Berkley Center

Waiting in line at a grocery store in the beginning of October, my friend and I were overwhelmed with headlines about the Oregon shooting. Overhearing our discussion—and noticing our American accents—a Scottish man eagerly engaged us in a conversation about gun laws in the United States. These conversations have been fairly common since my arrival in Scotland, a nation with one of the strictest gun control laws in the world. I’ve heard a lot of Hollywood-inspired ideas about what gun ownership looks like in the United States—“Everyone has a gun on their hip,” “You can buy guns at Walmart”—and received a lot of questions about the nature of acquiring a gun, how many people have them, and whether or not I own one.

The most recent mass shooting in Oregon made headlines in Scotland in a way that, I suspect, it did not in the United States. As President Obama has pointed out, mass shootings have become routine, but in Scotland most people are still perplexed as to how and why these incidents re-occur. In 1996 when a shooter killed 16 schoolchildren and their teacher at a school in Dunblane, both Parliament and the public responded. In part due to several petitions, Parliament banned all handguns (though still strictly regulated, shotguns are more readily attainable, especially to farmers) and introduced a mandatory five-year jail sentence for gun possession. Scotland now has one of the lowest murder rates in the world. There have been zero mass shootings in Scotland since the Dunblane School Massacre; in 2012 five homicides occurred with the use of firearms. In the United States, the Guardian reports that “there is a mass shooting—defined as four or more people shot in one incident—nearly every day.”

In 2013 when Police Scotland announced that some officers would carry guns on routine patrols, the Scottish public responded with another outcry to a gun control issue. Unarmed officers had been a source of pride for Scots, and by 2014, an article from the Telegraph reports that “due the wake of pressure from politicians, local authorities and members of the public armed officers will in future only be deployed to firearms incidents, or where there is a threat to life.” Of the 17,318 officers in the Scottish force, 275 are authorized to carry firearms.

When I talk to my Scottish friends about gun culture in the United States, I mention that our nation was founded with the help of militias, and I talk about the Second Amendment as well as the frontier. I also mention the popularity of hunting, especially amongst the working class. Hunting is also popular in Scotland, but it is generally an elite activity. In order to gain access to guns, hunters must access them through estates and hunt off of estate land.

Differences like these highlight the fact that juxtaposing nations is akin to comparing apples and oranges, but for two countries that are overwhelmingly similar, this is such a stark difference. My time abroad has taught me so much about my own country, and it is these types of observations and conversations that have helped me make sense of my own identity as an American. Though I love partaking in cultural exchange, this is one discussion where I wish I could not engage.