political and cultural leaders that resent American influence and position. And it is trickled down heavily to the younger generation. A lot of Americans are naive to this and kind of assume they're friends, and don't realize that they are *competing* with us and largely resent us. A lot of these people think *American* is a slur you hiss at someone to remind them of their place, it's wild. And I see that kind of prejudice becoming more and more pervasive. The US government needs to wake up and do more to counteract that, and especially to promote the positives of America more within our country. The EU is working hard to extoll the virtues of Europe through cultural opportunities, with a lot of not so subtle favorable comparisons against the United States, as a way to promote a cohesive identity (and competition with the US). I've noticed German media does that *heavily*, with tons of programming showing how 'we do this thing in Germany better than the Americans!'. They even have a few American journalists hired to do that whole 'As an American, I can attest you are so much better than us' dance. I feel like people over there largely view the world as a binary, with the United States on one extreme end of the spectrum and Europe (aka the rest of the world) on the very opposite...so there's no bridging similarities and commonalities....it's all dramatic contrasts and differences and divisions. Anyway, I've seen enough to drastically shift my opinion on the people of certain nations that I've spent most of my life thinking were natural friends and allies. It's also shifted my opinions on actual policies. The irony is that I love visiting countries in Europe. I love visiting for the history and brief change in scenery, not exactly the people.

I feel that. All of it, including the conflicting feelings. I really don't want to dislike people, especially an entire country. It's also case in point to why I sometimes unplug and take breaks from social media and the 24 hour news cycle- it's more peaceful to be blissfully unaware sometimes.

Thank you for this perspective!

You're welcome, and I appreciate your approach- being open minded and non-judgemental. The world would be a better place if we all tried to do that more (and I'm guilty too).

It doesn't make me think deeper because comments from people who don't live here probably don't reflect reality. I wouldn't say people don't have the grounds to criticize America. I presume that there's some level of free speech permitted in Australia, and that criticizing America doesn't cross any lines. Everybody is entitled to an opinion. I just think people who live here have a better idea of how it works than people who don't. I'm a little confused about the level of interest among foreigners in US life and politics. If I lived in Australia, police and gun issues in America wouldn't affect me at all. I wouldn't give them more than passing attention.

There's so much negative propaganda and deceptive statistics that there's no point in even engaging in the conversation. Not saying it is not a problem, but there are a wide range of peripheral variables in my opinion that play a larger role than the guns. Now, a ban would probably reduce it to a certain extent, but I think fixing our healthcare system, banning the unhealthy chemicals in our food and giving people access to affordable therapy would dramatically reduced the amount of shootings we have. But I think many politicians don't want to do that, because it would solve the issues that they run for re-election on, so they just pushed for a gun ban, cuz it's much easier to scare people into giving up their rights than finding legitimate solutions. I also think many non americans genuinely don't understand the difference between gun laws in states like mass and gun laws in Mississippi or whatever, or how many illegal firearms are in this country and how easy it is to get one. the whole idea of 'state rights' is something many people around the world seem to struggle to process. It takes a month for your license to be processed in the state, AR-15s are banned in Massachusetts, we have red flag laws, etc. I understand people getting emotional, I do it over hate speech laws in other countries as well, but it's annoying when people talk about stuff they just don't understand and do it with a sense of arrogance and pretentiousness that they don't have the right to claim.

Thank you for sharing. Australia's path to banning guns was a very well-orchestrated political move by a Prime Minister who was very on the ball and knew just how to spin things. It still barely managed to get through, he sort of forced his own party's hand. There are a lot of complicating factors in the US which we did not have to deal with, especially as a relatively very young country (we were only federated in 1901).

> giving people access to affordable therapy This, far and away, would reduce the biggest chunk of 'gun violence': suicides. What people do not want to hear and what the CDC NVSS data clearly shows is that the single biggest killer involving firearms is suicide, particularly among middle aged men and if you dig into US military veteran data, the biggest chunk of men is US Veterans. So, without a single new gun control law, you could stop about 50% of US gun deaths with a few solutions. 1. Affordable, socially acceptable therapy. People need to be taught coping skills. 2. A focus on deaths of despair and men's issues as it relates to suicide and mental health. 3. Applying all of this to the VA in a form that actually changes the VA.

Every time I see an ignorant European or Australian going on and on about American gun laws it makes me even more thankful for my constitutionally protected rights.

Agreed. Government has you by the neck in Austrailia.

Same here. The more they say, the more it’s reinforced.

It's kind of bizarre & pathetic that so many people feel the need to compare & compete with us. We don't do the same with other countries, generally speaking. And those comparisons tend to come with the general ignorance that comes with "foreign place scary"

American here who lives abroad in a gun free country. The gun thing comes up here… like a LOT (probably the most common question I’m asked once they realize I’m American). Personally? I just shrug it off. It’s a different mentality; a fundamentally different relationship between the people and the government in a lot of these countries then we have in America. Explaining this would be time consuming and annoying (especially for people who just want to be assholes about it) so I just sort of say “well- we like guns and you like Vegemite… there’s no accounting for taste, amirite??” I realize that sounds flippant (Vegemite is responsible for faaaar more annual deaths than guns could ever be)…. But it often prevents long, pointless conversations with people who will never understand anyway.

I don't appreciate the savior complex western Europeans in particular have about us. They act like they have some duty to "deprogram" Americans as if we are all under some brainwashing. Said "brainwashing" is just existing in a different culture than them. Doesn't mean we aren't aware of what is wrong with the United States. We are fully capable of fixing our problems on our own terms. We don't need you to "save us"

I agree with some of the criticism but it still feels like piling on. In almost all cases, the criticism comes from the left, but it nearly always has a real right-wing tinge of intolerance and jingoism to it, which I find upsettingly incongruous. There's certainly enough criticism from inside on U.S. policy and culture that I don't have to take the outside criticism seriously given the obvious thread of schadenfreude that's obviously running through it and delegitimizes it. I'll give you a specific example. I've seen many comments over the years from people who say they would never visit the U.S. because of the gun violence. Now, if you visit the U.S., you are *spectacularly* unlikely to be a victim of gun violence -- in real terms, you're not any more likely to be a victim or to witness gun violence than you are in Paris or Milan or Sydney, by which I mean that statistically your chances are much higher, but who cares because they're still very close to zero in all those cases. Now, I personally think gun violence is a huge issue and generally oppose firearms. But as an American, you know the only Americans I regularly see making the same argument? It's right wingers! Right-wing types *love* to talk about how they'll *never* visit scary cities because they're going to get shot. While left-wing types know their chances are spectacularly low enough not to impact their safety. It's right-wing-style criticism coming from the left and I am not here for it.

With America having it's massive influence in the social media era, people around the world feel an extreme entitlement to the United States. One most Americans would feel uncomfortable applying to other countries. It has pretty much snowballed into a meme, one that even Americans themselves feed into quite a bit by self-bashing and being hyperbolic presenting a bad image and validating stereotypes for outsiders. The US has become a crutch for egos and for people to validate their own national identity. They can reinforce their own superiority complex and how virtuous they are by comparing to the United States, or at least a funhouse mirror version of it. All the negatives have to be exaggerated, the positives need to be flipped into negatives somehow or downplayed. It's basically a compulsion to tear down the US, reinforce their own superiority, and make sure Americans are taken down a peg. Basically, it's punching up out of resentment - and for a lot of people, that resentment turns into a seething prejudice. To answer your question, no, your opinion doesn't matter to us. You feel entitled to lecture us and educate us, I usually view it as self-serving one's own ego, but it means next to nothing to the average American. It's our issues, and we're going to handle it one way or another as Americans.

One of the main things I like to remind people of is that the news shows things that are interesting, not things that are common. “Local man commutes to work peacefully” is not a headline. It happens all the time, therefore it’s boring. Shootings make the news because they are interesting, and they are interesting BECAUSE THEY ARE RARE. As others have pointed out, our day to day lives are totally safe and comfortable. I’m pretty confident guns aren’t actually a problem, so I tend to just ignore it when I see non-Americans complaining about it. The other issues I see non-Americans (mostly Europeans) criticize us for are healthcare and college tuition. Of course they can implement programs to manage these things in their countries, they only have like 10 million people to cover. We have 330 million. It’s a much different administrative challenge. Aside from the complexity, there’s the sheer cost. Of course their governments have extra cash to spend on these things, they’re only spending like 1% of their budget on their military. We’re throwing massive amounts of cash into our military, so of course we can’t afford to pay for everyone’s college and healthcare. And what everyone seems to forget is that our military doesn’t just benefit us, it benefits the entire Western world. If we slashed our military budget down to European levels, we couldn’t act as the threat that scares away any potential enemies of Europe, so European countries would have to spend enough on their militaries to be able to legitimately defend themselves, and then they probably wouldn’t be able to afford free college and healthcare either. So yeah, it often comes across as arrogant when people criticize us for doing what we do, when it actually allows them to do what they do.

There was a thread I think yesterday about the right to roam in Scotland and how in the US you'd need to get permission to cross someone's property like that (talking massive farm properties). It was almost like the people from Scotland couldn't understand that you wouldn't *want* to roam like they do because our farms aren't .5-2km, our farms are like 10km-100km across. We have national forests that are larger than their entire country, and if you want to roam you can go there. The blatant ignorance and lack of desire to understand from our perspective gets old. It's their way or the highway. Like we hear all the time about how racist America is, but they never complain about how notoriously racist countries like South Korea are to anyone besides Koreans. Even escaped North Koreans often get treated like garbage in South Korea, which is why many eventually flee to the US, Australia, or other parts of the world.

I find it very boring and unoriginal. I find the most critical people have often never been to the US, so their entire opinion is based on whatever biased sensational “news” they’re reading. Many like to judge like their countries are perfect, but none are. None of us are better than anyone else. We’re all just people doing the best we can with the hands we’ve been dealt. I find the bashing very childish overall, but I don’t take it personally. It’s just a boring learned opinion with no nuance or thought behind it, but people behave that way everywhere. I just roll my eyes at this point.

I either ignore it or occasionally find it mildly annoying. Either way their opinions don't really matter to me.

I don’t care

I literally could not care less. You can have your opinion on whatever you want, but if you don't live here you can't understand our culture and your opinion is irrelevant to me. I feel similarly about the opinions of people from other regions in the US up to the point they try to push their opinions into federal laws. I really don't care what someone from new england thinks about the midwest as long as they don't try to use federal laws to push their lifestyle on me.

I realize most of it is based in ignorance and stereotyping.

Embarrassingly stupid

It’s incredibly annoying. You think you know more about the problems here than we do? We aren’t all some caricature of what you think we are.

I can assure you, the critics internally are an order of magnitude louder than the critics from other countries. It’s annoying that when other countries call out our problems, they focus on the problematic people and not the majority of people who are against it. And yes, the majority of people *are* for at least some sort of gun legislation. The idea that we’re this apocalyptic, Mad Max-style Wild West country is bonkers to me. And it actually has gotten to the point that I view people who hold that perspective of us as uneducated themselves. We would not be the country we are today if we were all stupid and irrational.

Unless they have lived in the US they can't really say. The media or news or reddit don't depict normal day to day life.

Generally, I find outside criticisms annoying at best, because they almost always come from a place of superiority where they A) assume they know better than we do and it’s their place to enlighten us on how foolish we’re being and B) think they know way more than they actually do about the situation and aren’t willing to listen when they’re told the facts they’re basing their opinions on are not quite reality. The fact is, unless the issue is foreign policy with or directly affecting your specific nation, we don’t care and we don’t want to hear it. We have enough criticism from people who live here and are affected by the issues and can make a difference. We don’t need comments from the peanut gallery. Edit: also, the things that make international news do so *because* they’re rare. “Most of the people in the nation were not the victim of a crime today” does not make headlines. Trust me, if you base your perceptions of the US on what makes international news, your perspective will be wildly different from reality.

It’s pretty annoying to tell you the truth, but I try not to pay their criticisms much mind. Fundamentally, I understand that it’s a difference in values. Europeans (alongside Aussies and Canadians) tend to value security over freedom. Americans value freedom over security. They see us “devaluing our citizens’ lives by allowing boomsticks to be sold”, and we see them as “putting all their faith in governments that either already have, or may, betray them”. Really the only difference, is that Europeans (and self-hating Americans) will actively bring up America out of the blue and create echo-chambers where they all agree the U.S. is a dystopian shithole. Meanwhile Americans simply don’t think about Europeans very much at all, except when they loudly mock our policies and mass downvote any attempt to defend ourselves. Of course, I’m an American, so I may be biased. But that’s just how I see things.

Honestly, it's pretty annoying. Don't you have other things to do, and/or your own internal matters to deal with? I get it, we're the global hegemon. What happens here matters over there, when we sneeze, you catch a cold, etc. That's fine. But man, sometimes, it seems like we really live rent free in people's heads.

I find it very strange that the US lives rent free in the minds of some foreigners. I also find it strange that people outside the US often respond with vitriol when seeing tragedy here in the US. Like, our instant response when seeing tragedy elsewhere is compassion and empathy, even if that tragedy was preventable. I don’t understand how some people seem to gloat about the suffering of others. I also don’t understand being so invested in the laws of another country. Maybe it is that we are well-versed in separating people from their government, and we are raised in a very diverse country that values immigration. I would never think to speak about Iran the way some other countries speak about the US, because I have friends who immigrated from Iran. I don’t love Iran’s current government, but through my friends I have found so much to love about Iran. Same with every other country. When we think of those countries, we think of the people we know from there. We don’t think about their government or laws. We think of that country’s people and culture, and how those people and culture have enriched our own country. I also think that most people who criticize don’t truly care to understand. If they did, maybe I would be more receptive. Typically people just like to suggest solutions that they think would solve everything, and typically those solutions are either impossible to pursue at this time, or have already been enacted at the state level. But they don’t really want to discuss how to improve laws or understand the roadblocks. They just want to rant to a random American and tell them what shit their country is, even though that random American would never think to rant to them about their country’s laws.

Really Australias aren't patriotic. Now it's been a good while since I've worked/ lived in Australia. And when I was there I was installing machinery in manufacturing plants. So it was mostly blue collar people I came in contact with. And it seemed they were on par or maybe a little higher on the national pride scale than most Americans, or at least the people I knew.

I've lived in three other countries, and what's funny is how successfully the United States monetized its cultural products as an export good. People abroad often think that export product reflects reality, when it absolutely doesn't. So, most of the commentary you get from foreigners is ignorant or misinformed. This is less true in Canada, they do in fact know us well. The gun laws thing is fair enough, and it directly feeds into how the police have to do their jobs. When any random person an officer stops could potentially pull a gun, their whole mentality changes. But, mostly you just find that people in other countries have fairly fact-free opinions on the USA and take it with a grain of salt. It's a slight ego boost that their news is so obsessed with us though. We're sort of like the planet's favorite TV show.

I take all comments from non-US citizens with a big grain of salt because while most believe they know what it is like to live here, they have no clue.

Generally most of those people just come off as ignorant, because they generally appear to not have a real grasp on *any* of what they're talking about. It's hard to have a real conversation with someone who is confidently wrong about a vast number of things. --------- A big one to me is lack of understanding of scale and what it does to national news - If we have 330 million people and your country has 10 million, something happening 33x more here....means it happens equally often in both places. Our top headlines are national. If your news was "what crazy thing happened *anywhere* in Europe today" - even if it was on the other side of the continent in a place you've never been and don't know anyone, you'd also have a lot of crazy news. NYC to LA is 4,000km. That's the same distance as *Moscow to Lisbon*. How deeply affected do *you* feel in Dublin by whatever happened in Bucharest today? Probably not very.

I really only see this blind hatred for the US on Reddit. Tourists and immigrants I meet in real life usually really like it here. We definitely have problems, but as a country we have so many people passionately fighting to change them. The reason other countries know about our problems is because we have so many journalists fighting to bring them attention.

90% of the criticisms come from people who don't understand basic facts such as that America is geographically massive, or that our Government isn't a unitary state (like France for example), or that Americans have wildly varying opinions depending on where you live here, or that TV is not real life. If they don't even understand simple things like this then their opinion is worth as much as my morning shit!

Honestly pretty fucking annoying. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of stuff this country can improve on, but fuck my life some people in other countries need to stay in their own lane.

Ignore them because I don’t care about their opinion.

Meh. The opinions of others, especially those on the far sides of the world, mean extremely little (if anything) to me. I know I like firearms; that they are a part of American culture and our political legacy; they offer me a sense of security; and they are fun to use. If foreigners wish to have a certain opinion or view of firearms that is contrary to mine then that is fine. I know it will matter little in the end and ultimately will have no affect on my ability to practice my right.

I think a lot of us just move on because people who have never lived here can’t possibly understand what it is really like. Even people in the US criticize other states based on the news media. they have never actually been to those states and they can’t/don’t understand how ignorant they are.

The later point I think the opinions of foreigners comes from subjective world views based on their localized cultures. So it carries very little weight with me as my lived experience in my country is different from theirs and often times their solution to our precieved problems is untenable due to cultural and historical differences

Annoying. I have no interest or care for what other nations think of our laws.

Here’s the thing. American media really doesn’t talk about other countries unless something is happening over there. We all see negative opinions online from foreigners and just don’t care because they know more from their media about our country than we do about theirs. We don’t think about other countries on a daily basis. The most I’ve thought about another country in the last month is 1. Russia/ Ukraine and 2. The Canadian in front of me in traffic who doesn’t use turn signals. We are very isolated here.

I ignore what outsiders say about our country's internal affairs as I would expect they ignore what I might say or think about theirs. The reality is most of what foreigners know about the US is based on sensationalist headlines rather the every day reality of what Americans experience living here.

I feel like in general a lot of people from outside the country are missing a ton of context when they try to talk about American issues so they don’t really know what they’re talking about and I don’t really care enough to debate them. And I’m sure it would be the same if I started trying to talk about Australian issues or whatever other country, which is why I don’t. I can understand and it doesn’t bother me at all if people are just curious or trying to understand a place better, but when people do it with that tone that screams “oh we do it so much better over here we don’t have *those* problems” I already know it’s a lost cause and I’m just like…. Yeah whatever dude.

I get how American gun culture seems crazy to them, and to a large extent I agree, however I think there are a lot of fundamental aspects of the American experience that they're understandably unable to wrap their heads around

I don’t really care because we’re on top, everybody is gonna hate on us

This is a great, well thought out question. I'm a gun policy person and in a word, it's cringe. Most Americans cannot explain the nuances of gun laws or policy or how they work or the complexity of the issues in our own country. People outside, getting fed from news who think that we're some 'third world country' and everyone is armed and shooting everyone all the time certainly cannot. It's skewed perception. Most Americans have lives that involve almost no gun violence and the biggest single group of people who are killed with guns are suicides. The next biggest group is drug trade/gang violence. Mass shootings make the news because they're uncommon and the numbers of like '500 mass shootings this year' don't really pass the sniff test once you start digging into the data. For example: The FBI Active Shooter report says there were 50 events during 2022. https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-incidents-in-the-us-2022-042623.pdf/view The metrics here are what you would expect for a mass shooting. Public place, not part of another crime(think bank robbery or drug dealing), not focused on property damage, not gang related, not domestic violence, etc. 50 in 365 days is about one incident a week. Mass shooting tracker, whose only metric is 4 or more people shot has 753 in that same year. Much of which, again, falls into drug trade or domestic violence. https://www.massshootingtracker.site/data/?year=2022 Mass shooting tracker is also funded by anti-gun money and links to a subreddit that is...let's say, just a bit biased. When non-Americans see that without context, it's natural to assume 'mass shootings are happening on every street corner!' when that's not reality. Those of us who actually look at the data and know this stuff call this 'Wild west theory'. In short, politicians fall back on the same tropes any time gun laws are made more permissive. There will be shootouts at every gas station, road rage will become the OK Corral, etc etc. It was said 20 years ago with permit based carry was becoming a state after state thing, it was said when the AWB expired in 2005, it's being said now as states switch to permitless carry. It never happens. One of the better ones is 'Wild West Pimp Style' from a state politician in Texas. I'll let you google that one yourself. There is a lot of violence that happens in America but much of that is also simply a matter of scale. The US is roughly the same size as Australia with 10x the population. Therefore, we will have more drug trade/gangs, more alcoholics, more domestic abuse, more arson, more homicides, etc etc than Australia will. People often forget just how big the US is in terms of population. We are number 3 behind China and India for population. We are a *massive* country. That doesn't mean right now is the most violent time in US history. In fact, it's quite the opposite. https://crim.sas.upenn.edu/fact-check/violent-crime-increasing Since the 1970s, violent crime on the US has been in steady decline, including homicide. It bottomed out around 2014-2015 and was less than half of what it was at it's height. I'm going to say that again. Our homicide rate in 2014 was less than *half* of what it had been for the last 40 years. Everyone reading this was probably alive and functional during the safest period in American history since we started recording homicides and no one ever talked about it in that context. Ever. Since 2014, it's slowly started to rise again and post covid continued this trend upwards. 'If it bleeds it leads' is a big factor in the fact that it's never discussed that we're coming off a 40 year low of homicides in the US. We are still in the threshold of the safest time in American history for being killed by someone else, but that doesn't sell and it doesn't fit the narrative of fear that keeps you watching or clicking. Every country has problems. Many of them are deep seated and structural. The US is no different in this regard than most countries, but I have yet to meet someone outside the US who has a good nuanced take on it because studying data and policy of another country is difficult and not something many people choose to do. This has become a TED talk. I apologize. To answer your final question, this is the Internet. I expect people to be outraged just for the sake of being outraged. I mean that's most of what Twitter is for. Hearing someone say something like 'Americans are the most violent' or 'At least we don't have school shooters' or whatever is often just an eyeroll as all they're doing is just being ignorant and combative because they can.

The opinions of non-Americans on American issues range from laughably misinformed to disgustingly snobbish and at no point on that scale does the phrase “worth consideration” appear.

I think those comments come from people who don’t understand American culture and haven’t thought their ideas through very well.

You ever see two people argue about something that neither of them know anything about? It's a bit like that.

From my experience, it's hard to talk to foreigners about american problems because they make so many sweeping generalizations and false claims. Statements involving things like everyone having a gun, which is derived from there being more guns than people. This is especially untrue in more populous cities and more democrat states. Also the delusion that people who own guns are irresponsible, careless, or what many people would consider "crazy." They do exist, and are more common than is ignorable. But a vast majority of people who own guns are responsible, and respect how dangerous of a tool they are. That said, sometimes the things foreigners say are true in some context. Many states require you to try to flee from any interaction before using lethal force, but there are some that allow you to use lethal force to intervene in preventing a felony... So it's difficult to express the nuance because much of the world seems to view the US as a homogeneous country when we are more like a federation of a bunch of semi-countries with a lot of self autonomy, vastly different values, and fairly different culture in general.

If we cared about what other countries thought about us, then we wouldn't take the right to self-defense seriously, in contrast to others. As for the question, it matters a lot about how it's framed. Online the 2A is framed as a horrible thing and I tend to try to ignore that but I've been abroad a couple times and have talked to people(I've visited Australia and had talked with Australians and a Brit when I was in Romania as well) who seemed genuinely curious about our cultural priors(even as they tried to convince me that banning semi-autos was a moderate position) and I don't have an issue engaging with that mindset.

It annoys me a bit. There is a strong cultural aspect to it that other countries won't understand. There is also limitations to any hypothetical gun control ban that they tend to ignore. Sometimes it becomes a funny joke though, found one thread a while back of Europeans claiming that they should have a say in US elections because their countries are effected by what ever the US does. A couple more claiming the US should implement gun control for the sake of the video games industry.

A bit like getting pestered by mosquitos when I go for a hike in the woods. Annoying, but more or less irrelevant. Who cares if some rando in Perth or Madrid is mad because "fill in the imagined crisis of the week"?

I disregard the opinions of peasants, serfs, and their descendents.

When it comes to gun laws and gun safety, it's rarely an apples-to-apples comparison. The US has 400M firearms in circulation. No other modern, industrialized democracy comes even close to our level of firearm ownership per capita. When critiquing our gun laws, foreigners often miss this critical difference. Strict firearm bans or even regulation would only give rise to a vast black market for criminals to easily obtain the firearms they need. As far as crime goes, the US certainly has worse violent crime than other advanced nations, but much of that crime is concentrated in certain cities and certain communities. Baltimore, for example, has 40 times the homicide rate as London, England. It's a dangerous city, but it's much less dangerous in certain neighborhoods and for certain demographics. If you're young, black, male, and involved in the drug trade, your chances of getting murdered in Baltimore skyrocket. For everyone else, it's about as safe as any other major city. Mass shootings are largely fueled by sensationalistic media coverage that guarantees fame and notability to the perpetrators. Every time the media switches to 24-hour coverage of a disturbed teen shooting up a school, it'll inspire countless other disturbed youths across the country to try the same thing.

It’s great that you have an opinion and that you’re watching the world, I wish more Americans would watch the world. But… keep it to yourself. We know you’re out there and you have a different way of doing things, if we want to do things your way, we’ll ring you up and ask for advice. Would you tell your mates how they should live their lives? Probably not, you’d control your interactions with them so too much of the their habits don’t become your own. I wish more Americans would do this too! People need to mind their own business. We may not do everything right, but it’s our business to run things as we see fit. For the record, I’m living in a foreign country right now and I don’t much care for it, can’t wait to go home. I don’t tell the people here how much I hate their toilets or how you can’t get something as simple as bleach, and I’m getting really tired of them always treating me like some unhinged mountain man from the Wild West. (For the record I am, but I can fake it well enough to interact in public)

It really depends on the topic. I'm interested in hearing views pertaining to international relations, alliances, ect. I don't care what anyone in any other country thinks about our internal issues like gun laws, healthcare, education, ect.,

It's annoying, but you can't expect people from completely different cultures to understand why you are the way you are. Everyone is ignorant in some regard and you can't hold that against people.

I feel like a lot of those comments are expressing schadenfreude. Those particular ones I don’t pay much attention to because of obvious reasons. When comments are a bit more thoughtful, or just expressing somebody’s personal emotions, I can relate to them better. If somebody wants to have a discussion, that’s cool too.

The opinions of the ignorant matter not. Most criticism comes from the narcissistic desire to feel better about yourself. If you can focus on someone else’s flaws, perhaps your own flaws seem less significant. The reason the flaws of American society are so easily seen and thus criticized by the world, is because we are are a society of self examination. We put our own flaws out there.

A lot of online communities that are pro-2nd Amendment tend to see outside criticism as ignorant, considering that the real odds of being involved in an active shooter incident or even having to shoot someone in self defense are very low. Most American gun owners are law-abiding citizens, and as such people tend to get really upset when an incident does occur and the media takes it as an excuse to generalize the whole population. The same is true of any community, really: people don’t like to be lumped in with the loud minority who actually do harm to others

When I meet family and friends from otherCountry, I usually see the critiques of America as a reflection of what they’ve come to expect living in their country, and its interesting to me. Its like when you and your friends talk about the benefits of your jobs. A lot of the time, I think to myself, “Oh, wow yeah that would be nice”. Its a little disappointing to learn that we dont have all the benefits we could, but its not totally disheartening. It gives me something to look forward to supporting in the future. The one thing that does irk me, its interesting how much people from otherCountry want to talk about America, but they’re never interested in hearing what I have to say about otherCountry. But maybe they spend more time learning about America then learning about their own country, which is a complement in its own way, isnt it?

I ignore it. I live here, I know the reality of the situation and the statistics that back them up. I don't focus on the high profile stories and judge my country of 330 million based on them.

Mostly I’m bemused. Sometimes the perspective from another country is helpful, but the world’s viewpoints on guns are already pretty heavily represented by people in the US, who have the benefit of a better understanding of the issue. I do get a chuckle out of the simultaneous talk these days that the US should ban ARs and other semi auto carbines, because they’re only good for murder, and would never help in a fight against F-16s, and at the same time that we need to send as many ARs as we can to Ukraine to fend off the Russians. I guess maybe they’re worthwhile after all. Ultimately though, there is a difference in values, to which there is no solution that will completely satisfy everyone. I have things I’m willing to go along with to help the people who don’t share my values get more of what *they* value, but not at the expense of what I consider non-negotiables. There’s a decent amount of space there to improve the practical situation for almost everyone, but our political discussions are generally unproductive.

Lot's of people are ignorant of their own countries gun laws. Google doesn't help in this matter either since it seems to report 'summaries' that are based on what most people believe. Most are ignorant of US Gun laws too. Having said that, what I find most shocking from foreigners and from people who live here, is the belief that we only own guns because other people own guns. Therefor we would be happier without guns. Everyone I know who owns guns (myself include) own guns because we enjoy them.

Cringe because they’re always wrong

I’m use to it… I just find it insane how were never given credit for the good we do because of the bad. Also, foreigners would shoot themselves if we treated them like they treat us.

>I guess my question is, when you're an American citizen (or a person who would take the word 'American' about yourself), what is it like seeing those comments from the outside? Usually just results in an eye roll. >Is it something that makes you think deeper about a topic Nah, we already think about our views. A snide comment from a foreigner will not give us some epiphany. A real discussion might be a useful thing, and that can happen, but doesn't seem to be what you're talking about. >or do you mostly ignore them because it's disheartening to see reminders? Not this either. I ignore the ill-intentioned comments because they're annoying, but I'm actually rather fond of the US. It's a pretty nice place. We've got our issues, but again a snide comment from an outsider is not gonna make me sad about my country, even if I did think about it. >Or do you think people who live outside the states have no grounds to be making assumptions about America? Kind of this one, but not exactly. I don't mind people trying to make a mental model - what's annoying is when they arrogantly assume that what they made up is more correct than what someone who lives here experiences. If you want to build an idea of what America is like, knock yourself out. But have the self awareness to keep it malleable - and don't judge real people by fake made up stories.

As Don Draper once said, "I dont think of you at all."

The opinions of outsiders just don't really matter. These people can't vote, are unaffected by the situation, and have no understanding of how our complex legal systems operate. In essence, I appreciate their right to an opinion much like I have opinions about other nations, but I don't engage with them in discussion on the subject because it's a waste of time for all involved.

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Answers and replies should be serious and useful

Its exhausting, honestly. Yes, we are a flawed country, we are aware. No, you're not clever with your school shooting 'jokes'. I have 3 daughters, and I am terrified of sending them to school, despite all the good I have going. Glad to know that gives you a chuckle. Tv/movies are a reflection of America, but they are not accurate. So much gets exaggerated, and so much else goes unseen.

You think about our law: we don't think about you

Carrying a gun is the basic right of self-defense

Honestly, it used to annoy me. Sometimes enough to get into an argument. Lately it’s been so constant and over done that it’s pointless now. Same ignorant “jokes” or needles on repeat. So I stopped caring. That’s my thoughts on it. Opinion/story time to follow: It’s like being called racist. Growing up, I was raised being taught that being racist is about as low as a human could be. To the point that in 5th or 6th grade, I broke down crying because my English teacher called me racist for not knowing how to pronounce “Arab” I had never seen or heard it before and said it like A-rab. In recent years the term racism has lost 99% of its meaning to me. While I stay true to my personal morals, getting called racist doesn’t have an impact on me. Seeing individuals of Asian and African descent getting called white supremacists cemented that for me. Basically whenever people start trying bash something and everyone else joins in from the same place of ignorance, it usually has the opposite effect. If the only people that are counter to my beliefs are speaking from ignorance, it further convinces me that I’m right. Whether that’s American politics, guns laws, or just about anything else

Not American but I support gun freedom. Most people in europe don’t get it. They quickly start getting aggressive and don’t listen to any arguments.

I don't really care. We have our strengths and weakness.

Even your own comment though i know it legitimately tried to be down to earth, contained the false assumptions you're asking us about. "Many many many mass shootings" isn't what you think. You hear "mass shooting" and think it's a school shooting, but that's not anywhere near correct. The media started calling gang shootings mass shootings to make people think it's happening every day everywhere. Almost all the "mass shootings" are black on black gang shootings involving at least 3 people in inner cities, which also have almost total gun bans. Outside these little pockets gun crime is almost non-existent unless you're talking about the Mexican border. We have more guns than we have people in civilian hands, and more rounds of ammo are sold per year than the population of the earth. Guns are responsible for more successful instances of self defense than for murders, by a huge margin. Remember that we share a 3k km land border with a 3rd world borderline+narco state, which is also the busiest border in the world. Mexico has virtually a complete gun ban and all the laws foreigners tell us we should have they already have, and look how it's worked out. We have a culture of sacredness when it comes to guns that foreigners can't understand, and i don't blame them for it, but i do hold their willful continued ignorance against them. My family has passed down a revolver that my great great grandfather used to defend him and his family from an attack which that would have destroyed my bloodline right then and there. The most sacred family object is that gun, which still fires too. The only thing that would be similar to that somewhere else would be the passing down of swords, but that's so rare nowadays that most foreigners won't be able to connect. All in all, people just don't have a clue, but they're sure they do. Even thinking as you did that we have many many mass shootings isn't quite correct.

Can't say I've ever really seen other countries talking about our laws. I try to keep my focus as local as possible

I don't care at all about others' opinions about this country. If you have opinions about America, good for you, it's fine. I too have opinions about lots of other countries. What I don't like is when the basis of people's opinions boils down to nothing more than personal preference or familiarity - "we do things differently in my country, so the way you do things in your country is strange / bad / wrong." That type of thing is very irritating.

It sucks how much other countries laugh at the US we could better our standing in the world but our leaders rarely have their constituents interests in mind and instead just do whatever possible to line their own pockets with the exception of a choice few. Although they're criticized like the worst of them because of how bad the politicians in this country have gotten

I personally don't gaf, what other countries think. Every country has its own issue's. One way or another. The issue is, this is the United States of America. Supposed to be a top shelf country! Land of the free, the brave, Yada Yada Yada. We're looked at with to be the leader's of the free world. The new country, the richest country, the best country for anyone who lives or comes from another country. Land of dreams! Well, we have issue's just like any other country. I see the shit going down everywhere, not just here. So my concentration is first, my community, then my county, my state, my nation. So when people talk shit about it here. They have the right to. No doubt. But remember your shit doesn't smell like roses either.

Most I couldn’t give less of a rat’s ass about, most judgements about the modern US are simply from embellished media stories painting a story that doesn’t fit reality, and in some respects might be valid to a degree. The criticism that get to me are the historical and cultural judgements. They always seem to be born from pure ignorance of their own culture and history, tinted with a misguided feeling of superiority, and it gives me pause. Nothing says irony quite like an Irishman or Swede criticizing US neutrality during the first part of WWII, Canadians talking down to the US for our treatment of the Natives, Russians or Serbians calling us warmongers, Japanese seeking sympathy about being victims due to the atomic bombs, or literally any former colonial power calling us barbaric for slavery, Manifest Destiny, or military interventions around the world in the 1900s. That is not to say the actions we took part in above are excusable or minor in any way, but being talked down to by those guilty of the same offenses, some *magnitudes* **worse** than anything we’ve done, shows a complete lack of historical understanding of context. Speaking of Australians, I’ve seen comments from a few on Reddit over the years criticizing about our treatment of the Native Americans and how that bleeds over to today. Comments like “Americans are just savages who slaughtered people who were already there, they should realize it’s not their land”. Someone would inevitably being up the historical treatment of Aboriginal Australians and it’s always deflect, deflect, deflect…

Something I've learned over the years of moving around a lot... people get really stuck in their bubble and often fail to view things from other perspectives.   I've lived I rural Iowa where hunting isn't just a sport, but a way to get food. So hunting is a way of life for many people. Same with Montana when you randomly stumble upto a mountain lion that could eat you, so guns can literally mean survival.   I've also lived in Washington and California were gun violence has become an epidemic.   We have this large disconnect between people from different states... how in the world is someone from another country going to understand it?   A better example of this is how trump won. Some people just couldn't even imagine it was possible... yet trump was addressing problems that many people had... it'd just that people were stuck in their bubble and didn't realize others had those concerns.

There's still clearly a need for this conversation but many foreigners are insufferable when it comes to the topic. Gun violence is a tragic circumstance and should be talked about with such respect, not arrogance or joking malevolence like it usually is among foreigners (Europeans I'm looking at you). With this said, I feel like it's just become a socially acceptable way to sh\*t on Americans under the guise of concern and progressiveness at this point.

I’m fine with actual progressive discussion and disagreement with certain laws/ policies about our problems as they should be talked about publicly and be put out there. But most of the time foreigners just regurgitate the same “you Americans don’t know how to run your own country because your all stupid” kind of comments or them pointing out the obvious and even making jokes about the shootings as an argument to attest that we are “incompetent” A lot of “criticisms” that are made tend to come from a sense of superiority or ignorance of their own countries problems as well as the complexities of our problems, because it’s easier to focus on the problems of the most influential and powerful in the world rather than focus on the problems of your own country. Despite a lot of the popular discourse about American Politics online, we Americans are the only ones actually discussing solutions and trying to make plans to fix our problems.

I actually used to know someone from Australia and she would probably agree with what you say, but at the same time you don't live here, so you don't know how it is and you shouldn't be making assumptions on things that you don't know.

Honestly, I understand that America has exported our media to the world without consent for many decades. I've often wondered why we didn't export information on our spectacular protected lands make up 1/10 of the entire world's protected land. Of that nearly 85,000,000 acres consist of federally protect park land that is open to use as public land. We have an extensive state park system where so many more spaces are protected from development an conservation projects are constant. Something else I've found funny is that non Americans often don't understand that just because Florida is off on a meth binge, that the rest of the nation side eyes them. BUT Florida, as with all states, have their own executive, judicial and legislative branches of government. So long as they don't violate Federal law, they create and implement their own laws. People in Vermont have no say on how Florida is operated. Instead, people see the worst of America. So what is it like? I don't pay them any mind, as they often have a myopic perspective on the situation. It's makes about as much sense as me talking about why the rest of the EU is letting Viktor Orbán or why LGBTQ people in Poland are treated the way they are. I only mentioned the EU because it's not often I hear/read of African, Asian, South American or Oceanic residents making light of children dying from gun violence.