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Canada is almost 1/4 immigrant and their gun control laws are extreme by American standards.
I really don't sympathize with pretending the US is as bad as Canada. We really aren't. Canada is our really poor and badly mismanaged neighbor.
The US is no better off than Canada on the immigration front, where 25% of the US population is now hispanic or Asian. Demographic projections are only going one way.
I don't care if you think Canada's gun control laws are 'extreme'. The fact is you can buy an 'assault rifle' in Canada. It might have a 10 round mag and your selection is more limited, but it's a rifle all the same. The rest is semantics.
No one does. Which is why the feeling is so mutual. Americans are great at isolating themselves from the world around them since their country is so large. You can live a lifetime in the US without feeling any of the things being talked about in media.
I used to think of America as a silly place that, from my end, didn't really exist. All the news and media coverage felt similar to a reality TV show. It was striking for me to learn that most Americans feel the same way and that their own reality, like mine, is far away from 'America'.
In that respect the US is much worse than Canada. Most Americans have no idea what their country even is. How could they?
You are comparing apples and oranges here. The US is 15% foreign born, Canada almost 25%. There's a large difference in magnitude here.
There is a far greater difference in firearm availability.
It is popular to be excessively critical of the US. I think pretending the US is as bad as Canada is an example of that. By any measure other than how many maple leafs are on the flag, the US is far better than Canada.
I am comparing relevant metrics. 'Immigration' is a meaningless category since it only tells us what is recently going on, not what has been ongoing. A short look at US demographics tells a very clear story: Used to be majority white. Soon to be minority white.
If you are Canadian you can reliably attain an 'assault rifle' so long as you don't live in specific cities and jump through a few hoops. Not as smooth but very similar to the US. Yes, you can't get a million and one different variation of an AR 15 or an AK platform rifle, as many of those are banned, but you can get relevant stand ins. At the end of the day you have reliable platforms that fire rifle caliber rounds.
It's popular to point at others and say: See! We're not that bad!
There are plenty of measures where the US is an embarrassment. Violent crime and prison rape to name two very relevant ones.
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