The more I learn about USA the stranger it seems. Guns are legal cause freedom, even at cost of lives, and secrecy of correspondence is just nice-to-have? Why do you need the guns, if you don't use them to defend your privacy?
Bear a few things in mind... most Americans don't own a gun, and most who do don't have them to rise up against the government, and quite a few don't fit into the stereotype of 'gun loving American' at all. After the Newtown shooting (I believe it was) there was widespread support for gun control legislation (close to 90% IIRC) but it was summarily killed because of the power of lobbyists.
America is bigger and more complicated than perhaps it seems from the outside. Also, gun ownership is a constitutional issue... IANACS* but the purpose of that is to allow the people to rise up against the tyranny of either an oppressive government or an outside enemy (as there was no assumption at the time that a standing national army would be a thing, or that Britain was going to leave us alone.) So that's been something we've been arguing over since the beginning.
Meanwhile, a lot of Americans just aren't as politically charged about privacy as they are about gun rights. There's no privacy lobby which is as powerful as the NRA, an you can't win midterms by scaring your constituents about how the other party is coming to take your private keys away. There might be outrage about this eventually, but you've got to give it time to bubble up. All many Americans even know about Edward Snowden is some vague notion that he 'stole secrets' and 'gave them to China.' Meanwhile all you see on the news now is the George Zimmerman trial.
Bear a few things in mind... most Americans don't own a gun, and most who do don't have them to rise up against the government, and quite a few don't fit into the stereotype of 'gun loving American' at all. After the Newtown shooting (I believe it was) there was widespread support for gun control legislation (close to 90% IIRC) but it was summarily killed because of the power of lobbyists.
America is bigger and more complicated than perhaps it seems from the outside. Also, gun ownership is a constitutional issue... IANACS* but the purpose of that is to allow the people to rise up against the tyranny of either an oppressive government or an outside enemy (as there was no assumption at the time that a standing national army would be a thing, or that Britain was going to leave us alone.) So that's been something we've been arguing over since the beginning.
Meanwhile, a lot of Americans just aren't as politically charged about privacy as they are about gun rights. There's no privacy lobby which is as powerful as the NRA, an you can't win midterms by scaring your constituents about how the other party is coming to take your private keys away. There might be outrage about this eventually, but you've got to give it time to bubble up. All many Americans even know about Edward Snowden is some vague notion that he 'stole secrets' and 'gave them to China.' Meanwhile all you see on the news now is the George Zimmerman trial.
* I am not a constitutional scholar