While I always noticed that USA has the most loosen restrictions when it comes to owning firearms. I just happened to find out that in singapore, even carrying of pepper spray for self-defense is illegal.
How come that Singapore can ban all these weapons and not be a den of criminals, And USA can't.
I'm not American, so can only comment from the perspective of an uninformed outsider...
I would imagine that the history of the nation plays a huge part in US attitudes to guns. We can go back to the War of Independence, when a bunch of colonists had to raise militias to defend themselves against an organised army, and then through to the era of Manifest Destiny, and the taming of a continent... living on the frontier and expanding into wilderness makes guns a necessity, both for protection and hunting food.
We could ask whether gun ownership is appropriate in modern civilised metropolises, but that is a different question. The present is always built upon the past.