Sweet Shooter, sorry to have ruffled your feathers, but the article was written by a British writer working for BBC (which, unless I am mistaken, is a British entity), judging us by their standards and trying to generally vilify conservative gun-owners in the USA. Most people world-wide are pretty good at judging others who are not of their cultural group and pointing out how different they are. From our perspective, many of their cultural norms are abhorrent (trials in absentia, confiscation of firearms from law-abiding citizens, censorship, police keeping records on all citizens, etc) and they feel the need to point out that liberals in the USA are "feeling threatened". Well, waah! Babies feel threatened when the bogey man scares them, mature people do not feel threatened by imaginary fiends.
But after all, I suppose I might have been a bit off-target, so please overlook my back-woods, hillbilly-ish attitudes regarding those who judge us and want us to become just like them.
Yes the restrictions are asinine, and the government made those not the people.
Governments are made up of people, they are not some soul-less protoplasm that was and is and ever shall be. They are made up of people. Look around yourself, and ask yourself "is that one of "them"?"
And in the FWIW slot regarding my post, you might also make a note that I too grew up in Europe.