Now guns are fun, i agree, but as we don't let our kids play with knives
What do they get to play with? Foam blocks? People are very much still kids when they are old enough to be
carrying knives on a daily basis.
Why do you think there are so many "illegal" guns in the US? It's because people are retarded and don't lock them up so that any burglary or robbery with an armed citizen ends up with a robber or a burglar that has one more gun.
Except that the stats support it being mostly straw purchases, instead. Some stolen guns get used in crimes, but most get resold as sporting goods to other private parties that have no knowledge of the property having been stolen.
For self defence stopped being valid when it fails most of the time
Got any evidence of that? Most seems to go the other way: that it far outnumbers murders and accidents, and failures are in the minority (though significant enough to keep harping on training and practice).
As to the rest of the pointless character-attacking: you've been eating too much media crap, just as the anti-gun nutters have. To see reality and prepare for it is not fear. To see reality, yet pretend it doesn't exist, and that the government will swoop in really quick and save the day before anything bad happens, is preposterous. The scout's motto, OTOH, is sensible.
I'm curious, is the US really a gun driven third world hellhole like the NRA states or is
Well first, no, it seems D.C., Detroit, and Chicago account for most of that, so some borer cities are doing their best to compete, these days. Second, the NRA is 1st and foremost a mouthpiece for the U.S. arms industry. Everything they say must be taken with a pinch of salt. Third, La Pierre is half crazy, and I'm not sure how he stays being a representative, since half of what he says may as well be, "open mouth, insert foot." They would do well to ditch him...he must have some good material for blackmail or something.
[or is] it like any other western nation where carrying a gun is entirely unnecessary (if you are not geo or spidey and need to kill black people real fast for being in your neighbourhood)?
Well, I don't know. From what I've seen, neither Australia nor the U.K. are places I'd want to be less armed than criminals in. The 'civilized society/nation/culture' argument is usually either backed up by countries with highly homogeneous societies, or unicorns, rainbows, and flying pigs.
However, we
do have unnecessarily high income inequality, and the war on drugs, the combination of which has consistently remained volatile. We are not, on the whole, a tranquil society.